The obvious thing as a novelist that you want to do is make the reader ask “what comes next?” To get them hooked so that they keep reading the story.
But in addition to that, I want them to ask the following question:
“What’s going on here?”
I want them to be uncomfortable. I want them to wonder about the past. I want them to be baffled about the present. I want them to need to know the outcome. I want them to WANT to take the journey, whatever it might be, so that they can have their questions answered.
Believe me–I don’t always get this right. But this is a goal. To set up a scenario with far more questions than answers. The fun part is answering them in my own unique way.
Just started reading “Isolation,” and I’m hooked. And the question in my mind when I finished the intro — “What’s going on here?”