Fiction stories require creative thinking and the ability to come up with something that could make some real sense too. Unlike normal stories, fictions are often quite difficult to write because the writer may find it quite odd to balance out the logical sense and keep the creative idea together. However, certain tips can help you in making your fiction more engaging by keeping parity between logic and the main storyline.
How to Make Your Fiction Engaging
Making your fiction engaging is not as much of a difficult task as many perceive it. There are certain points that you need to consider prior to writing it all down. Take small steps but those that matter and you will soon be able to write up something that has a high value.
Make a Worth Reading Introduction
To make your fiction more engaging, the best tip for you is to come up with a strong entry. A well-focused and uncommon introduction would be the one that could engage the readers. “Once Upon a Time” needs to be replaced with a more appealing and attention-drawing introduction. If you read the fiction stories by some top novelists, you will see that all of them have caught the attention of the reader right from the beginning.
If your introductions are not strong, no one would want to read any further. With a vague or very casual beginning just like “any other writer” would do, you would be wasting your time writing the entire story. Make your fiction more engaging by getting your reader’s interest right from the first paragraph. No one will read it if they are not finding any thrill or intriguing element in your introduction. Remember that only good intros will provide good outcomes.
Character Development
One of the main things many writers do is that with a focus on the storyline, they tend to miss out on character development. An engaging fiction story will always have the characters fully described along with their nature and personality traits. If you just focus on the story and don’t spend some time nurturing the character traits, the readers might end up being confused.
Make sure that the majority of the characters are fully described. Don’t just do all the description at once, rather use the concept of events and incidents to describe how a particular character reacts to certain situations. Differences among the characters should be created so that the readers can evaluate each of them as distinctive to the other.
Dialogue Development
Imagine having an exceptionally outstanding story that makes perfect sense with all of the logic well-defined but not having proper dialogues. It would create disinterest among the readers who would not want to read more on this particular fiction story because the dialogues are not something that sparks interest. When writing fiction, the storyline is made after a thorough consideration but the same should be done for dialogues.
Some dialogues become very famous and popular as they highlight a particular element in unique ways. One of the reasons why the famous show, The Game of Thrones and movie Harry Potter got popular was because the dialogues of all the characters were just too ideal. They gave the sign of a unique thinking perspective.
Suggested Reading – Harry Potter Conspiracy Theories
Tension
Don’t worry, we aren’t going to give you any tension but we really suggest that your readers should be finding some sort of tension in the story that they are reading. For example, what is something that could be creating a problem in the entire storyline? There can be certain elements such as resistance, dilemmas, or any other aspect that needs to be accepted.
Tension is correlated with characters as to how the characters resolve the tension. However, a pro-tip to always keep your readers engaged is that you should maintain the tension throughout the story. Don’t come up to the climax right away or in an easy manner. Make sure that various complications have solutions that no one would expect. The famous Netflix series “Money Heist” has been famous because the story had tension throughout with each problem being resolved uniquely.
Keep What Matters
If anything is complex in fiction or any story in general, it would be this point. Some writers over-explain a detail at places where it isn’t even required. On the other hand, many writers lack the right detail for important events. Neither of the two situations is acceptable because it results in losing the grace of your story.
To write well, re-read your story unless you find the flaw. Add details where you think that a certain element might be missing or that the reader could be deluded with unclear clues. Remove details where they are not required to maintain the flow of the story without losing the interest of your reader.
Research the Trends
Some things are in trend while others are not. There was a time when horror stories and movies were quite common and were of major interest to the audience. However, with time, the trend has changed. People shifted to action movies or the ones which had a high level of suspense among them. During the digital age, these trends change very frequently which is why your fiction should be matching those trends too.
For example, for the past many years, space campaigns have been on the rise. Writing a fiction story keeping this trend in mind would help you have your readers engaged. Similarly, there are loads of other niches which should be considered. Always research the trends before you start writing. In case you don’t follow them, you will be demotivated as the story might not sell in as much volume as you wanted it to be.
Address a Real Problem
Although this is not possible in every fiction that you read or write, this could be a great way to have your reader attentive to you. Some fiction movies and stories address real-life problems in a fictitious manner. This adds more interest to the audience. If you try to do that and consider the other aspects mentioned above, we guarantee your story will be most engaging.
One of the best examples for this is the movie “Armageddon” or the movie “2012”. Armageddon addressed the problem of a potential asteroid attack on the planet while 2012 addressed the issue of a doomsday coming to the world. Writeups and the storyline of both have been brought close to reality which makes them less of a fantasy and more of reality thereby aiding the appeal of the story.
Learn other tips about writing fantasy fiction here – Expert Tips for Writing Fantasy Fiction.
Maintain Pace
This is very important. If you are writing a fiction story, you need to keep the pace balanced throughout. Some stories are very slow and the reader keeps on waiting for the tension and climax. Such stories are not pleasing to the readers. On the other hand, some stories are fast which means that the reader is unable to figure out many elements unless he re-reads the story two or three times.
Therefore, it is important to maintain the pace of your story. If you are confused about whether the pace of your story is balanced or is it abnormal, you should ask multiple people to read it before giving it a final touch. In case there are any issues related to the pace of the story, you would know that and any adjustments could be done before a mass scale launch.
Deliver a Resolution
In some stories, the resolution is not there and such stories provide an open-ended cliffhanger to the readers. However, this idea could not work every time. In fact, only a few stories could stay appealing on cliffhangers. Why? Because the readers think that they just wasted their time if they didn’t find a proper resolution to the problem.
In fiction stories, delivering a resolution becomes more important because the situation being highlighted is not real. In an unreal situation, any ending could make sense but what exactly was the intent of the story writer, has to be mentioned. This is why you should try to not leave your stories on a cliffhanger unless it is pure fantasy fiction. In that case, you can use cliffhangers with some hints of what could happen.
Conclusion
Writing fiction is not that difficult if you have a creative mind. However, creativity is not the only thing that matters. If you want your fiction to be something that instantly appeals to the readers, you need to be careful regarding even the smallest details. If you haven’t written fiction, do remember the points we just gave above. In case you have written a story, cross-check it with regards to the tips and points that we mentioned above. We hope your story gets amazing with our tips!