What Draws Me In? A Point of View

What draws you into a story is by and large, extremely personal.  It is probably why we have so many stories out there to choose from and why people use the old adage: there’s something out there for everyone.  That may be true, but at least I can say what draws me into a story.

Let’s ignore picking a story out, since that’s a whole other process to me.  It involves judging a cover, a summery and finally, opening up a random page and checking the style.  In fact, I didn’t read Game of Thrones for years because of these things…which is ridiculous.  I’m a huge Games of Thrones fan.  The books are amazing.  So… ignoring the picking process, let’s delve into what I find interesting enough to keep me coming back to a pages of a book.

The first is writing style, or voice.  I can suffer through ridiculously “Mary-sue” style characters if the voice of the author is engaging.  The language has to compel me to move forward whether through the beauty of the words, the humour, the intensity, or the pacing.  This means that just about any story can engage me if I like the writing style enough.  Case in point: I love Pride and Prejudice, The Parasol Protectorate series, Jurassic Park, and Divergent.  All of these books are vastly different writing styles but the way they string the words along makes me keep turning the pages. 

The second is character.  I’m an actor and I thrive on good characterization.  I gobble it up and beg for me.  It stands to reason that I gravitate toward stories that are character driven.  Does this mean I don’t love a good plot driven tale? No, but what makes me eager to keep picking the book up, is character.  The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint or Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty are arguably, character driven books.  Plot will always push those characters forward, but it is the inner push of the character that truly progresses the story. I adore that push.  I want that push.  Give me a character I can walk with, run with, and cry with and I’ll follow them through the fires of a battlefield and back.

The third and final deciding factor is the concept.  I love the extraordinary.  It is why I struggle so much with contemporary fiction and I’m working on that…  but give me time travel, a murder at Pemberley , the fight in the sandy lands of Arrakis, a ghost haunting her friends and trying to save them from her murderer.  I want something that’s unusual and clever.  I want to be taken out of my world and dropped into something else.  I want that little twist and it doesn’t have to be fantasy.  The Fault in Our Stars took us on a journey to meet a horrible man that most would never dream of doing: that’s fantastical.  That’s unusual.  That’s beautiful.

In short, what draws me in is this: I want to hear a voice in the writing.  I want to follow a character through a story.  I want to be taken out of my mundane life.  I just want a point of view.