Naomi Dawn Musch

Creating a page-turner is every writer's dream, a book that readers can't put down until dawn winks on the horizon and exhaustion claims them. But how do you do that? I've given a great deal of consideration to what makes a page-turner. The result of that contemplation is that we writers have to explore the core of our stories.

Starting with a good idea and traveling the discovery stage is like drawing a line through a puzzle maze from the beginning to the end. But is winding our way through a good plot enough to create a page-turner? To do that we need to create a matrix, a multi-dimensional story grid. We need to study and expose themes that matter to our characters and will resonate with readers.

We need to explore the core of our idea and ask ourselves: what are the larger issues our character is facing? Are they issues of loneliness? Guilt? The loss of a dream? Bitterness and resentment? Humiliation? Fear? Abandonment? Being caught up in an historic event? Then we need to do the same thing for lesser characters in the book. It's when these characters meet and interact, with each of their core issues exposed, that conflict is heightened. (As an excellent example, make sure you read to the end of the post to note the diversity of themes dealt with in the novel I just finished reading.)

The same thing can be said of plot. What is the plot? What will make it richer? Is the question or dilemma we are raising enough to sustain a high level of anticipation on the part of the reader? Do we need to raise more questions? That's probably certain.

Recently, I read an opening that set up the main character having trouble with nightmares. Hopefully, as the book goes on, there is much more to it than that. While her nightmares were horrible, I wouldn't be much compelled to read an entire novel to find out how she gets over them. I paused on page five. I hope that the problem of her nightmares is going to lead to some further revelation soon, or I will have to abandon the novel.

When it comes down to it, story core is established by unearthing its themes and aiming at them while we write. There are many ways to explore your story's core to discover untapped themes. You can use a story-building method like Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php) or you can "storyboard" using note cards or post-its to arrange scenes. You can even use an old-fashioned outline. Just ask yourself a list of questions to discover whether each scene contains distinct conflict and whether or not it is outward or internal, loud or subtle, and whether or not it is strong enough to keep a reader going further.

You can do the same thing with character worksheets.There are plenty of them available on the internet. Or you can make up your own questions. You might start by asking your protagonist and then your antagonist, What do you most care about? What's your biggest fear? What was your darkest moment? What is your deepest desire -- Physically? Emotionally? Spiritually? What is keeping you from reaching your goal or desire?

Exploring the Core will help you nail down the important themes of the story. Without a strong main theme, and several sub-themes, it won't stick to a reader for long. It'll be nice, but forgettable.

I just finishing Elizabeth Musser's The Swan House. Her prose is rather long-winded and I found aspects of some scenes, especially near the beginning, to be repetitive. It would have been hard to stick with except that she does a superb job of building themes into her story core that created a slow but firm gripping process. In fact, she did it so well that I cried near the end. I loved the way the themes picked up like unbound threads here and there, but wove together into a perfect tapestry at the end. She made me wonder what her first thoughts were as she began conceiving ideas to write this book. Maybe they went something like this:

• I want to write a story about... a young girl coming of age in Atlanta during the civil rights unrest in the early 1960s in which she is torn between her wealthy white upbringing and her friendship with - and attraction to - a poor, young black man.  
• I want to incorporate the tragic plane crash that occurred in Paris in 1961 affecting the lives of thousands of Atlanta's citizens. I'm also intrigued by the famous, historic Swan Mansion and want to somehow include it in the story - even as an image.  
• How does the protagonist meet and develop a relationship with Carl Matthews, the young black man? Ah... through her family's maid whom she'd mostly not given much consideration toward while growing up.  
• Why does she meet him? Oh, yes, her mother is killed in that plane crash. She was a well-known artist, touring in Europe. The protagonist, Mary Swan Middleton  begins going to the inner city with her maid to "help out" at a mission as a means to focus on other people's problems and assuage her grief.
• Oh! And her mother had secrets... she'd been institutionalized and the girl had never been told the truth about her mother. She finds out during a party when another student blurts out that Mary Swan's mother was "crazy".
• It turns out Mom suffered severe, cyclical depression which affected her art.
• Mary Swan is confused about faith, and comes to discover who Jesus is through the work of an inner city mission and a woman who left luxury beind to serve others.
  
• How does she discover the truth about her mother and other secrets harbored in her family's past? Oh, a dare. A tradition of her elite private school -- a mystery that has to be solved by a selected junior classman each year, it's a mystery that winds deeper and deeper and is intricately connected to her own life.
• And on, and on...

Of course, Ms. Musser's thought processes may have worked completely differently, in a dissimilar order entirely, or maybe the complete idea just burst upon her in a dream -- I'm merely guessing. Likely, she wrote pages and pages of notes just to squirrel out the details. But the point is that one thing usually leads to another in a matrix-like novel. Themes emerge, in this case themes of racial injustice, the fragile emotions of teenage girls, the anguish of coping with death and tragedy, depression as an illness, evolving class structure in America, fractured families, salvation and faith, first love, discovering gifts and passions, and others. Ms. Musser surely must have ferreted out these themes and aimed toward them for her book to have come to such a tightly woven finish that it could produce tears! I'm pretty tough.

As writers ask questions of their characters and plant themselves deeply into their story situation, as they imagine all the nuances of era and personalities, as they consider larger issues and deeper human needs, themes and conflict will layer in grid upon grid until a story matrixe merges and a page-turner evolves. So, don't be satisfied with a simple, linear plot, and characters who have no depth of personality . Explore the core.