Narrative Drive

NARRATIVE DRIVE

Narrative Drive is that force that keeps the reader reading. It could be the location: maybe the story is set in Italy, and the reader loves immersing him or herself so much that they don’t care about the characters r the plot that they put the story down.

One really good way to keep readers reading, is to craft a compelling character. A case in point is the Lisbeth Salander series of crime novels by Stieg Larssen, a Swedish journalist who passed away half way through. The books were a world-wide phenomenon, and the publisher hired another writer to keep the series going. Ludlum’s books managed to keep coming out even after his death. Larssen’s stories are gross and grotesque and gruesome, but I was riveted on the main character, Lisbeth, who was a computer-whizz teenager to whom every bad thing in the world happened, but she managed to survive it all and trumpth. They are also extremely long, well into the high 100s of pages.

Another great character for me is George Smiley, the British espionage counterpoint to James Bond, crafted by John LeCarre, who passed recently. LeCarre also wrote The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, with Richard Burton and Claire Bloom, his second novel in which Smiley appears but briefly. I loved Smiley and couldn’t wait to read the next one. His real name was David Cornwell.

In classic fiction, I’m a big Kafka fan. He finished one novel, The Trial, and one short story, The Metamorphosis, but is a staple on the existentialist fiction list. It has a great opening sentence, and I kept reading to find out what all the mysterious things were all about and what was going to happen to the main character, identified only as K. The parable of the door is also pure existentialism. Kafka’s name has even entered the language as “kafkaesque” meaning strange or bizarre. We all have been in situations which are indecipherable.

None of these characters or genres may interest you. But narrative drive should. It’s what you need to achieve in order to get people to read your stories. They may not like the character, but they have to stick with him, either rooting for them to succeed or for them to get their comeuppance.

NEXT: Length