The 5 R's That Will Keep Your Readers Emotionally Riveted

How to turn the screws of story in fiction, memoir, and screenplays

Photo by Lee Hutton on Unsplash

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Hi Everyone,

A couple of weeks ago, when I shared the epiphany that helped save my first novel, I realized that I’d never posted here about the mechanics of “turning a scene”:

“Slice-of-life writing is bullshit.”

A few of you seemed eager for me to go into greater detail about these inner workings of story, so here goes.

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The 5 R’s

The name of the game in storytelling, whether you’re writing fiction or memoir, screenplays or personal essay, is emotional engagement. Information may be a desirable bonus, but readers don’t read stories for information; they read to be moved. That means you’ve got to hook their feelings quickly, and then keep producing new and changed feelings so that they’re constantly in suspense about what’s going to happen next.

You’re going to say, oh, that only applies to thrillers or mysteries. But no. This rule applies to romantic sagas and literary dramas, trauma memoirs, and road trip movies, as well. If you don’t give your audience a compelling emotional ride, they will lose interest. Full stop.

Fortunately, there is a way to track the emotional movement in your story. I do not recommend trying this when you first invent your story, as systemic analysis can crush the spark of creativity. But once you’ve let your imagination run wild and you have your shitty first draft in hand, the 5 R’s I’m about to share with you can really help you shape its dynamic force.

Think of this force as the excitement and anxiety you feel on a roller coaster. Or, if you’re an avid fan, during a nail-biter of a basketball game. Or as you watch a complicated aerial act at the circus. Or a professional boxing match between equals. You cannot look away because you do not know what is going to happen next and you feel as if you need to know what’s going to happen next. That combination of uncertainty and need-to-know is what keeps readers turning pages, too.

The best model I’ve found to show how this works is Raymond Carver’s short story “Little Things,” which was also (and more perfectly) titled “Popular Mechanics.” So I’m going to illustrate each of the 5 Rs with a segment from that story.

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