How to Create Chemistry with Your Readers

What is that mysterious tug that draws you near someone for no apparent reason? Some call that immediate and intense emotional attraction experienced by two people chemistry. Is it possible to create the same sort of chemistry with your readers as the emotional connection you feel with that someone special who occupies all your thoughts and free time?

Creating characters who are compatible with your readers through similarities in lifestyles and values often still leads to boredom and is not enough to guarantee passion and commitment.

Rather, it’s the characters who you know are bad for you but you can’t stop reading. You stay up all night reading. You forget to eat and forego bathing. You snap at anyone who attempts to separate you from the book you’re reading. The characters become more real to you than your own family. You long to touch the characters, be in their presence and bask in the great feelings they evoke in you.

True chemistry occurs only when there is a definite electrical spark that one feels for another; an excitement and physical charge. Though that spark may be a magical moment outside your reach, you do have full control in creating excitement and a physical charge. By setting up dramatic moments filled with emotional and intellectual attraction and whenever possible, sexual tension, you leave your readers breathless and turning the pages faster to find out what happens next.

Excitement, tension, emotional engagement is created by not giving the reader what she wants. Deny her the full picture and she wants more. Frustrate her desire and her desire grows. She wants what you won’t give her so she has to read further into the story. Deliberately build up her expectations and then don’t satisfy them immediately. When you do, don’t give away everything. Keep the reader off balance. Giving just enough and no more heightens tension.

Give your characters passion in their lives. Passion for something or someone at a deep and emotional level carries the reader along in the character’s excitement and connects the reader to the character’s enthusiasm.

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