Last night, I bailed on a book. I’m not a quitter. Firmly, I held to the belief that by the time I got one-third of the way into the story, I would care enough about the characters to strive onward to “the end.”
I feel guilty for jumping ship on a fellow author’s book—especially since this book had been selected by my book club. Yet, when most of the other club members stated that they were moving on to the next month’s selection, I figured that gave me a license to do the same.
The overall complaint: They couldn’t connect with the book’s characters.
Why couldn’t I, or anyone in our book club, connect with the characters in this book? The writer never allowed us to get close enough to them.
Every writer dreams of readers getting pulled into their book. The best way for that to happen is to have your characters grab the readers and yank them into the plot to go along for the ride. But before that can happen, the characters need to get close enough to the readers to grab them.
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