In a post on DIY MFA, Stefan Emunds begins a multi-part examination of the intersection of storytelling and psychology. Emunds says that understanding psychology can help you enrich your storytelling, engage readers, create verisimilitude, convey truth, and understand themselves better. In this post, Emunds focuses on reader engagement.
Readers invest time and effort into reading your book, but they also invest emotionally, when they root for your characters amidst their struggles and setbacks. You can create reader engagement with nine elements:
- Empathy. If readers don’t empathize with your protagonist, they won’t care what happens to them.
- Curiosity. More than a question of what happens next, reader curiosity means giving them a glimpse into someone else’s life. “People read to experience situations they can’t or don’t want to encounter in real life,” Emunds says. Curiosity is generated by anticipation (positive) or worry (negative). The greater the power divide between your hero and the antagonist forces opposing them, the greater the curiosity.
- Tension. Tension is created by the distance between desire and reality. Again, anticipation and worry help create tension.
- Inspiration and motivation. “Great stories deliver inspiring what-ifs, morals, or wisdom bytes,” Emunds writes. “That is the power of narrative.”
- Sense of wonder and beauty. Use sensory detail and characterization to create a sense of wonder and beauty in your world.
- Emotional thrill. Readers want to live vicariously through your characters. Action and conflict will bring them along for the ride.
- Excitement.
- Satisfaction. A strong ending will satisfy your readers’ curiosity and interest in your hero’s journey. Your ending might confirm your readers’ beliefs or leave them glad they aren’t in your protagonist’s shoes.
- Feelings. “Emotions sell,” Emunds says. “But readers have become more demanding and desire deeper stories, stories with existential depths that conjure feelings and touch the heart.”
How many of these elements should you use at the same time? There’s a balance. “Too few engagers and your story gets boring,” he says. “Too many engagers would stress out your readers.” Of these nine factors, empathy should be most present, because it enables curiosity and tension, he adds.
