The ‘Read On’ Tank

It will make for a wonderful story to have begun the way most people like and not how they don’t care much for.

What the?

That first sentence smells like a large, steaming turd, doesn’t it? I can barely parse it and I wrote it!

Many people won’t read past a first sentence this awful. I wouldn’t unless there was a compelling reason to continue. Life’s too short and there’s too much to read.

Beginnings are important. I believe beginnings are fiction’s most important element.

There is a theory I heard once (I wish I could remember where) that readers have a little ‘Read On’ tank. This tank starts out empty and when the reader reads the first sentence, and they like it, and they’re intrigued, and there’s no speed bumps, then a little bit of credit goes into the tank. You might think of this credit as warm, green reading juice, but that’s a bit gross—I’ll just call it credit. A good first sentence will carry the reader through the first paragraph. If the first paragraph is good then there’s enough credit to take them through several paragraphs. A good page will get them through a few pages. A chapter earns another chapter. And so on throughout the book.

When a reader sits down with a book from a big name, like Stephen King or John Grisham, their tank already has quite a bit of reading juice, er, credit in it. Those writers are proven and don’t have to hook the reader from the first word.

Word of mouth will generate ‘Read On’ credit. Take “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” I heard positive things about the book, but the praise was always accompanied with “It’s a bit slow starting.” I plowed through the first few chapters thinking “this sucks,” but I kept reading and you know what? The story eventually hooked me, the mystery became interesting, and the characters became fascinating enough for me to want to know what would happen to them.

The two biggest ways the tank loses credits are through speed bumps or boring prose. Speed bumps are things which take you out of the fictive dream. They’re when the reader stops the flow of reading and must back up, re-read, and decide whether to throw the book out the car window. Boring prose happens when the reader doesn’t give a rat’s backside about what they’re reading.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does show some of the ways to gain and lose credits in the reader’s ‘Read On’ tank.

• Lose credits with bad grammar or spelling. Nothing is worser that reeding prose peppered with these sins. (I know, insert flatulence noise here.)
• Gain credits by developing reader empathy with the character. Um, easier said than done, but that is the goal.
• Lose credits with backstory dumps. When I hit more than a couple of sentences of backstory I start skimming.
• Gain credits with questions. Will Timmy spend his life at the bottom of the well? How did Snooki get a bestseller? If there is a God then why won’t he help me with the lottery?
• Lose credits by being predictable. When the reader always knows what’s coming then “wreeent” you lose.
• Gain credits with space alien probes. Just checking if you’re still reading.
• Lose credits with irrelevant tangents. Like that whole space alien probe thing of the last bullet point.
• Gain credits with quirky characters. Unless they’re quirky just for the sake of being quirky and have nothing under the outer layer of tasty frosting.
• Lose credits by being unintentionally funny. Like “John thought to himself …” Unless John is telepathic, he’s pretty much going to always think to himself.

This list could go on and on. The point is to create your own list and examine your work from this perspective. It’s a illuminating lens to view your prose through.

Until next month, keep writing.