I am only 15 and have recently started my first novel. I'm pretty inexperienced so how can I make my readers want to continue reading? I want to write for like 10-16 year olds ig, dont really like adult fiction.
I was in your shoes a long time ago. You can't "make" anyone want anything. You can write an engaging story that some people want to keep reading. There's a lot that goes into it. I suggest looking through the critique forums, reading through a few stories, forming your own opinion and then seeing the feedback, what others thought they did well and did poorly. There are a lot of good posts on here to go through. I think forum members @Lazaares and @jannert have a lot of really good suggestions, just to name two. But the two biggest things you can do is read and write. Practice practice practice. If you just want to "write a novel" it will be hard to get there. But if you instead focus on developing your craft, and temporarily set aside the famous novel goal, you'll quickly gain talent. Good luck, hope to hear more from you.
One thing you can do is to include what's called a hook right art the beginning of the story. It's like a cliffhanger, or an intimation that something horrible is about to happen. It's exciting and really pulls readers in so they can find out what happens. Let me once again link to this amazing article: Bringing the Dead to Life—Notes on Twilight by Bill Johnson I post this every few months, but then repetition is how we learn, and this is really excellent stuff. Pay attention to his ideas about the question, answer, question process and how it grips the reader and sets the hook, makes them really want to discover what happens next.
Ok, that's how to set the hook at the beginning, but you want to know how to make an engaging plot. Basically you need to get the readers invested in your main character's problem, so they want to see him solve it. That involves several different things, such as making him relatable or at least interesting, making the readers want to identify with him, and then creating a powerful and compelling problem for him to spend the rest of the story attempting to solve. To learn how to do all this—well, that's why there are so many books about how to write books. You need to learn to write well and compellingly, and how to lay out a story structure that works. One good place to learn this is through the website of K M Weiland, and I also recommend her books. But there are also many other excellent books on story structure and writing technique. You should look them up on Amazon or somewhere and get a few that sound appealing to you.
You used a key word: "engaged". The other word I'd connect to it is "Invested". It's a benefit of RPGs that you can gauge investment/engagement directly: if you're hosting almost every night, engagement will simply show in the number of attendants and how much they stay overtime / how early they arrive to start. What really hooks people onto RPGs is when they aren't partaking in a story, but in the story of their character. Their story. Fiction writing is much similar, but also harder: people tend to have a sense of investment in their RPG characters by default - but the characters you portray are brand new & start neutral to them. This is your core tool to create that investment. The hook shouldn't just be a teaser of they style and the story - it should serve to introduce the main character and establish some form of interest or connection from the audience. I will want to continue reading because I care about a character's future and fate. The easiest way to get a reader invested is by presenting a character they can connect with through shared experience. This is the key to good character conflict: choosing a theme that is integral to people, something many others have experience with. Fantasy and science-fiction aren't any different: they can extrapolate everday conflicts to the cosmic/epic level. When I write political conflict/intrigue, I don't present it as a "here's it, enjoy it" package of pure politics - my inspiration for most power struggles & intrigue I write is office life and corporate hierarchies (and I'm writing for adults, of course). Now's the spin on the whole thing: a character isn't always a character. The audience can be invested in an animal, an object, a setting or even abstract concepts like a religion, a nation or an ideal. I especially like fiction that handles locations/settings like characters: allows them to develop, change, evolve and have their own arc. A good writer will have a firm idea of who their audience is, and what could get them invested. Genre fiction tends to focus more on characters and settings - whereas adult and literary fiction can target concepts with great effect.
Steven King used to tell people to think up interesting characters and put them in challenging situations. The main character in my book is 15.
So say if I had the MC have to leave his home because a cult that practices volcanic sacrifice to awaken the "King of Dragons" attempts to kidnap him and he is stranded on the mainland (he lives on an island, think Hawaii to America.) that would be a decent hook to excite the reader?
That sounds a little impersonal to me. But I don't think you can tell if it's a good hook from a synopsis—you'd need to actually write out the sentences and make them relate to each other using the question, answer, question method. Also quite likely you'll be able to come up with a really good hook only later in the writing process. When you're first trying to lay out your ideas you probably don't have a good fix yet on the characters and the themes. Especially the themes, those tend to emerge as you're writing. But often so do the characters and their specific and very personal situations. It's very rare that I write a beginning and it remains unchanged as the story takes on depth and specificity. In fact often the first few paragraphs are the last part to get written since they're so crucial and require a solid understanding of the whole story in depth to write.
That sounds great! Might I suggest finding one of these old crusty guys on here and have them mentor you through the first steps of writing stuff like that.
A plot idea; but you need to develop it a little more for a hook. Who is this MC? What relation does he have to the cult, an what might he do on the mainland?
I think some people think that the subject has to be interesting for the story to be interesting. But what matters more is how you write it. To put it another way, the more interesting the premise, the stronger your foundation. But even a weak foundation can carry a complicated and beautiful sculpture. It's all about skill.
I don't think you can tell in case this is a decent trap from a summary - you should really work the sentences and get them to identify with each other using the strategy of inquiry, answer, question. In addition, very reasonable, you will have the opportunity to think of a big trap just later in the creative cycle. By the time you first try to expand your thoughts, you probably don't have a decent solution on the characters and topics yet. Especially topics, these will usually pop up as you compose. However, it is often the same with the characters and their particular situation and extremely close to them. Thanks for this!
You can't make people keep reading and what may make them out the book down could be out of your control due to personal preference. I would tell you to be well read in general but especially in the area you want to read like teen romance or teen horror for example. It'll help you figure out how to go about things. Have a good main character is an excellent start. But there really is no secret formula that I've discovered. I would recommend you do some research into plotting a novel because once you know the structure you can do it with or without a written plan. But it helped me to see a novel cut up into it's technical pieces. I know someone done that for hunger games.
I still have my original attempt notebook from when I was your age. It is awful. Like really really bad. Mostly it was me attempting to emulate authors I was into at the time (mostly Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and George McDonald). It would never in 100 billion years ever be published. But guess what, that is totally ok. Stop writing what you think others want to read and write about things you love. Horror, fantasy, romance, etc. Take time and refine your craft...world-building, character, and plot development...these are things that come with time. Are you a discovery writer or a plotter? Steven King is completely a discovery writer, he doesn't make any outlines at all. Other Authors like Robert Jordon made such detailed plots that after his death Brandon Sanderson was able to finish The Wheel of Time based mostly on the notes. Personally I kind of hybrid...I have notes but they are not detailed and while I kind of know what my character is going to do, the details don't come out until I finish the page. It becomes important because if you are staring at a blank page and don't know where to go, try sketching an outline of what you want to happen. Or if you make an outline and the character suddenly just does something else and it feels right to you, realize it's time to take the reins off and let it go. I guess what I am trying to say is, treat your writing like growing up. You are 15 now and you are not the same person as you were when you were 7 and when you make it to 40 like me, you will not be the same as you are at 15. Just write and your writing will grow with you and the more you do, the better you will get at it.
