I figured out something about writing like a month or two ago and I was finally able to put it into words—it’s important to throw footballs (thread)

If you want a reader to want to continue reading, it’s about anticipation. Anticipation, like waiting for a thrown football to come back down to earth. You want the reader to be picturing that trajectory and all the ways the football might come down.

Your first thrown football is the same end-of-act-1 premise that is your whole story’s summary: oh, “how will they react to having to pretend to be married while hiding their real feelings?” “How will they react to being assigned to work together when they hate each other?“

The reason people want to read the book is they are anticipating that end-of-act-1 premise being entertaining. But it’s not enough just on its own. If you want a reader to feel *pulled* through a whole story, they need several things to anticipate at the same time.

So the 1st Anticipated Thrown Football is the reader knowing it’s an Arranged Marriage AU. They’re willing to read an entire first act (15%) just to get to that part. So before they get to the goods, before that football comes down, throw more footballs in the air!

Examples of footballs are when you end a chapter but the reader has more questions than answers: “who killed his mother?” “What happened in that day 20 years ago?” “Who is the mysterious Theodore the heroine thought about?”

Other footballs are the reader anticipating a promised scene that will happen before the book ends:
-the heroine must compete in a tournament
-a mother desperately wants to see her son again
-a natural disaster is coming
-a truth is being hidden from the heroine

The key word is “anticipate”—you have to let your readers in on it. They want to be able to envision and guess at what will happen. The thing that makes a book one “where you can’t put it down” is when every chapter introduces a new anticipation.

The anticipation of a mystery or puzzle being solved, the anticipation of a character finding out about what the audience already knows, the anticipation of whether or not the hero will succeed. Don’t let a chapter go by without throwing another minor football in the air

All of these anticipations have a trajectory the reader can guess at where they might land. You can answer those with surprises that are well-set-up, but you can also just play it straight. The reader gets to read the mother reunite with the son, which they’ve looked forward to

Anyway before the first (main premise) football gets launched, you have a lot of time to throw like 5-10 more minor footballs. Make them obvious, don’t hide them, don’t fight the reader or pretend your writing is so good the prose will be enough. The reader needs to anticipate.

(Imagine me writing a writing advice thread when I don’t know what I’m talking about. Like always, I have to explain things to try to solidify them in my own head and thank you for your patience)

I don’t know why this only made sense to me when put into a sports metaphor bc I don’t know anything about sports

try to separate plot threads into tiny steps that escalate and cause anticipation. I separated out all the steps in one plot thread of a romance novel. Looking at it this simply, you can better see how it pulls you through the story. There were 4 other threads mixed with this

This anticipation is why Harry Potter 4 was a lot of people’s favorite one. It gave the school year a few known events to anticipate, you want to know whether Harry wins and how. Book 7 feels a bit “I don’t know what I’m waiting for but I sure am waiting for it” in comparison.

go through Hunger Games and at the end of every chapter write down what new reason the author introduced to make you want to continue reading. There’s something to be said about really structured elements that are easy to understand like a competition.