Narrative Drive is the energy of a story, the force that propels it forward, the promise that something important is going to happen. You create a strong narrative drive with a focused story goal, strong characters, and the questions you raise in readers’ minds.
For example, in the beginning of More Deaths Than One, Bob Stark is reading that day’s newspaper when he comes across the obituary of his mother, who he had buried twenty years before. There many so questions this scene generates that it should be impossible for readers to put the book down until they get the answers to at least a few of the questions. Is the obituary a hoax? If not, how could his mother have died twice? What is Bob going to do? How is he going to find out the truth? How would I react if this happened to me?
When Bob goes to the cemetery to check it out, he sees himself standing by the open grave with his college sweetheart and a passel of children, which raises the granddaddy of all questions --- what the hell is going on? Bob wants to know, and so do readers. (At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.)
By the time a few of these questions are answered, if I did my job correctly, I will have raised more questions to which readers will want the answer, and so the story is propelled forward to a satisfying ending.
If the story goal isn’t focused enough, if the characters are weak, the questions the story raises in readers’ minds falls under the heading of “who cares?” Why am I reading this? Why isn’t anyone doing anything to resolve the problem? When is something going to happen?
Today we’re going to talk about narrative drive. What propels your story forward? What questions does your story (ideally) raise in readers’ minds? How do you create scenarios that engender questions? How do you make sure the questions are ones the readers will care about?
As always, any topic that will help us improve our writing is fair game in these discussions, so feel free to bring up any of your writing concerns.
Let's talk.
The group No Whine, Just Champagne will meet here at this article for a live discussion about writing and the writing life on Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 9:00pm ET (8pm CT, 7pm MT, 6pm PT). Hope to see you, but if you can't make it then, the discussion will continue during the days afterward, so please stop by and tell us what you think.
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Comments: 35
Or, when you read the 1st book which promises more to come, enjoyed the book and are eagerly waiting for the next .. and waiting and waiting and waiting ... and it becomes that bus that never comes.
It definiately must be hard - the reader doesn't want to feel cheated (I don't), but you also need to leave them yearning for that next book in the series and leave the biggest question unanswered with a big teaser at the end.
I see a series on tv that I really enjoy, but if there is no end goal and its just about the characters, I'm bored with it by the end of the 1st season. And books take much more commitment from the reader than a tv series does.
What would Lord of the Rings be without the epic journey to destroy the ring, the one big purpose that spans the entire series?
Without the ultimate goal of destroying (Voldemore? is that his name?), the Harry Potter series would just be a bunch of books about young wizards in wizard school with some annoying guy making trouble now and then.
It's more of an unfinished story.
It's also why it's a good idea to find a test reader or two - someone not embedded in the story, who will read it with interest and give an honest unbiased opinion of what might be lacking or overdone.
I have no idea who I could use for an unbiased opinionated test reader. And I have no $$ to pay someone.
Or you could enter a contest like ABNA on Amazon.
Sometimes something is in your head, but you think you mentioned it in the story, and leaving it out can leave the reader going "wha?"
On the one hand you need to give the reader something quick to grap their interest, a teaser that intrigues them and makes them hunger for more.
On the other hand, you can't just dangle that teaser in front of them without giving them any satisfaction for the length of an entire book.
You need to build the suspence and need to know surrounding the main drive while giving them little victories along the way. The reader needs to feel like they are learning the secrets well before you reveal the punch line, but revealing too much too soon leaves the ending flat and anticlimatic.
I don't like books where you can read the first chapter and the last and know the entire story. In a spiral, readers can't tell the whole story by reading the ending, because part of the ending was revealed long before.
It fits the basic description of a whodunnit, but doesn't feel like a whodunnit.
I'm not even sure if it would be called a mystery.
None of my books are whodunnits, but I don't reveal the perpetrators of any of my crimes until the end of the story. (That's another thing I don't like reading -- when I know who did it from the beginning. It feels as if the book is missing something, like half the suspense.)
You nailed that one LV.
Hi Y'all
I like the way LV described the process. Let out little bits of information at a time, but don't withhold the big answers for the entire book. I think having a series of resolutions, but then raising new issues works better.
What I often do is answer all the story questions, then twist the ending just a bit to where another question arises. It's more to leave readers with the idea that the story is continuing and that all is not well, but it would just as easily work with a series.
Draw them in with a tease, give a little, maybe even give them the answer, but at the same time leave them with a bigger question to pull them in deeper.
“Who were James Angus Stuart and Regina DeBrizzi Stuart?” Mary asked, trying to ignore the mounted heads of murdered animals staring down at her from the lawyer’s wood-paneled walls.
Even though that question is the theme of the book (and "murder" a foreshadowing of events to come) and hopefully will be the question that readers want to know, just voicing the question out of the blue like that is nothing to drive the story. But, as the chapter continues, and we find out that James and Regina are Mary's grandparents who were recently murdered, leaving her their farm, and that her father claimed they were dead -- Now that raises questions. Who were James and Regina, and what did they do that was so horrible their son claimed they were dead?
Other ways are: switching POV to give a different perspective and ramp up the tension or ending a scene with an unexpected set-back. Both ways leave questions in readers' minds, and the energy created drives the story forward.
A scene might start with the perpetrator's pov, then switch and take over just moments before his pov ends and continue with the victim's pov that leads into another twist of the story.
Just like the characters don't act without a purpose or reason, everything we do as the writer has a reason or purpose.
And I don't do it at every chapter either. Some chapters are centered more on the emotions of the people and will start in one character's head then jump to the other. Other chapters are more about sharing information and events.