Adding an Emotional Investment to Your Writing
Readers, like investors, can be total suckers. It doesn't take much-a housing boom, a bump in the price of gold, or a spunky protagonist with a past-to get their hearts pumping. Like investors, readers are hungry. They have liquid emotional assets, and they want to get their money's worth.
For a writer, that emotional capitol is money in the bank.
The problem is, writers often fall into the easy trap of developing a great emotional attachment with their readers, only to fail them when the chips get cashed in. There are several pitfalls that result in the bankruptcy of that investment, causing the reader to feel betrayed by the author and reluctant to be lured back into the story.
Poor investment decisions include killing off an important character early in the story and failing to replacing him or her with ... something: some major twist of plot caused by the untimely death, or (hopefully) with another empathetic character. Similarly, sub-plots which are initiated and terminated early in the story but do not reinforce any common themes of the book sap that emotional investment but leave readers wanting. Dream sequences, too, can have this effect. For example:
Obadiah was shackled to a boat in the Red Sea. He looked over the side of the boat and noticed the green water sparkling with glitter, swirling in small whirlpools as far as he could see; hypnotic. The whirlpools widened and the boat started to spin. He panicked, but no one else on the boat seemed to care. The boat started going faster and faster, downward toward the deep.... He woke up to the smell of coffee.
Doesn't that suck?? Obadiah appeared to have an interesting story to tell, but it was just a dream. What a rip-off. You, Dear Reader, started to invest, but the story didn't pay off.
Or maybe it does.
The contribution doesn't have to be immediately clear. It is gratifying when a reader discovers a connection between a seemingly-trivial dream (or death, or sub-plot) in the beginning to a major twist later in the book. It's like the reader not checking his account balance for years only to discover at age 67 ½ that he is a millionaire. Then he can congratulate himself for being such a smart investor ... and the shareholders are happy.
|
