The Importance of Curiosity and Tension to Storytelling — from janefriedman.com by Stefan Emunds
Today’s post is excerpted from The Eight Crafts of Writing by Stefan Emunds (@StefanEmunds).
Excerpt:
To maintain reader curiosity, you can raise and answer multiple questions on multiple levels—for example, a story question, an act question, a chapter question, and a scene question. Try to keep two to three questions open at any given time. Raise two questions in your opening and answer one. Then, raise two new questions and answer one. Then raise two new questions and answer two.
Take the world of TV and movie writing: screenplays have seven or eight sequences, and each sequence begins with a challenge/question and ends with an answer—success or failure. You can do the same thing with chapters and acts.
