Escapism:

1. seeking to escape from reality

2. seeking to escape from reality by form of books

▪️your readers want to escape from the worry and unpleasantness of life.

▪️keep this in mind and you’ll write great stories that your readers won’t be able to put down.

This is especially easy if you add suspenseto your book.

How to create suspense:

▪️start scenes and chapters with urgency

Example:

Molly woke up.

She yawned and stretched and moseyed into the kitchen to make her cereal.

She found her favorite kind (cinnamon toast crunch) and poured it into a bowl with milk.

Now, she sat down in front of the window to watch the morning birds pecking the ground.

Let’s say someone is about to break into Molly’s house and kidnap her. Well… your readers will probably never make it to find out because this scene started out with no promise and no urgency what so ever. It’s just a boring morning routine that no one wants to hear.

Let’s try it another way…

Molly woke up with a strange feeling in her gut.

The house was quiet and she remembered that her parents had left on vacation.

Maybe she was just nervous about being alone. Yeah, that was it.

She started breakfast but the feeling wouldn’t leave her so she decided to lock all the windows and bolt the front door.

But the strange feeling persisted.

Suddenly, she remembered that she had forgotten to lock the basement door.

She sat down her bowl of cereal and slowly headed down the dark stairs…