How do you make your writing interesting and engaging?

[TheBryceKrispy]

How do you make your writing interesting and engaging because I have no idea on how to do that.

[spicy_sweets]

That's a um
very broad question. How many novels have you read? Have you found the narration style you want to roll with?

[SleepingPoppy]

What do you like best about the stories you've read? What do you find engaging? What characters do you relate to? What gives you the feels?

Examine the media you like and see if that helps you. =)

[joannekwan]

A tip I picked up from listening to a live reading of a 'bad' novel.
From a pure construction point of view: Vary the length of your sentences.
The variation of breaks keeps the brain from being lulled into boredom.

[laurelevermore]

Another thing to take into account is the narrative voice. Like, who is telling the story? Is it from the point of view of the main character or a narrator? Things like that can engage readers in various ways. I find that when it is written in the first person, it feels more personal while in the third person, it is slightly more distant. But it all depends on how you write it.

[BlueDragon]

Don't over use adverbs. You don't need to use two or three of them every sentence. They're often the hallmark of unprofessional writing.

If you want to improve writing, check out Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. It helped me with many an essay. You can probably get it at any library, if you don't want to purchase it.

Edit: not just essays, but writing in general. It's seriously a great source for improvement.

[MuffinMusing]

You have to make sure your characters' personalities and emotions are coming through in the story. (It's difficult, for sure.) If the reader doesn't care about the characters, chances are they're not going to read the story.

[Pablo.C.S]

Answering that could be quite difficult, as something might be interesting and engaging to one person, but would put someone else off completely.

I guess as a rule of thumb in fiction, try to make the language of the prose accessible, instead of over using complex terminology that doesn't add anything tangiable to the story.

Even in something like explaining science in Sc-Fi or magic systems in Fantasy, it's still a good bet to keep your language as simple as it can realistically be.

Try to keep the pacing consistent and not allow the work to be bogged down with unnecessary filler.

And naturally, give lots of room for characters to develop and interact with others and the world around them.

I've written some threads that whilst don't directly answer your question, does offer some tips on common traps to avoid and general techniques to help improve creative writing.

I wrote these tips with, comics in mind specifically, but a lot of what I wrote can effectively cross over to novels as well.

I don't want to criticize any one single comic that does this, only the habit that I keep seeing re-occurring in modern storytelling but especially in comics, manga and web-comics. Bear in mind, these are issues are mostly present in high concept stories, but occasionally can be seen in other genres, such as action and thrillers. Talking during fights: instead of actually fighting, two characters decide to talk for 5 pages before they do their first attack. This is a terrible habit to get …

Recently I've seen the term subversion thrown around a lot, being used to describe comics such as One Punch man etc. And being used interchangeably for satires and parodies, as well as with plot twists. With this post, I wish to clarify exactly what these terms are and how they are different from one another. Plot Twist: A plot twist is a scene that re-contextualizes a plot point present throughout the story. A plot twist could emphasize something you didn't notice throughout the story, o…

Recently I did a post on how originality is overrated, which you can read here: And I wanted to balance that out here, by offering a practical alternative to originality and how to handle this correctly. The three best ways to create content that is practically original, that is to say, content similar to existing fiction, but that hasn't been created under a specific direction, context or with a certain set of characters. Is to: A) Take various elements from different genres and fuse t…

I hope this helps in your creative endeavors,

-Pablo, Author of INTERMINUTE

[DiegoPalacios]

My personal recomendations.

1-Make your characters interesting and/or relatable (both are optional, but having at least one is a must if you want people caring about them and by extension, your story.)

how to make them relatable?: give them personality traits and/or conflicts people may relate to.
(A gamer will not be relatable if he doesn`t have common sense, even if they are gamers just like the audience.) Maybe they react in the way the audience would or are exposed in situations we all may have.

Interesting: what is special about them? a gift?. an unusual view of the world?, they are insane? (a nonrelatable character can be interesting too)

How?, give them a personality. No need to know every single detail of their lives, but you must have a clear idea of how would they react in most situations.

Character dynamics: contrasting and complementary characters create an interesting dynamic.

Even characters who are similar in some ways and different in another can be interesting (ex: two stubborn warriors who fight for opposing ideals)

2-Make every update meaningfull. (pacing, pacing, pacing.)

The updates must be relevant and/or entertaining, hopefully both if possible.

Relevant: does it advance the story or the development of the characters in any way?

Entertaining: does it makes people feel something? this can manifest in many forms: a humorous scene, a hearthwarming moment, something awesome and/or satisfying happens, maybe some horror or even a sad scene, but make sure you touch their hearts!

Of course, you can have updates where the purpose is to just build up suspense, make sure the payoff is satisfactory

Interesting characters and a solid pacing will give people something to talk about. And that is engagement.

[ZoeBlessing]

@kainatarma Adverbs do have their place, but a lot of people overuse them instead of finding stronger verbs, coming up with better descriptions, or realizing the adverb is redundant. Some examples:

1. "Get out!" she said angrily.
   Yelled, screeched, or screamed would be better words instead of "said angrily". They're more impactful, and each has a different nuance.

2. He cried sadly.
   Redundant. We know crying is a sad thing, so the adverb isn't needed at all.

3. They stood there confusedly.
   Rather than telling us they were confused, body language can be used instead. Like scratching their heads or eyes darting back and forth.

[Lady_DarkStar]

Give your characters flaws, and don't make it easy for them. Easy and perfect equal boring.

[DiegoPalacios]

except for parodies, but i agree.

Giving the characters good and bad qualities and giving them compelling conflicts and struggles will make the story interesting.

[BlueDragon]

What they said.

Thanks Zoe and Diego!

[simplykit]

i try the shock factor

i try to make something thats never been done before

[charliesackett]

Either get really high or stop sleeping for a minimum of three days. Ideally you should be just sleep deprived enough that you stop differentiating between good and bad decisions, but not quite at the point where you start hallucinating. I know if I start seeing spooky ghost children in my apartment then I've gone too far.

Then, pretend you're your favorite author. If you have a few, pretend you're their bastard love child that has inherited all of their best qualities. Write what you think that strange hybrid bastard would write.

THEN, just start writing. Don't read over it or think about it too hard. Just go.

Then sit on it for about a year and edit the fuck out of it. Rinse and repeat. BAM. Masterpiece.