Make it happen
Keep readers hooked by paying attention to what happens next in your story, says Adrian Magson
© Kyle Simmons on Unsplash
Aquestion often heard on family car journeys is ‘Are we there yet?’ I know I must have uttered it hundreds of times as a kid, to which my father usually replied, ‘We’ll be there when we’re there.’ A no doubt equally annoying question was, ‘Where are we going?’, to which the response was, ‘There and back to see how far it is.’
He was a fun person, my dad.
Coming forward a lot of years, the question writers should always be asking is, ‘What happens next?’ Fortunately, we don’t have to ask fathers, mothers or significant others, because we’re in the lucky position of being able to provide the answer ourselves. We simply get on with writing it.
Every story has to have a number of What Happens Next (WHN) elements. Without them there is no story. You might as well write about a stone on a hill. No movement, no interaction, nothing.