Make me care

A story needs two things: An interesting character, and a serious problem.

“Interesting” and “serious” are where it gets more complicated.

Here is an article on how to make your reader care about your characters (by giving them a reason to care before the action explodes on the page). If they don’t care, they won’t read on.

Some other day I’ll talk about how to make readers care FAST – before you lose them. I reckon you’re lucky if you get two hundred words.