Adding While Subtracting

By Kristin Owens

Readers want to be pulled into the story quickly. Riveting opening lines and powerful first pages can do this effectively. But after hooking them, how do writers hold their attention until The End?

The challenge of sustaining attention is often called the “messy middle,” and the problem is that we writers keep pulling out the same tool: writing more words. We pile on the superlatives, double-down on metaphors, or simply throw additional words on the page to see what sti...