Some of the best books have us talking about them for years, learning more about the story as we mature and our understanding of life deepens. We see things we never realised, things we never saw before though we may have read the words over and over.
Tag: Good books
Good books and their secrets
There are many ways to make your book a pageturner. Here are just some.
- Craft suspense whatever your genre. Make each scene and chapter a cliff-hanger, leaving the reader with questions for which they need answers.
- Create a delicate balance between what your reader knows and what each character knows.
- Foreshadowing what is to come creates anticipation.
- Lead and mislead your reader at appropriate times.
- Language and word choice create mood and atmosphere.
- Lush writing involving all the senses creates an emotional response in the reader.
- Dripfeed your story, allowing your reader the satisfaction of piecing most things together for themselves.
- Use pacing wisely. Vary the pace at which the story moves, sentence length and structure to build to a climax or relax the reader before a shock or surprise.
- Raise the stakes both external and internal for your protagonist, then set a clock ticking on a time limit.
- Use twists and turns to keep the reader curious.
Story
That’s not a good book, that’s the best book. When you want to read slowly because you enjoy the book so much you don’t want to end, but you also want to read fast so you can find out what happens!
The best thing is that, with a book, you can keep your friends close. Re-reading your favourite books is like revisiting that lost friend. There’s nothing like reading a new book and discovering how good it is, but reading an old friend is almost as good. Especially when you have an aging memory. Then all your best friends are new again. Probably one of the few benefits of such a memory.