By Dawn Field
The best books
suck you into an alternative world in a single sentence. Ideally, it happens
in the opening sentence. Some take a paragraph—others longer. If it takes
too long, few will chose to read a book unless they’ve already cultivated a
love for the author or the topic, or someone promised it was a terrific read.
The best books
create worlds you can feel and understand even though they are imaginary or, if
based on true stories, you only experience vicariously. A great read gets comments
such as “I could so relate to that character,” “I never knew the life of a
Buddhist monk was like that,” “I could just feel his pain when he broke his
leg,” “I could see the jungle temple in my mind,” and “I could feel the cold in
the winter survival scene—I almost started to shiver as he was trying to start
the fire in the snow.”
The art of
pulling a reader in is not due to being a master of words—although this helps
tremendously—as much as being a master of the human experience and human
psychology, and understanding the key features that define the essence of any
experience. It is also a matter of achieving precision in descriptions.
What can you do
to ensure you have the best possible chance to pull your readers into your
world? How do you make them not only suspend disbelief but ache to stay there
until you kick them out on the last page? What makes them hope you write a
sequel?
These seven
things will certainly help. Great writing has them all.
1.
Stereotype
. . .
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~*~
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