5 Things that Will Keep your Reader Interested

I decided to write a writing advice post today about a few things I’ve noticed in books that have always keep me interested. I’m going to use  and Percy Jackson series as references since these books never failed to keep me turning pages.

1.       Cliff-hanger chapters. Obviously, this is a well-known tactic used everywhere. If you plan your story right, this isn’t that hard to do either. It’s not limited to just action parts. You can have one of your characters say something we’ve all been waiting to find out, or have something happen suddenly. Unlike other things, this can’t be overused.

2.       Someone is about to tell something we’ll have been waiting to find out and the conversation is interrupted. This happened many times in the Percy Jackson series. He was about to find out something and then some stupid monster appears out of nowhere. Subject is dropped. But if you do this, be sure to come back to the topic somewhere down the road.

3.       Memory loss. Someone in your story doesn’t remember something significant. The character can have full blown memory loss (as in he doesn’t remember anything), or he can just forget a certain important event. Be sure to give a reason why the reader wants to know what happened.  You don’t have keep it a strict secret. Put hints to possibilities of what could’ve happened here and there.

4.        A balance of action and personal conversations. Even if your story is action and adventure, you should still include personal conversation with the characters. Your action might be far from boring, but the reader still needs to care about your character. That makes the dangerous adventures more exciting to your reader. Why? Because they know about the character and they care.

5.       A personal risk. Whatever the main risk is, always add another risk to do it. That’s what kept my heart pounding during the first chapters of The Last Olympian. Of course, the main thing was: Percy must defeat Kronos or the gods will be overthrown and the world would end. Along with that, the know-it-all Oracle predicted that he was going to die while doing so. I LOVED Percy so this was not only heartbreaking, but I didn’t wanted to stop until I reached the end.

Hope these were helpful! Be sure to remember Memorial Day!