When asked why stories are read, fiction writers offer high-minded reasons:

• Fiction is the tale around the campfire: a celebration of our heroes.

• Fiction whispers cautions: warnings about our enemies.

• Fiction affirms our values.

• Fiction challenges our values.

• Fiction is a mirror: how we are.

• Fiction is inspiration: how we can be.

• Fiction takes us through our fears.

• Fiction brings us hope.

• Fiction reminds us of what matters.

• Fiction instructs.

• Fiction entertains.

• Fiction makes us wonder, dream and imagine.

And so on. Those may all be true, but those are stronger reasons to write fiction than to read it.

When readers are asked the same question, many give different reasons. Mostly, readers simplify their response to fiction, sorting it into novels they “liked” and “didn’t like”. They may say a bit more, usually about characters they love. Sometimes they may add their enjoyment of a story world, or “the writing”. Notably, readers rarely cite “plot” as the primary reason they read.

For writers, I think there’s a more insightful question to ask: When readers read a novel, in what ways are they rewarded?

That question might sound to you blunt, mercenary, mechanical, a pathway to all that is manipulative, commercial, and artless. It might feel to you that the answer will zoom to genre tropes, plot tricks, and the cynical business of giving readers exactly—and only—what they want. It perhaps will lead to storytelling that is inauthentic and cheap. Am I right?

What I’m talking about, though, is not the aims of fiction but rather its effects on readers. Story skills and story purpose are not the same. Whatever your reason for writing, no matter what your story type or style, there are ways to keep your readers enthralled not only by your tale, but by the manner of its telling.

What kind of effects am I talking about? Let’s take a minute to discuss.

Fiction Effects

Whatever your story origins, styles or intents, the practical fact is that you want readers to sink into your stories, stay entranced and, in the end, be glad that they read. There are a zillion ways to achieve that.

My craft colleagues and I have offered many. Some of the discoveries I’ve written about are the application of micro-tension (see The Fire in Fiction), and the counter-intuitive, scientific fact that readers do not feel what characters feel, but instead are on an emotional journey of their own (see The Emotional Craft of Fiction). I like explaining things about fiction that look like art—and often are described as if they are temple mysteries beyond human ken—and showing instead that they are skills that can be understood and used by any writer in any story.

Today I want to focus on one particular effect that rewards readers for reading; not to cheapen stories, but to sharpen storytelling skill. What’s on my mind will not be new to you, but I can see that it’s something that is not always in the minds of writers as they write. I see the lack of it in manuscripts.

So, here’s what I’m thinking about, a less often discussed reason that readers read: They like to feel smart.

Crossword puzzles, trivia games, magazine quizzes, op-ed pieces in newspapers, and more have the same effect. When you guess or know the answer, connect dots, or agree with an expressed opinion—bingo, you feel smart. Win at a casino and you’ll feel smart and superior too, rather than what you really are, which is merely lucky. When your toaster is rated “the best”, or you like what your election choice is doing while in office—whether that politician is acting in your interest or not, a phenomenon called “affirmation bias”—then you get a shot of smart juice. It’s a biological human effect.

So how, then, do stories make readers feel smart? Wouldn’t it be nice to have that effect in addition to all the other effects that you can work in your stories: emotion, suspense, empathy and so on?

Building in Smarts

I’m going to make you feel smart. I’m going to do that with a magazine trick: a list. Here are things that make fiction readers feel smart:

• Puzzles

• Problems

• Questions

• Riddles

• Dilemmas

• Mysteries

• Projection

• Insight

• Wisdom

And of course you have those effects in your WIP, right? You’re smart!

Uh, hold on. Let’s not fall into the trap of feeling smart just because we read a list and recognized what’s on it. Let’s turn that momentary illusion of smarts into a skill set, story tools that you can consciously use.

Puzzles: A puzzle is a challenge to figure something out. Think of a maze. Is there a path through? Sure, but not an easy one. There are false directions that lead to dead ends. Some attempts fail. Several fails bring frustration. However, along the way there are corners to turn the correct way…you just won’t know which directions were right until you reach the exit.

Problems: Problems catch our interest because we believe that there must be a solution. We can think of one, maybe several. However, problems “deepen” when solutions don’t work. The deeper the problem runs, the more we’ll hack at it…and the smarter we’ll feel when the problem, finally, is solved.

Questions: Some questions are easy. What day of the week is it today? Interesting questions, though, do not have an easy answer. More information is needed. We must go places and ask further questions.

Riddles: Riddles are questions that seem impossible to solve. They are set up that way by posing a question, but adding to it a condition that is an apparent contradiction to the obvious answer or that makes the obvious answer impossible.

Dilemmas: Dilemmas are choices which do not present a simple right-or-wrong. Two choices are either both right or both wrong…but which is better or which is worse? That’s a dilemma. (Add to the dilemma a cost—gain one thing but lose another—and a dilemma becomes a plight.)

Mysteries: Mystery is a fiction genre but it is also an effect. Something happens and we don’t know who is responsible. Or perhaps why. Or perhaps how. Murder isn’t the only mystery. Anything that isn’t explained right away is a mystery.

Projection: Projection is the anticipation–a forecast—of what will happen. How things actually go may or may not follow what we expect. (Note: Projection can be the whole foundation for a novel, as in science fiction. In SF, the future is projected from our own in some logical way; however, how things go after that may—but probably won’t—be the way that we expect.)

Insight: Insight is when something puzzling about a person is explained.

Wisdom: Is a truth easily understood…but not easily gained. Wisdom cuts through the fog, clears away confusion, resolves dilemmas, simplifies, clarifies what is most important, and reorients us to fundamental human virtues and values.

Making Readers Feel Smart

So, understanding what produces the effect, let’s turn that into practical tools:

• In your WIP, what is the main problem? Break down the solution into components: steps to take, things to get, places to go, people to reach. Make any one of those things unusual to the point of impossible: a puzzle.

• In your WIP, what is the main problem? List all solutions. Let your protagonist consider all, reject some, try others. However, all solutions fail. (In the end, the outcome doesn’t depend on any solution, but on how you look at the problem.)

• In your WIP, what is a question embedded in the main problem? If it is easily answered, go deeper. Pose a question the answer to which is contingent, conditional, ambiguous, different for everyone, slippery, mystical, or in any way impossible to answer decisively. Turn that into the central question for your protagonist.

• In your WIP, choose a character who can help (or hurt) your protagonist. Have that character pose a challenge or test to your protagonist, but with a condition which makes the challenge impossible, or means that there is no right answer to the test. If there is a way to win, it’s withheld.

• In your WIP, pick any choice that your protagonist makes, big or small. Think about the choice that your protagonist doesn’t make. Make that choice equally attractive, rewarding, positive. Or, make that choice equally awful, consequential, negative. Build until there is no right choice.

• In your WIP, pick a character. Dream up something for that character to do which is out of character. Do it…but in secret. No one knows who, how or why. Devise a hidden motive, one personal, ideological or unexpected.

• In your WIP, send signs that a terrible outcome is coming. Let’s call it The Looming Disaster. Make that Disaster happen, only it’s worse than expected. Who, and what, can make it worse? Plant those factors earlier in the novel, in passing, so that we should have known!

• In your WIP, pick a character. Give that character a hang-up, phobia, paranoia, bias or fear. Create two reasons for it: 1) The reason obvious from what that character says and does, and 2) the true reason, which is psychological and based in that character’s hidden history. Let your protagonist guess or figure out Reason 2.

• In your WIP, what is a simple truth that cuts through all the clutter, suggests a better way, or that reframes everything that’s happening in human terms. Let’s call it The Duh. Who can deliver The Duh to your protagonist? Time it for when there seems to be nothing left but defeat.

Conclusion

Readers love to feel that they figured something out. Actually, it can be you who has constructed puzzles, problems, questions, riddles, dilemmas, mysteries, projection, insights, and wisdom that allow readers to have that sensation.

Manipulation? Maybe. I would say, rather, that this effect, done artfully, causes readers to think. Nothing wrong with that, right? Additionally, if it serves your novel’s purpose, who cares whether the effect happens organically as you write, or whether you deviously devise it?

It works.

Donald Maass

Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).