*This* is How You Engage Your Readers
One of the most common questions - and worries - I hear from writers is whether they’ve written an engaging story. It feels like a mystery, this skill good writers have of sucking us readers into a story.
It’s not mysterious - the skill, or the reason why writers struggle with this. And it has to do with screens.
No, this is not a screed against technology.
Just stick with me here…
I’m a huge, HUGE, H U G E fan of the TV series Andor, which tells the story of Cassian Andor, who plays a key role in securing the information the Rebellion uses to blow up the Death Star in the OG movie that started it, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. I could GUSH, but I’ll spare you. Instead, I’ll narrow my focus to glancing.
Yes, glancing.
In an early scene, Andor is in a bar, looking for his lost sister. It’s not clear yet who he or his sister is, but a sense of danger permeates the air. Andor is tense, alert, anxious. He asks the woman working there about his sister. Her eyes narrow. Andor’s brow furrows with intensity. Two unsavory security guards take notice. The woman glances at the men, tells Andor who they are, then leaves. Andor glances at the men. The men glance at Andor. They exchange a few terse words. The woman returns, tells Andor the person he’s looking for is no longer there. Andor and the woman exchange some words, some heavy glances. Andor stalks out, face tight with emotion. End of scene.
All this glancing is telling a story all its own – Andor’s search for his sister is desperate and dangerous. And very important to Andor. You can hear it in the clipped tone of his voice. You can see it in the way the actor, Diego Luna, holds his body. Hunched, tense, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed. His intensity palpable (I’d include a screenshot here, but I don’t want to get into a copyright tussle with Disney - just google Cassian Andor and you’ll see…). I have no background in acting to judge whether someone is a good actor – I’ll leave that to the professionals – but Diego Luna definitely had me 100% hooked.
With the amount of screen-based storytelling we all consume on a regular basis, absorbing story from visual cues like is second nature. An actor can put so much into a glance. So it’s only natural, when we sit down to write, that we turn to visual cues to tell our story. We ‘see’ our stories in our mind’s eye, like a movie. We see our characters hunch and tense and, yes, glance, and it all feels full of meaning to us. When we write, “…she glanced at the door,” we believe the reader can intuit all that meaning too.
But the whole glancing thing? It doesn’t work in writing the way it works in the movies.
Why?
With a book, you are presenting readers with text instead of visuals. What you see in your mind’s eye isn’t much use to readers; readers are not in your head. They can’t see what you see. Nor will your book come with Diego Luna to act it out for them.
And yet so many writers rely on visual cues to do storytelling work. But knowing what your character is doing - glancing, or hunching, pursing - is not going to engage your readers.
Knowing why they’re doing it will.
To write an engaging story that will have readers 100% hooked, you have to go beyond visual cues and get your characters’ thoughts, feelings and reactions - AKA the why - on the page.
The fancy writing term for this is interiority.
Let the Reader In
The novel’s super power, the thing that makes it unique from other art forms, is its ability to get the reader inside characters’ heads. Readers get to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, hear their thoughts, feel their feelings, react with their reactions. They get to be inside the story, immersed in it all.
In order to do all this immersing, writers need to get their characters’ interiority on the page. Interiority is a character’s thoughts, feelings, and reactions to what is happening in the story. It’s your characters processing the events of the story through their eyes, their perspectives, and it’s the special sauce that allows readers into your story. That engages them. You need this trifecta at every turn. Your POV characters should be thinking, feeling, and reacting to everything that happens in the story.
It has to get onto the page, or the reader will feel shut out of the story.
To wrap your head around this, think about how this works in your own life. Something happens; let’s say a car comes to an unexpected stop at the corner you’re standing on. First, you’d have a thought about that car. “I wonder why that car stopped when it has a green light.” Then you would have a feeling about that. “I’m worried that car is going to cause an accident.” Then you would react, probably by stepping back from the curb. By thinking, feeling, and reacting, you have processed the event of the car unexpectedly stopping at the corner. This would all happen in the blink of an eye, of course (or in an intense glance from Diego Luna).
Your characters need to run through this processing progression as well. Without it, whatever action is happening on the page remains inert. Flat. Readers won’t know what to make of it.
Let’s take a look at an example. Here’s a quick passage from The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig, in which the protagonist, Nix, who is on the hunt for a very specific map, is looking through a sketchbook of maps and drawings:
“I dropped my eyes and turned another page; the image gave me pause. Black ink slashed the paper like the smoke of a cutlass: a ship as sleek as a shark, bound tighter to the pier. I could almost hear the creak of the rope as she strained at her bonds. At the prow, the mere suggestion of a solitary figure, as ephemeral as a wisp of smoke. It must have been me. “This is beautiful,” I said, but the word fell short. “It is…true.”
“You are too kind,” he said, looking up at me through his lashes; they were long enough they nearly brushed his cheeks when he blinked. '“She makes a lovely subject.”
I glanced up from the page, suspicious, but his expression was earnest. The next page was blank. I handed back the book with a sigh. “I can see why you’d call me a tourist.”’
—The Girl from Everywhere, Heidi Heilig, pg 118
Lovely, right? And it’s got everything - action, description, dialogue, and interiority.
I’m going break this quick passage down, so we can see how Heilig wove important interiority into this quick moment. I’ve put the interiority in bold.
Here’s the first line:
“I dropped my eyes and turned another page; the image gave me pause.”
Nix takes an action here – she turns a page. Then we get her reaction to what she sees on that page: it gives her pause. It grabs her attention in a way that makes her want to linger over what she sees. It’s evoked emotion in Nix.
Next, we get a visual cue - a description of what it is she’s seeing on that page:
“Black ink slashed the paper like the smoke of a cutlass: a ship as sleek as a shark, bound tighter to the pier.”
Now we know what she’s looking at - a drawing of her ship. Her home. This is followed by a really important piece of interiority:
“I could almost hear the creak of the rope as she strained at her bonds.”
This piece of interiority doesn’t just give us her reaction; it also references her past. This keeps Nix from flattening out into ever-present narrator, only reacting to what’s in front of her (to read about the problem of the ever-present narrator and how to avoid it, check out this blog post).
Then we step back into the present moment with more description of the drawing, followed by a thought:
“At the prow, the mere suggestion of a solitary figure, as ephermeral as a wisp of smoke. It must have been me.”
She’s interpreting the drawing for us readers. This is followed by an emotional reaction:
“This is beautiful,” I said, but the word fell short. “It is…true.”
With ‘the word fell short,’ Heilig cleverly tells us Nix feels nostalgic, seeing this rending of her ship. Then we get some dialogue from the Blake Hart, other person in the scene.
“You are too kind,” he said, looking up at me through his lashes; they were long enough they nearly brushed his cheeks when he blinked. “She makes a lovely subject.”
There’s no interiority here, because we are not in Blake’s head - we are in Nix’s. Nix can only observe Blake. But his words trigger the next moment of interiority from Nix:
“I glanced up from the page, suspicious, but his expression was earnest. The next page was blank. I handed back the book with a sigh. “I can see why you’d call me a tourist.””
Yes, Nix glances. That’s the action she takes, our visual cue. But it’s followed with the information readers need to understand the meaning of that glance. She’s suspicious of Blake, but comes to the conclusion he isn’t trying to trick her. When she sees the next page is blank, we get her next reaction: a sigh. A sigh suggests to the reader Nix is disappointed there isn’t more (and that it isn’t what she’s looking for…you’ll have to read the book if you want to know more).
Just for fun, now let’s look at that quick passage without any interiority, just action and description and dialogue:
“I dropped my eyes and turned another page. Black ink slashed the paper like the smoke of a cutlass: a ship as sleek as a shark, bound tighter to the pier. At the prow, the mere suggestion of a solitary figure, as ephemeral as a wisp of smoke. “This is beautiful,” I said.
“You are too kind,” he said, looking up at me through his lashes; they were long enough they nearly brushed his cheeks when he blinked. “She makes a lovely subject.”
The next page was blank. I handed back the book. “I can see why you’d call me a tourist.”
Feels different, right? Or rather, doesn’t feel like anything. We don’t know what Nix is thinking or feeling as she looks at the drawing. She’s not processing the moment on the page for us, so we can’t process it. We readers are shut out of the moment. We’re not a part of it. It’s just happening.
And stories that just happen are stories that readers DNF.
Getting the Balance Right
Another thing you’ll notice about this quick passage is that the interiority is woven into the action. The thoughts, feelings, and reactions are there in bits and pieces, fit around the forward-moving action of the story. This lets the reader stay in the flow of the story while still giving them all the information they need to know to understand what’s happening. They are thinking, feeling, reacting, and processing right along with the character as they go about the adventure of their story.
When I’m working with writers on getting more interiority into their stories, it’s not unusual to get some pushback. Having characters think, feel, and react to everything in the story doesn’t feel natural at first. Writers worry they’re spelling out too much, or that they are bloating their word counts. But what they’re really doing is letting the readers into the story. They’re giving the readers what they need to understand what’s happening…and giving them a reason to keep reading.
The general rule of thumb with interiority is, if you feel like you’re overdoing it, you’re probably doing it right.
That said, too interiority can bring a story to a halt, info-dump-style. I don’t see this very often, but when I do, it most often shows up as too much thinking (I’ve never seen anyone overdo the feeling or reaction part). The character is overthinking on the page, following overwrought trains of thought and posing lots of questions.
If you catch yourself writing out big blocks of thinking, remind yourself that thinking is just one part of interiority. Mix in feelings and reactions. And remember to weave it into the action of the scene.
And THEN, you’ll have written an engaging story.
Till next time…
Happy writing!
Erin
Photo Credit: Igor Olmilaev for Unsplash
