Many of the stories entered into the Global Short Story Competition show that their writers have a keen understanding of the need to intrigue the reader by creating intrigue.
One way of creating intrigue is something in your early lines, something that makes you sit up and want to read more. It is called The Question. Catching the reader’s attention is crucial and a good early question does the job beautifully.
But there is another, more subtle way, and done right it can be very effective. The idea is that, in the middle of ‘straightforward’ narrative, you drop in something, sometimes just a line, sometimes just a word, but something that nags away at the reader.
It is like having a conversation with a friend who suddenly says: “Of course, there’s that other thing that has been worrying me.” At first hearing you might miss it but within seconds you are going back to the line and saying “Thing, what thing?”
It is like that with writing and one or two of the stories that have arrived over recent days have done it really nicely. You can enter at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
John Dean
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