As a writer, you want to make an addictive book which will keep your readers up at night, unable to put the book down. Do you remember all the occasion you read a good book, the thrill of the journey it took you on?
A feeling you want to replicate.
What is the secret to engaging your readers enough so that they can’t stop turning the pages?
Table of Contents
Here Are 5 Ways To Keep Your Reader From Sleep:
This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, at no extra cost to you. |
1 Take away your protagonist’s weapons, team, and defences
There is nothing like reading about a vulnerable character, stripped of everything that helped them or kept them safe. Your readers can be hooked by needing to know how the main character will get out of this sticky situation. Situations like these can also make your readers start to root for these individuals. And you want your readers to get attached.
Examples:
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It is often considered, along with The Three Musketeers, as Dumas’ most popular work. It is also among the highest selling books of all time. The writing of the work was completed in 1844. Like many of his novels, it is expanded from the plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.
The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the Hundred Days through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. It is primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, forgiveness and death, and is told in the style of an adventure story.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
‘It is a horrorshow story …’
Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future, until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean?
A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, A Clockwork Orange is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters. This critical edition restores the text of the novel as Anthony Burgess originally wrote it, and includes a glossary of the teen slang ‘Nadsat’, explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews, shedding light on the enduring fascination of the novel’s ‘sweet and juicy criminality’.
Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He spent six years in the British Army before becoming a schoolmaster and colonial education officer in Malaya and Brunei. After the success of his Malayan Trilogy, he became a full-time writer in 1959. His books have been published all over the world, and they include The Complete Enderby, Nothing Like the Sun, Napoleon Symphony, Tremor of Intent, Earthly Powers and A Dead Man in Deptford. Anthony Burgess died in London in 1993.
Andrew Biswell is the Professor of Modern Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. His publications include a biography, The Real Life of Anthony Burgess, which won the Portico Prize in 2006. He is currently editing the letters and short stories of Anthony Burgess.
2 Create a new problem at the beginning of the chapter, then don’t solve it until later
Sprinkling a little bit of disaster gets your reader’s minds rolling, thinking in overdrive what the possible outcome could be.
Tease your audience with incoming issues and let them fester.
This keeps them on the edge of their seats in wait for juicy new information associated with the new problem.
Examples:
Annihilation by
For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border – an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.
Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown.
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut – 1963
Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding ‘fathers’ of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to humanity. For he is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. Writer Jonah’s search for his whereabouts leads him to Hoenikker’s three eccentric children, to an island republic in the Caribbean where the absurd religion of Bokononism is practised, to love and to insanity. Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut’s cult tale of global destruction is a frightening and funny satire on the end of the world and the madness of mankind.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was born in Indianapolis. During the Second World War he was a prisoner in Germany and present at the bombing of Dresden, an experience he recounted in his famous novel Slaughterhouse Five (1969). His first novel, Player Piano, was published in 1951 and since then he has written many novels, including The Sirens of Titan, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos and Hocus Pocus.
If you enjoyed Cat’s Cradle, you might like Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
‘One of the warmest, wisest, funniest voices to be found anywhere in fiction’
Sam Leith, Daily Telegraph
3 Bring in a new character whose presence upsets your main character
This is an opportunity to disturb the balance. To let the readers see the protagonists exhibit new emotions, fears and behaviours.
With what you knew about the behaviour of the main character turned upside down, there is room for situations to occur that your audience could not fathom. There is a chance for ruin.
Think about the consequences of introducing this new character will have on your story moving forward.
Examples:
A Carnivore’s Inquiry By Sabina Murray
When we meet Katherine, the winning, and rather disturbing, 23-year-old narrator of A Carnivore’s Inquiry, she has just arrived in New York City. She strikes up an affair with a middle-aged Russian emigre novelist she meets on the subway, and almost immediately moves into his apartment. Soon restless, she journeys across the United States and into Mexico, trailed everywhere she goes by a string of murders.
As the ritualistic killings pile up, Katherine comforts and inspires herself by meditating on cannibalism in literature, art, and history. She ponders subjects as diverse as the Donner Party, the fall of Dante’s Count Ugolino, and the true story behind Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa. As the story races toward its frightening conclusion, Katherine, and the reader, close in on the true reason for her fascination with aberrant, violent behavior.
A shocking and enlightening modern Gothic novel, told in highly intelligent prose, A Carnivore’s Inquiry is a sly, unsettling, subtle commentary on 21st century consumerism and the questionable appetites that lurk beneath the veneer of civilization.
4 Change focus
You want to get your readers invested. How about focusing on a secondary character with a problem arising from their new angle.
Including information, the protagonist has missed- and then don’t revisit that character for a few chapters (pages or alternating between scenes).
Build suspense with the information they found. Create wonder of how the story will move forward without knowing what was just about to happen.
Examples:
Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) by Leigh Bardugo
Nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017, this fantasy epic from the No. 1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of the Grisha trilogy is gripping, sweeping and memorable – perfect for fans of George R. R. Martin, Laini Taylor and Kristin Cashore.
Criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams – but he can’t pull it off alone.
A convict with a thirst for revenge.
A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.
A runaway with a privileged past.
A spy known as the Wraith.
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.
Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist.
Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction – if they don’t kill each other first.
An epic new exploration of the Grisha universe from the writer of SHADOW AND BONE, SIEGE AND STORM and RUIN AND RISING, totally consuming for both old fans and new.
Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1) by Sarah J. Maas
The book that started the phenomenon. Sarah J. Maas’s global #1 bestselling THRONE OF GLASS series has taken the world by storm.
Meet Celaena Sardothien.
Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.
In the dark, filthy salt mines of Endovier, an eighteen-year-old girl is serving a life sentence. She is a trained assassin, the best of her kind, but she made a fatal mistake. She got caught.
Young Captain Westfall offers her a deal: her freedom in return for one huge sacrifice. Celaena must represent the prince in a to-the-death tournament – fighting the most gifted thieves and assassins in the land. Live or die, Celaena will be free. Win or lose, she is about to discover her true destiny. But will her assassin’s heart be melted?
5 Surprise!
You want to shock your audience. But how could I do that?
- Uncover a secret only the readers have witnessed OR only known to the characters
- A u-turn of events
- Something they were better off not knowing
- A new character with rising problems
‘Someone You Know’ by Olivia Isaac-Henry
You can trust your family, can’t you…?
Tess Piper was fourteen when her adored twin sister Edie disappeared.
She has spent the last twenty years building a life away from her fractured family, desperate to escape the shadow of the past.
Only now she needs to confront the huge hole her sister’s disappearance left in her life, because a body has been found. The police are shining a spotlight on the Piper family. And secrets are about to surface.
After all, it’s common knowledge that more often than not, these crimes are committed by someone close to the victim. Someone they trust. Someone they know…
What really happened to Edie Piper?
A gripping thriller perfect for fans of C.L. Taylor, K.L. Slater and Rachel Abbott.
Reader reviews
‘I totally devoured this… the ending is a killer! Loved how the pages just blurred into one another and was seriously gutted when I’d finished it and wanted more.’
‘A great read, fascinating and intriguing kept me guessing right until the end’
‘Dark, twisted, creepy, atmospheric, engaging, unputdownable brilliance. Read this book in 2019. I implore you.’
‘An intense, creepy and pacy thriller.’
‘A must-read for any fan of mystery, murder, and twists that you don’t see coming!’
‘ A creepy tale that had me hooked from the opening pages and held me right up until the final paragraph.’
‘Emotional, gripping and twisty.’
‘A creepy familial thriller, with many twists and turns, this one will keep you guessing right to the end. I can usually guess the ‘baddie’ but I failed completely with this!’
‘A super twisty whodunnit that also delves into the darker regions of sibling rivalry. It will keep you guessing right to the end!’
‘An excellent debut with a sinister sting. Reveals and plot twists delivered so skilfully that you won’t know who to trust.’
‘Yesterday’ by Felicia Yap
A brilliant high-concept debut thriller – just how do you solve a murder when you only remember yesterday?
‘The thriller of the summer’ – Observer
‘Yap is a phenomenon’ – Guardian
‘The intrigue of Gone Girl and the drama of Before I Go to Sleep‘ – iNews
‘So hotly tipped it should come with scorch marks… Quite literally mind-bending’ – Red
Today, the police are at your door.
They say that the body of your husband’s mistress has been found in the River Cam. They think your husband killed her two days ago.
You can’t recall what he did that day, because you only remember yesterday.
You rely on your diary to tell you where you’ve been, who you love and what you’ve done.
So, can you trust the police?
Can you trust your husband?
Can you trust yourself?
Keeping your audience invested enough to have the unstoppable urge to keep turning the pages is all about doing the unexpected AND giving the reader exactly what they have been waiting for.
Reading books that do just that will help give you inspiration for how to recreate this moment for your own readers!
Good luck with your writing journey! Let’s start a conversation in the comments.
What do you do to keep your readers engaged? Let me know in the comments, until then.