It might seem like a silly thing to talk about, but some authors likely struggle to make their story interesting. Mixing a pathological need to describe things in detail, introduce all the characters, and creating a story that people care about, many people end up with a story that is flat out boring to read. Naturally, a boring story is a failed story.
There is no such thing as a "key" to success. My idea of interesting isn't necessarily the next guys' idea of interesting. However, if you're struggling to keep your story interesting or you find people abandoning your story before it "gets interesting", it might be because you're missing something. In general, stories should be interesting throughout. And you might make excuses that you're trying to introduce new characters, an environment, or foreshadow, but in the end it depends on your capacity to write to keep things interesting.
If you don't find the scene interesting, how can you expect your readers to find the scene interesting? And that is the rub. You need to keep a book interesting, regardless of the scene. It really shouldn't have "boring" parts. Once again, interest is relative, and someone might find a fantasy or romance boring compared to someone else just because of personal tastes. Still, at the end of the day, a good book is a book someone wants to read.
Now, there are a billion ways to "make a book interesting", especially depending on your target audience. If your target are teenage boys, they'll probably love girls declaring their love for them, moments of being overpowered and dominating, and arses getting their comeuppance. If you're writing a romance, sweet beautiful scenes where the protagonist hold each other on the beach and whisper sweet nothings all into the night might be the ticket. However, here are a few examples of things that will probably help your story be more interesting, regardless of the genre.
Make Characters Pop With Personality
This might seem contradictory, especially after I've complained about the FIS character. After all, the FIS character occurs when you're desperate to put extreme emotion to every little action they do. Obviously, I'm not talking about that.
What I'm talking about has a better example, and that is the difference between a theater actor and a movie actor. As you know, a movie can set the mood many ways. If someone is crying, they can close up on the tear. They can let you listen to a whimper, or play background music that is sad and somber. Theater can't really do that. In a theater, you have to always project your voice, even at a distance, and even if you can squeeze out a tear, most of your audience will not be able to see that.
Many theater actors fail to cross over to movies and vice versa because the way you act is just that much different. When writing books, you sometimes need that same level of clarity. For someone who's always telling you to be subtle in your writing, I know this sounds like a contradiction, so I'm hoping I can explain it properly here.
Let's use another example. Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Babylon 5, all of these science fiction and fantasy stories have other species other than humans. These species are almost always a culture that exists from humanity, or a personality of humans, cranked up to an extreme. You have Klingons who are warriors that take after Vikings. You have money-centric races like the dwarves, and religious races too. Every species has its own "quirk".
There is a reason for this, by the way. It comes from how our brains work. We label and group things. If Klingons had as much diversity as humans did within their group, not only would it be difficult to build a narrative around that, it'd be difficult for us to identify with them at all!
Anyone who's been in enough fights on the internet know that basically everything is polarized. You're either a democrat who believes everything a democrat believes, or a republican who believes everything the republicans believe. Pro-life or pro-choice. Evolution or Creationism. Athiesm, or Indoctrination in a religion. The world simply doesn't work in these extremes, yet we, humans, are constantly labeling each other and ourselves in these extremes, even when the truth for 95% of people fall somewhere in the middle.
So where does that leave you when creating a character? I'm not saying you need to polarize your character. I'm DEFINITELY NOT saying you should create a character that cranks some personality trait up to eleven. However, if you want a story, that's interesting, you're going to need to create characters that pop.
You need to find an interesting way that this character will interact with the world, and then you need to drape the character in it. Go all or nothing.
But Dorian, the strawman whines, then you will have built a 2D character that is predictable and boring! To which I answer, NO, no you haven't. You see, even if you build an exaggerated money hungry protagonist, you can still give him a range of characterization. The only thing sticking to a quirk does is close the range. It's refining, not destroying.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. True creativity does not come from having free reign to do whatever crazy thing you want... true creativity comes from being restricted in what you can do and finding new ways to build within that construct.
So in the end, what I'm saying, is that the characters you make can't be every character. If you make a character who is happy, then sad, then crying, then depressed, then angry, who loves money, hates the world, but loves people, maybe perverted, a stark atheist... you're pulling a character into too many directions. When you pull a character in too many directions, what they end up looking like is everyone else.
And that would be the point I'm making. Real people... we aren't interesting. You, me, and billy-bob may have disagreements here and there, but 90% of people (at least within any given culture group) probably don't think all that much different than others. So if you want a character to pop, you need to give them extreme points. You need to make them "the character who is like this". That's the character people will remember. After that, it's up to your creativity to make that character that pops more than a 1 trick pony, giving him more personality and dimensions. How? With subtlety of course.
Include Side Characters with their own Stories
First off, when I'm talking about side characters, I'm not talking about the hero's companion or the MC's best girlfriend. I'm talking about the random NPCs, mobs, and characters that they run into in their day-to-day life.
Most of the time, a side character is just uninteresting. You wouldn't even bother to describe their hair color, let alone give them a name or a personality. That's kind of how we do things in real life, right? I certainly don't remember the face of the person who sold me my Big Mac last week when I went to McDonalds.
Of course, I must say it again. Real Life is boring. If you want things to be interesting, then try building up the side characters with a little more eccentricity. These are living, breathing people too, and while you have a story going on throughout your book that you want to focus on, every side character in your story has their own lives going on too.
Since they're not the focus of your story, the main character may never know everything that is going on. However, you can include hints and side characterization. These little interactions may help build up the story. It'll make your world feel more alive. It will may your characters feel like they exist within a world that wasn't built specifically for them. Most importantly, it will be less boring.
I'm reminded of a story in the TV show Community. In a certain episode, a character named Abed isn't in the majority of the episode. As characters talk and do their own thing, he shows up in the background. First, he's shown meeting a pregnant girl, getting into a fight with boyfriend, her going into labor, and then her having a baby in the back of a van. At the end, he's asked "do anything interesting this week?" and he responds "Naw." In 4-5 short scenes, an entire story is told, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the main character.
It's hilarious, and it's an entire story done in the background. I'm not suggesting you necessarily do that. That's naturally something only a visual media could manage. However, as your characters interact with the side characters that don't have any effect on your story, give them a story too. Maybe the first time he comes in, the guy is angry because he caught his wife cheating on him. The next time your character meets him, he's with a new girl. Then the next time he meets him they are in a bar and he's drunk because she cheated on him too, and he's asking people why everyone he meets cheats on him.
That's naturally just the first thing that came to my head, but continuity and side stories add flair to a story. You're making your world more dynamic, you're giving side characters' something to do, and in the end, you're making the world more interesting for it.
The trick is, once again, subtlety. Don't just have the characters do this and then explain the whole thing. It doesn't HAVE to be explained in entirety. Your main character can comment on their experience with the side character, but it doesn't always have to be some explained out thing that ties into the overall story. I've personally felt a lot of books have suffered from getting too obsessed about side characters and focusing on them while we all want to just see the main character finish his story. I've also seen stories that, upon finishing the main story, will write a few side stories revealing what these characters were doing and why they were acting that way during the main story. Then interested parties see that and laugh, realizing how it all fits together like a puzzle. I think this is the best in a lot of ways.
This will be a recurring theme, by the way. A story needs to be dynamic. Your main character is not the only one doing anything in this world, so remember you have a whole world out there that is still moving forward regardless of what your MC is doing.
Give the Setting Something to Do
And this is where it comes around. If you're having trouble because your main character is doing something boring... then give your setting something to do. Some of you might immediately shout "a setting can't do anything! It's just a place. How can a building do something!" Well, Mr. Strawman, I have news for you. Settings, like people, are not static. They change over time. How?
Make the people in your world do something. Instead of having your girl walk down the hall of a high school, have your girl walk down a high school where people are getting ready for the dance, putting up fliers and hanging decorations. When you enter a new town, have a festival going on! People are celebrating for some kind of yearly thing.
Maybe there is a parade. Maybe there is a holiday. Maybe there is some event. Maybe a king is visiting. A Rockstar? Use the environment to build the expectations. Have people doing something, or preparing something. Give your environment, and the side character in it, something to do while you main character walks around.
Make the world bustling. Once again, make it dynamic. A world that is moving while your story is moving is a world that is better for it. Maybe your character will have to interact with that world. Maybe those events will tie into your world. Maybe they're just gravy. However, if you really want to make a story that isn't boring, make sure to write a story where things are going on, even if those might not be the things your character needs to deal with. However, you get extra points if they tie into each other.
Even stories like Die Hard took place at Christmas, so if it's something that works, go for it. (P.S. avoid doing stuff at Christmas unless you want your story to be forever labeled as a Christmas story.)
Cut Out the Boring Stuff
This is a little simpler than my other advice, which is a little vague in some ways. So you're having trouble combining two scenes. Maybe you think the journey from this city to the next city would be boring. Maybe you have no ideas for events or conversations to occur during the travel. Maybe you don't know how to describe a scene, or you're just not very good at said scene. Or maybe, you just don't feel like it.
Either way, here's a thought... skip it. There is no reason you have to explain boring stuff. Don't get me wrong, it's often important to establish an atmosphere, to have good transitions, and provide familiarity to your characters. However, at the end of it, if you're just writing to fill out a word count, you should just skip it. Why write nothing until things "get interesting". Just skip to the interesting part already. Don't waste your reader's time and don't waste your own time.
Now, I'm not saying skip everything, and only show the high octane action scenes, but you don't need to show every little detail. And even if the details are difficult, sometimes some plain old exposition is enough to get around that. Just tell us what happened on their three-day journey, don't explain it.
"But Dorian! That's telling, not showing, that's bad!"
Shut Up Strawman! Get out of my head! Telling is perfectly okay when it comes to events that happened in the past of the story. When people tell you to show, not tell, they're mostly talking about backgrounds, personalities, and information not available in the story. And while yes, even while it's better to show, not tell, if what you're showing is "boring", then it's better not to show it. And in some ways, it's better to tell something in the eyes of your protagonist, since you gain their perception of events. Rather than trying to show... for example, that he thinks someone has a crush on him, it's easier to just say "I think she has a crush on me because over the entire class period she's given me a look about three or four times now."
Witty Banter
I already discussed this in the banter chapter preceding this one, if you want a story to be interesting, you need characters that have conversations with each other. Every word out of their mouth does not need to be there for the sole continuation of the plot. People can joke, spread gossip, complain, explain, and make offhanded remarks.
A story where people say things more than the bare minimum necessary is a story with characters that come out more complex and more interesting. Every time they say something not plot relevant, you gain a better understanding that there is something going on in their brain. You realize what is important to them, where their mind is, and ultimately, what kind of personality they have.
You can say a character is a badass, a monster, a slut, angry, clever, stupid... but until you have them open their mouths and actually come off that way, you never really know. Banter is one way to obtain his characterization. It works on a level nothing else quite does. We, as human beings, communicate, so naturally, we become skilled at understanding and following communication to get a since of how other people are.
As a side note, I also see this as a problem in a lot of books. There is often a disconnect between how a person is said to be, and the word coming out of his mouth. You can call this guy a bad boy all you want, but the second he starts saying "please" and "may I", you're not giving him a bad boy vibe. Your words are telling one thing and show another. And thus, banter is born. Even if you have to make the meek guy say something unmeek-like, if it's surrounded by other meek-like comments, we just won't notice the discrepancy.
And more on point to this chapter, good banter can carry a story for quite some time. Think about your best memories. I'm betting a lot of them involved you chilling with your friend, talking and laughing. When you remember a movie, what is it you remember best? A quotable line, probably.
We tend to remember good dialogue. We tend to be entertained by talking. So, you have good banter in a story, and you'll have people who remember it and are entertained by it.
So, there you go. If you want an entertaining story, make sure the characters and setting are dynamic, avoid being boring, and keep your banter interesting.
So Dorian, what you're saying is that the way to make a story interesting is to write a story that's interesting...
Shut Up Strawman, no one cares what you think!