Is there a generic term for this? And...

[AG31]

.... what are some other examples? Terms that don't quite work are puzzle, tension, page-turner quality....

By "this" I'm talking about things that cause you to want to turn the page.

Examples are:

Small - A character enters into the scene/conversation without being introduced to the reader.
The characters keep talking about some prior event that they understand will, but it's not explained to the reader.

Middling - The MC is struggling with some sort of conflict, divorce, overcoming fear, tyrannical boss. How will it be resolved?

Big - Who killed him? How did the killer get inside the locked room? How will our hero get a not guilty verdict?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Suspense?

 

[AG31]

Suspense?

Could be.

 

[PennyThompson]

Mystery? Your "large" examples are literally just murder mysteries

 

[SmilingLez]

.... what are some other examples? Terms that don't quite work are puzzle, tension, page-turner quality....

By "this" I'm talking about things that cause you to want to turn the page.

Examples are:

Small - A character enters into the scene/conversation without being introduced to the reader.
The characters keep talking about some prior event that they understand will, but it's not explained to the reader.

Middling - The MC is struggling with some sort of conflict, divorce, overcoming fear, tyrannical boss. How will it be resolved?

Big - Who killed him? How did the killer get inside the locked room? How will our hero get a not guilty verdict?

Perhaps it is simply this:

A question opens.
The answer waits.
Something is missing. Something is withheld.
The reader notices.
The mind reaches forward.
One page becomes another.
Not suspense. Not necessarily mystery.
Just curiosity, left deliberately unfinished.

YMMV

 

[Writer61]

Bollocks springs to mind.

 

[crookedletter]

The word book-blurbers like to use is "propulsive." Or, one that always makes me laugh a little, "eminently readable," which sounds a bit like damning with faint praise. But I think both are trying to describe that quality -- whether done by means of suspense or mystery or some other approach -- that makes you just want to keep reading, to find out who that dude is or who killed Mr. Body or how they're going to get out of this pickle.

 

[Britva415]

.... what are some other examples? Terms that don't quite work are puzzle, tension, page-turner quality....

By "this" I'm talking about things that cause you to want to turn the page.

Examples are:

Small - A character enters into the scene/conversation without being introduced to the reader.
The characters keep talking about some prior event that they understand will, but it's not explained to the reader.

Middling - The MC is struggling with some sort of conflict, divorce, overcoming fear, tyrannical boss. How will it be resolved?

Big - Who killed him? How did the killer get inside the locked room? How will our hero get a not guilty verdict?

Hard to tell what kind of word you're looking for. How would you use it in a sentence? What blank are you trying to fill?

 

[XerXesXu]

Hook.

 

[TheLobster]

I’d call it intrigue, in the sense that it makes the reader intrigued about what happens next.

 

[Dodola]

Anticipation

 

[AG31]

Hard to tell what kind of word you're looking for. How would you use it in a sentence? What blank are you trying to fill?

A book can have a good plot. It can have good characters. It can have great description. It can be characterized by ______________________.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Not sure what you are asking

Narrative Hook maybe of some of.those and character arcs for others.

There's a literary tool around promises, progress and payoff. The things you describe to hook the reader are initial promises of a (mini) mystery and then are progressed and paid off during the story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

.... what are some other examples? Terms that don't quite work are puzzle, tension, page-turner quality....

By "this" I'm talking about things that cause you to want to turn the page.

"Hook".

 

[OralAllOver]

More than anything, I think it's engagement with a character.

 

[OralAllOver]

Replies:
As I went to great lengths to explain in my book on Character and Viewpoint, there are various levels of characterization, which you use as needed for a particular character in a particular story.

If the story is ABOUT character (i.e., it follows the character story structure), then you absolutely must know the character and all their relationships, and therefore all those other characters and THEIR relationships.

But if, as I suspect is the case with what you're writing, you are writing event or idea stories, then characters do not have to have the same level of depth. What you're writing is traditional Romance (not love stories, but stories of Great Deeds even if done by common people). And in Romance, characters ARE WHAT THEY DO. That is, we discover who they are by seeing the choices they make. Characterization will consist of showing their decisions and motives at the time, but you don't have to make a big deal about it. Often the situation will be explanation enough.

think of Die Hard. The gestures toward 'character' were slight indeed - his marriage was over but he still loved her and hoped she loved him. This had VERY little to do with the forward progress of the story. Does anyone have any doubt that the character would have done anything even slightly different if he had not had a close relationship with one of the hostages? OK, maybe at the end - but the point is, you didn't have to know anything about his childhood or his high school or his old friends or his first kiss or any of that other crap. HE WAS WHAT HE DID and WHY HE DID IT and that's all the characterization you needed.

Besides, "higher motivations" implies that characters are all good guys. Characters often have very low motivations <grin>. Let the moral universe take care of itself. You'll find out who you are by seeing what you write. But don't plan it like an essay designed to teach moral lessons. That just gets icky. Instead of following some character schema, you should be feeling it as part of the writer's trance: Ah, yes, THAT'S what he'd do, or, Oh, man, yeah, THIS is what's got to happen now. If you have some moral lesson in mind (this character represents Courage), then you won't feel as free to follow the story where your unconscious mind wants it to go.

 

[OralAllOver]

BTW Anne Rice under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure has sleeping beauty erotica, some of which are free on internet (got em long ago)

 

[anthrodisiac]

I shall also emphasize: hook.

I, for one, love hooker stories.

 

[OralAllOver]

TJ Hooker is back!