Quick Tips to Avoid Losing a Reader
First, be careful not to overwhelm the reader with detail. Scene and character description are important, but a tale that starts out with a lot of detail will bog the reader down in minutia and he may never resurface. Sharing detail can be likened to serving a five course meal. Encourage the reader to continue the tale by doling out details one tasty morsel at a time. Drop crumbs here and there to keep his attention. If you give him everything at once, he's likely to get full and turn away before the story is complete.
Second, don't give away the entire story in the first few paragraphs. Short story writing is different from writing an essay. You don't need to tell the reader where the story is going. You must pique his interest with a hint of the story to come and then take him on a journey to discover the full tale.
Third, limit your characters and scenes to a reasonable number. Readers can only absorb so much information in one sitting. When you are working within a limited space you need to keep it simple. The story shouldn't have more than a few characters and stay within one, or at most two, settings. Limiting both will allow you to develop rich characters and give enough detail about the setting so that the reader will be able to picture it as the story unfolds. An overall guide is to limit yourself to sufficient detail for the reader to identify the characters and follow the plot.
Finally avoid poor spelling and grammar. Nothing will turn a reader away faster than opening a tale to find it full of spelling and grammar errors. If you don't care enough about your story to present it in the best possible light, why should the reader use his time to sift through the typos and errors to get to the actual point? Visual appeal is important. Clean up the table before you lay out the meal for the reader.
Related Tags: writing, tips, readers, short story
Sonia Fischer is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Fiction Writing.
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