A Simple Trick to Keep Readers Turning the Pages

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Scene and chapter breaks are the most likely places to lose a reader. Are yours doing all they can to keep them reading?

On Monday, I talked about writing without chapters, and one of the benefits of that was choosing the best places to end my scenes and chapters. Today, I want to elaborate on that a bit.

When I was still new to writing, I thought a scene or a chapter was a contained bit of the story. It started, and then it wrapped up by the end. It might talk about what to do next, but that happened in the next chapter. I made the same mistakes pretty much every new writer does. I ended scenes with:

• Characters going to bed
• Characters setting off somewhere
• Characters achieving a goal and being happy about it
• Characters musing about the next day or the next task
• Obvious foreshadowing of doom (dum-dum-DUM!)
• Melodramatic cliffhangers with characters in trouble or shocking revelations

There are ways to make every single one of these work, but more often than not, they aren’t strong endings and don’t provide the best hooks for enticing readers to turn the page.

The Freedom of Writing Without Chapters

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A first draft doesn’t need to adhere to a chapter format.

I’m not sure when I started writing this way, but sometime in the last four or five years, I stopped using chapters during a first draft. Instead, I write scenes grouped by acts, and decide later how those scenes fit into a chapter structure.

I don’t think I would have done this if I hadn’t started using Scrivener. Its folder and file format makes it easy to organize my manuscript into scenes and group them into chapters as needed. Writing in Word just didn’t have this same flexibility.

I discovered this “no chapter” draft gave me the freedom to write a scene and not worry about length, or even how it might transition to the next scene. I just wrote the scene and moved on to the next after it was drafted.

How to Write a Real Page-Turner, Part 5

By Laurisa White Reyes, @lwreyes

Part of the How They Do It Series 

JH: Laurisa White Reyes wraps up her How to Write a Page-Turner series today a sure-fire page-turner technique to keep readers hooked in your story.

Laurisa White Reyes is the Senior Editor of Skyrocket Press & Author Services. She has published sixteen books, including 8 Secrets to Successful Self-Publishing and the SCBWI Spark Award winner The Storytellers. Laurisa also provides personal coaching for writers. To connect with her, visit Skyrocket Press.

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Take it away Laurisa...

Sunday Writing Tip: Make Sure Your Scene Endings Hook Your Readers

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Each week, I’ll offer a tip you can take and apply to your WIP to help improve it. They’ll be easy to do and shouldn’t take long, so they’ll be tips you can do without taking up your Sunday. Though I do reserve the right to offer a good tip now and then that will take longer—but only because it would apply to the entire manuscript.

This week, check how you end each scene and/or chapter and make sure you’re giving readers a reason to turn the page.

A scene break or chapter ending is a natural place for readers to put down a book, and sometimes we write it that way without considering the downsides. Characters go to sleep, they leave for a journey, they settle in to wait—they at in ways that say “pause the story here” in some way.

Make it Stick – The Art of the Chapter Ending

By Tiffany Reisz, @tiffanyreisz

You never forget your first time. Your first time you read a book and one single sentence blows the top of your head off and makes you realize the terrifying power of what a great writer can accomplished with a few simple words. Every professional writer has that first moment of breathless chills like a caffeine pill has just kicked in and you feel like the words you read are not words but wings and you can fly with them.