Hooking your reader to your character
When I start a novel, I give the author about three chapters for me to like the main character. I’m actually pretty generous—in a bookstore, your average book buyer reads the first page, maybe the second. Usually not more than that. Depending on how fast they read, the first page or two takes approximately twenty seconds. That’s it. You need to hook your reader into the story and give them a character they can like within those first few pages. In Writing for Emotional Impact , Karl Iglesias lists these three “categories of appeal”: * We care about victims—characters we feel sorry for * We care about characters with humanistic values * We like character with desirable qualities Victims—You don’t have to just think stalker victim here. Don’t we love the underdog? The downtrodden? The kid who gets beat up in the schoolyard? The man without enough money to pay for coffee? The woman beat up by her husband? The teenager who can’t read? Humanistic values—Show your character doing something n