To me, the key to keeping readers focused on your story is relatability (yes, I know. If you’re reading my world-building posts, you’re shocked). A story is relatable when the reader can imagine themselves in the story, meaning the reader accepts what happens in the story as something that could happen to them, meaning it’s familiar, and that brings us back to grounding the unfamiliar in the familiar.
At this point, we revert to basic psychology; How do people relate to things? Turns out there are four basic ways:
- they’re familiar with a place (Setting)
- they’re familiar with what’s happening (Plot)
- they’re familiar with the people involved (Character)
- they’re familiar with what’s being said (Language)
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2 thoughts on “Relatability”