This week I’m going to keep my post short yet hopefully powerful. I want to discuss what keeps readers interested in a story. Is it the villain? The setting? The romance? When we boil everything down to the very basics, what keeps people reading? It’s a lot simpler than most people think.
What Holds A Reader’s Interest?
You may have heard me say before that readers come for the premise and stay for the characters. They are pulled in by a cool concept: a boy going to wizard school, a girl trying to survive a death game, or a woman forced into a battle school with dragons. These are all intriguing plot promises that pull readers to a certain story. Yet once they get into that story, it’s the characters they get attached to and root for. We want Harry to succeed at school and win against Voldemort. We root for Katniss to beat the game and return home to her sister. We stay to see if Violet can survive battle school even though she has a physical condition that makes the task almost impossible for her. As readers, we get invested in the people.
However, I’ve come to the realization that neither premise nor character are what keeps readers’ interest. Eventually, every premise will get boring. Magic school is just school after all. Harry going through Hogwarts could have felt like any other school once readers became used to the new subjects. Then we have Katniss who many people find annoying, yet the series is very successful. So clearly, neither premise nor character can carry a story. Readers say they read for the protagonist, the romance, the magic system, etc. All these answers are so broad that is makes it hard to pinpoint exactly what interests them. But what if I told you that the same one thing interests everyone?
What keeps readers interested in a story? If we boil it down to one element, it’d be plot—specifically conflict. Now, anyone who has followed my posts for a while might be sighing. Yes, I’m back to one of my favorite subjects: conflict. For a while, I was hitting the subject pretty hard with posts like the three layers of conflict, broadening and deepening conflict, and possible endings for conflict. Now, I want to give you a basic formula for conflict that will keep readers interested in your story until the end.
Why Is Conflict Key?
Before we pull out the components of conflict, I just want to take a minute to explain why conflict holds people’s interest. Conflict means struggles, and struggles build curiosity and camaraderie. Why do people stop and gawk when a fight breaks out? Because they want to know what happens. They’re curious. And, if they like someone involved in the fight, they feel tension about the outcome.
Conflict also builds a connection between those who go through it. People in the military form a strong connection with their fellow soldiers because of what they endure together. Even something like living through the COVID shutdown creates a common experience of suffering that brings people together. When your characters go through conflict, readers live that alongside them and get more invested in what happens.
Let’s sum this up. Conflict makes readers curious to stick around and see what happens. That leads readers to struggle alongside the characters and bond with them, which then creates tension when more conflict occurs to threaten the characters.
The Conflict Formula
Okay, let’s move on to the practical steps of creating conflict. Here is one simple formula to create conflict in your story:
Desire + Opposing Force + Stakes = Conflict
If you want readers to be interested in your story, you need this formula in every scene of your book. What does the character want? What stands in his way of getting it? What potential consequences might happen if he doesn’t get it? If you can clearly show each of these elements in your scenes, readers won’t want to put down the story.
Conflict Formula Example
It’s important to make sure you have all three elements. A character without a desire is boring. If he’s just listlessly going through life without any goals, readers won’t care what he does. Give him a goal. Let him want something, like to be a on a baseball team.
If he has a desire but nothing stands in his way of getting it, then the story is also boring. Sam wants to play baseball. He tries out for the team and gets picked to play. End of story. Boring! Now, what if he wants to play baseball but the coach doesn’t like him. Sam is going to have to work really hard and be the best person to try out for the team so the coach can’t turn him away, or Sam will have to find a way to get on the coach’s good side. Now we have more of a story, though not a super interesting one yet.
Let’s say the character goes through all this work and gets on the team. So what? Sam gets to play baseball. How does that change his life? If there are no stakes attached to the goal, then it feels empty. Sure, some baseball fans will like the story because they like the game, but it won’t change their lives. It won’t make readers stay up until two in the morning to see if Sam makes the team. However, if Sam has to make the baseball team to so he can quietly investigate his little brother’s death at a team party last month…then we have intrigue! We have stakes. If Sam doesn’t make the team, he may never know what happened to his brother. Now readers will stay up until the early morning hours to see if Sam makes the team and can discover the truth.
Final Thoughts
Conflict is important to every story. You don’t have to throw your character into dangerous situations, but he must want something that can change his life and struggle to get it. Desire + Opposing Force + Stakes = Conflict. If you remember this simple formula and apply it to every scene, you’ll keep your readers interested until the very end.
Thanks for reading!
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