How to Make Readers Care About Your Protagonist—and Your Plot

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

If you’re struggling with a lagging story, a lack of character agency might be the reason why.

A helpful-yet-brutal piece of critique feedback is “Why should I care?” Why should readers care about the character, the conflict, or the story in general? Why should they read this novel you’ve worked so hard to create?

“Because it’s my novel and I love it” might be true, but sadly, no one outside our friends and family accept that as a reason. And sometimes, not even then if we have honest critique partners. Potential readers are lost every day to novels that might be good in every other aspect, but they just “didn’t care” what happened to the characters.

Often, this is due to a lack of agency.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com