How To Create Narrative Drive—The Driving Force of Your Novel

If you’re a writer, chances are you’ve bumped into the term narrative drive once or twice. Like voice, it’s one of those elusive concepts you know your book needs, but you’re not quite sure how to define, let alone how to build it into your work. 

So, what is narrative drive?

In a nutshell, narrative drive is that internal pull that makes the reader turn the page.

You know that feeling when you just need to read one more chapter? Or when you can’t put the book down the whole night, even though you have an important meeting in the morning? Or when you can’t stop thinking about the book between reading sessions? That’s narrative drive at its best. It’s what keeps the reader engaged with the book. The stronger the narrative drive is, the more unputdownable the book will be.

Narrative drive shows up differently in different genres. Or, better said, its intensity requirement is different for different genres. For instance, in Thriller and Suspense, narrative drive is the focus of the novel—it’s what readers come to these genres for, that feeling of suspense and needing to know what happens next.

In quieter genres, such as character-driven Women’s Fiction and Literary Fiction, narrative drive is not as front-and-center as some other elements, like character growth. But rest assured that you still need it chugging away under the hood. Regardless of the genre, narrative drive is an essential ingredient in every story that works.

How is narrative drive built?

Narrative drive is fueled by two main things: curiosity and concern.

The reader will turn the page when they’re curious about what will happen next. They will also turn the page if they care about the protagonist and worry about what’s about to happen to them—the impending danger they might or might not be aware of.

So, logically, to create narrative drive, you need to make your reader curious and worried. How do you do that?

• Curiosity

Curiosity engages the reader on an intellectual level—by needing to know what happens next, learn something, untangle some sort of mystery or secret.

It’s created when the writer plants questions inside the narrative. The reader will then turn the page to find the answers to those questions.

Questions you pose can be big or small. The biggest question every book should have is the big story question. It’s the question that is posed virtually on the first page of the book (however subtly), and answered in its denouement. This question is the hook of the book—what the reader is willing to read the whole novel to find out.

Most times, genre dictates what the main story question will be: if you’re writing a Thriller, your story question will usually be Will the protagonist get out of this predicament alive and well? In Mystery, it’s Will the protagonist find out who the perpetrator is before the perpetrator gets to them? In Women’s Fiction, where the focus of the book is the emotional journey of the protagonist, the main story question usually is Will the protagonist overcome her personal obstacles and finally be fulfilled and happy?

Let’s look at some examples of main story guestions:

In The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, the main story question is Will Elle choose to be with her loving husband Peter, or the love of her life, Jonas?

In Dear Edward by Anne Napolitano, the main story question is Will Edward overcome his grief and rise above the tragedy that marked his life?

In The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne, the main story question is Will Helena deal with her murderer father—and her past—before it deals with her?

Every book needs the main story question—it is the tightrope that allows your reader to go from the first page to the last. But the story also needs smaller questions. Some are answered straight away, some take several chapters to be answered, and some spread across multiple acts of the story.

Here’s where the problem often emerges: how do you know when is the best time to answer any given question? In other words—how long should you wait before you present the reader with an answer?

If you answer the question too soon, it can fail to be engaging, and you lose tension and suspense it could’ve created. Sometimes I come across this issue when editing. The writer raises a question that complicates characters’ lives, but then solves the question in the very next chapter. For instance, the protagonist becomes seriously ill, only to get well in the following chapter. A character loses a big chunk of money, only to get it back the following morning. Or, there’s a huge misunderstanding that gets straightened out almost instantly. It leaves you wondering why the writer even bothered raising such a complication at all, if they’re going to let it fall through so fast.

If the question goes on for too long, though, it can feel overwrought and forced. I come across these types of questions as I’m editing too—when the writer wants to make the tension last longer than it feels organic to the story. For instance, when two characters need to discuss something, and then chapter after chapter this conversation keeps getting put off in less-than-believable ways.

Good rule of thumb is:

— The bigger the question, the longer it should take to answer. Let the full implications of that complication unfold before you remove it.

— The solution needs to come organically. Don’t put off the solution just to keep the tension going. Usually, when you’ve addressed all sides of the argument, explored all the potential angles, it’s time for a conclusion.

• Concern

Unlike curiosity, which is rooted in intellect, concern is rooted in emotions. It requires the author to engage with the reader’s feelings, to make them feel for the protagonist (characters). Concern is much more elusive—and therefore harder to achieve than curiosity for most writers, probably because it’s easier to make people think than it is to make them feel.

So, how do we make the reader engage with the story emotionally?

There are surely different answers out there, but here are the two most common ones:

• The reader needs to care about your protagonist. To care about them, they need to feel like they know and understand them, or admire something about them. You want your reader to feel like they’re reading about a real-life person, not a cardboard character. So, it’s always good to avoid stereotypes or at least putting a twist on them.

  To engage a protagonist emotionally, it doesn’t matter if this character is someone your reader can identify with or not. For instance, in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, the protagonist, Eleanor, is an extremely emotionally stunted individual, and an unreliable narrator. But the author offers enough context on how she sees life and world around her—shows you what Eleanor cares about, and what she wants, to make you care about if she gets it. You also get a glimpse that what Eleanor wants (get together with the celeb crush whom she stalks) and what she needs (emotional connection) aren’t necessarily the same thing.

• Kick off the emotional plot. Just like the intellectual plot (what actually happens in the story on surface level) you need an emotional plot (how what happens in the story affects the protagonist, and makes them move along their character arc). In other words, the reader needs to sense why the events of the matter to the protagonist. This should be the underlying current present under the ‘real,’ external plot at all times. The reader should always sense the emotional state of the protagonist—even when it’s not front and center.

  In words of literary agent Cecilia Lyra (The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Podcast, Episode How to Write a Novel in Half the Time): “We feel before we think. Feeling is unconscious. This is actually something that all writers should think about. Your protagonist’s unconscious should be on the page—not just their conscious awareness, not just the stuff they’re seeing—but the stuff they’re not even realizing they’re actually experiencing.”

  If you can capture that—the emotional underlying current that not even your protagonist is aware is thrumming below the surface of his conscious mind—your reader will be engaged.

In simplified terms, we care about protagonists who feel real to us—regardless of if they’re good, bad, or severely flawed. We engage with those protagonists who are more than cardboard characters, a clichéd version of a real person. When you put such person, one that feels real, in a predicament of a plot (in a context of a story question) it’s only natural the reader will feel concerned. And from there, they will start asking questions—other type of questions than they’re asking with curiosity. They don’t only want to know what happens next, but how it happens, and how it affects the protagonist in the process.

Three ways of raising concern and curiosity

Creating narrative drive is all about information: it’s about strategically deciding what information to give to your reader and when to give it.

One of the biggest problems I come across as an editor is when writers withhold vital information from the reader in order to create suspense. Writers will withhold critical information so that the reader can later have big or small reveals and revelations—and to keep them curious while they’re getting there. But what they usually end up doing is—withhold vital context (the one that’s necessary for the reader to even engage with the protagonist and their plight).

Withholding information for a later reveal is awesome. It sparks the reader’s interest and keeps them turning the page to find out what happens.

Withholding context, on the other hand, is not so great. The reader feels like they’re reading a book with a blindfold around their eyes. They see what is going on, but they have no context to filter it through. As a result, they will usually either fill in their own blanks (which results in a disappointment if the writer takes the story where they didn’t expect) or they’ll choose not to engage the story until they have more information. This can often lead to a frustration so big that the reader will put the book down—the exact opposite of what the writer wanted to achieve.

So, how can you tell as a writer what information it is okay to withhold, and when are you just robbing your reader of context? This is a topic that would require a whole article, but here are some pointers:

1. Withholding the information the protagonist knows

If you’re writing in 3rd person or 1st person, you can’t successfully withhold context. I often see writers trying to do this, and it always fails. For instance, there is a secret in that character’s history and they deliberately speak of it in vague terms so as not to let the reader in. The reader then gets frustrated with the POV character’s vagueness, because it feels forced.

Your POV character can’t unknow what they know. The suspense doesn’t come from us not knowing what the issue is, but from us knowing exactly what the issue is and seeing how they handle it.

In other words—we should know exactly what the POV character knows. You can play a bit with how to-the-point they are when they’re referring to that knowledge, and this can give you some leeway, but, honestly, it’s better to err on the side of giving information than withholding it.

2. Withholding information your protagonist doesn’t know

When writers are trying to foreshadow something that’s going to happen later on, but that their protagonist shouldn’t know about yet, they will often have protagonist turn the blind eye to the weirdness of the situation.

For instance, there is a character behaving oddly, and the protagonist is acting as if they’re not even aware of it, even though it’s obvious.

When there’s information you want your reader to know but you want to keep your protagonist in the dark about, make sure they at least acknowledge what doesn’t add up.

For instance, in Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, as the protagonist, journalist Jean, is exploring the story of a woman who claims to have had a child through virgin birth, the odd thing is, why would a woman in 1957, with a settled and peaceful life, subject herself to public scrutiny? This is a question that is definitely popping up in reader’s head, as it doesn’t make sense for that woman to do that.

The author could have chosen to avoid addressing that issue altogether until we found out—simply because she’s saving it for a later reveal. But it would inevitably be frustrating for the reader, as it wouldn’t feel plausible that Jean wouldn’t wonder about that herself—curious and smart journalist that she is. So the author has Jean acknowledge that question, even if she doesn’t yet have the answer.

It is, in fact, Jean posing that question (why is Gretchen, who has a perfectly settled life as a 1957 suburban housewife, ruffling feathers and making this potential mess for herself?), that creates even more narrative drive.

So, when you don’t want the reader to know something that’s obviously going on, it’s best that they at least acknowledge that there is something they don’t know, something that feels off

So with any piece of information, you need to ask yourself: is this something my character knows (and cannot possibly unknow)? If it is, and you’re writing from their perspective, then it likely isn’t something you can successfully withhold from your reader in order to create curiosity. Try creating concern instead: tell us exactly what the information is, and show us why it matters for your character. Have the character fully engage this issue and show us what’s at stake for them.

If it’s a piece of information you don’t want your protagonist to have yet, at least have them acknowledge the weirdness of the situation and ask themselves the question. That question will create curiosity, and make the reader turn the page.

To that end, there are three ways information can relate to reader’s knowledge:

• MYSTERY — POV CHARACTER HAS MORE INFORMATION THAN THE READER

Mystery engages the reader on the intellectual level—by sparking curiosity. The reader wonders what will happen next. On the author’s side, it’s created when the reader has LESS information than the character. Usually it’s used in mystery genre where the reader knows less than the detective/perpetrator.

The Marsh King’s Daughter, for example, relies on mystery to propel us to read on. Helena knows more than she lets the reader know. In this type of a book, the reader is okay with not getting all the context upfront, so they don’t get frustrated with that so easily. Suspense the mystery is creating (and, usually, a fast pace) makes up for the missing context.

•  DRAMATIC IRONY — POV CHARACTER HAS LESS INFORMATION THAN THE READER

Dramatic irony engages the reader on the emotional level—by igniting concern. The reader knows MORE than the protagonist—they can even know how the book ends. The narrative drive is created by kindling concern over how the things will develop.

In They Both Die in The End, the very title tells you how the book ends. Both lovers end up dead by the end of the book. So you’re not reading to find out what happens. The title tells you what happens. You’re reading to find out how and why it happens. Your interest is rooted in concern.

In Dear Edward we know from the beginning that the plane is going to crash. In fact, the book is divided into two timelines—and in the present timeline, the plane crashes in virtually first scene, kicking off Edward’s grief. In the past timeline (which develops over the course of that flight) we follow several people on the plane that we know is going to crash. Curiosity, therefore, is nixed. What keeps us reading is concern for those characters—how will they deal when things (quite literally) go down.

•  SUSPENSE — POV CHARACTER AND THE READER HAVE THE EXACT SAME INFORMATION

Suspense engages the reader on both intellectual and emotional level. You’re both curious about what will happen, and concerned about how it will unfold. The reader and the character have the exact same information. The suspense comes from knowing exactly what is going on in this moment, but not knowing how things will develop later on. And as those events unfold, the reader is there right alongside the reader.

Most books rely on suspense—a combination of curiosity and concern. The key to determining which information to withhold and which one to reveal is the character’s knowledge. We should know what they know, and let suspense come from the fact we don’t know what’s going to happen next—anymore than the character does.

Using Voice to Create Narrative Drive

There is one more way of creating narrative drive that’s not related to either concern or curiosity or the information that protagonist and reader have.

Sometimes, narrative drive can be created purely by voice.

Here’s an example; the opening of The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller:

“Things come from nowhere. The mind is empty and then inside the frame, a pear. Perfect, green, the stem atilt, a single leaf. It sits in a white ironstone bowl, nestled among the limes, on the center of a weathered picnic table, on an old screen porch, at the edge of a pond, deep in the woods, beside the sea.”

The voice here is amazing, but the author doesn’t stop there. By the end of this chapter, you know exactly what’s at stake for the protagonist: she slept with her best friend (Jonas) last night, while her loving husband Peter, and Jonas’s wife Gina were chatting inside the house. And by the end of this day, she has to decide whether to upend her life and choose the man she’s always loved, or stay with the husband she also loves, but maybe a bit less passionately.

In other words, you get curiosity (whom will she choose?) and concern (delivered through us understanding the basics of who Elle, Jonas and Peter are) on top of a beautiful, rhythmic voice you’ve leaned in to listen from the very first sentence.

When the writer has an engaging voice, it’s almost like someone singing beautifully. A listener will lean in, even if the don’t know the lyrics, and even if they don’t understand the language. They will listen purely because the beautiful voice, the cadence, and the rhythm of the song is pulling them in.

Same goes for reading. When someone has an amazing writing voice, the reader is willing to follow that voice for quite some time, just because the cadence and rhythm and quality of writing is addictive. The author, on the other hand, gains some leeway until they set things up.

This leeway doesn’t last forever, though. Even books written in most beautiful of voices will be put down if the author fails to engage reader through curiosity or concern. A beautiful voice only means it will take them longer to put the book down.

So it’s best to not rely entirely on voice to engage your reader, and the best authors out there will press hard on all three (voice, concern, and curiosity) to keep the reader hooked.

The opening of Lily King’s Writers & Lovers is a perfect example:

“I have a pact with myself not to think about money in the morning. I’m like a teenager trying not to think about sex. But I’m also trying not to think about sex. Or Luke. Or death. [Curiosity: who’s Luke? What does he have to do with death? Did Luke die? Was he her lover? ]Which means not thinking about my mother, who died on a vacation last winter. There are so many things I can’t think about in order to write in the morning.

Adam, my landlord, watches me walk his dog. He leans against his Benz in a suit and sparkling shoes as I come back up the driveway. He’s needy in the morning. Everyone is, I suppose. He enjoys his contrast to me in my sweats and unkempt hair [Concern: we’ve all met people like Adam who throw their good situation in life in the face of someone less fortunate. It makes us sympathize with her, and root for her to get the upper hand. ].

When the dog an I are closer, he says: “You’re up early.”

I’m always up early. “So are you.”

“Meeting with a judge at the courthouse at seven sharp.”

Admire me. Admire me. Admire the judge, the courthouse and seven sharp. [Voice.]