There’s still so much more to share from Craft­Fest. Today I’m com­bin­ing two work­shops: How to Keep the Reader Turn­ing Pages, given by Peter James, and Research and the Will­ing Sus­pen­sion of Dis­be­lief, given by W. Michael Gear. Both gave point­ers for mak­ing sure the reader stays in the story and keeps reading.

James stressed that char­ac­ters are the most impor­tant aspect of our sto­ries, and we need to engage the reader from the begin­ning. To do that, it’s impor­tant to cre­ate emo­tional con­nec­tions for the reader, and it won’t come through if you don’t know your char­ac­ter.  He told us to give all char­ac­ters some­thing or some­one to love—no char­ac­ter should be all bad.

He reit­er­ated the need for ruth­less edit­ing, mak­ing sure every­thing dri­ves the nar­ra­tive for­ward, and to make sure to engage all the senses.

Another point James made is that “a likely impos­si­bil­ity is bet­ter than an unlikely pos­si­bil­ity.” He also told us to be original—to find new ways to describe things. And to remem­ber that less is more.

Gear began by describ­ing a novel as Char­ac­ter, Plot and Set­ting. All require that you do research, and, as he pointed out, if you’re lazy with your research, you’re not likely to suc­ceed. As an archae­ol­o­gist, he’s used to doing a lot of research. James also stressed doing one’s home­work. He said he goes out on a ride along with his local police depart­ment once a week. Read­ers want to be in “safe” hands—they want to trust the author to tell them the truth—or as close as it can get in fiction.

Gear spoke of his pre-author days, when he was read­ing a west­ern novel about a cat­tle drive, which he was find­ing interesting—until the end, when the cat­tle arrived at their des­ti­na­tion and it was calv­ing sea­son. This in and of itself is unlikely, but the death knell for the book for Gear was that through­out, the author had been describ­ing this herd of cat­tle as being made up of steers. (If you’re won­der­ing why this is an issue, check here.

Gear also warned that research can be a trap. It’s too easy to get sucked into the research so you for­get to write. He stressed that you can’t do too much research, but you can put too much into the book. Research has to be inserted grace­fully. It’s an art.

He asked us what per­cent­age of our read­ers we’d be will­ing to lose due to bad research. But he also pointed out that it’s impor­tant to bal­ance the “real” with what read­ers will be will­ing to accept. When read­ers pick up a book, they’re will­ing to sus­pend disbelief—to an extent.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *