[Democracyman]

I am not a fiction writer and only a beginning writer of non fiction, so I only know a little from what I read and from what I read.

To me many books don't have enough to grab a reader's attention. In the old days there was nothing to do, so a book could meander around quite a bit and the reader will stay, today the reader is bombarded with distractions, other entertainment options abound.

I think it a bit much to leave a large dangler question at the end of each chapter, however most chapters should have this element, something should be there to drive the reader forward to really want to know what happens next.

It is a question of emotion, what emotion the reader gets from the story, the plot, the problem the hero or villain has?

Give the characters a problem, a mission and a place to grow into. Give the reader strong emotions, somehow.

I think the emotions you can generate in a reader drives them to keep reading, right?

I have decided to model after Louis L amour's style in fiction and his best books seem to demand you to keep reading and in his kind of story it is a mission to be completed in a dangerous situation and quite often a end of chapter dangler that keeps the reader going to the next chapter.

It is like this, if a reader reads the first paragraph of your book then at that point the reader simply can't put the book down, or just leave it for another form of entertainment, that is the hoped for effect.

Dan