Top 3 Ways to Build Story Intrigue

We all want to entice readers to well, continue reading. That's how fantasy novels get finished and how books become bestsellers, after all. However, I find people rarely talk about how to specifically build that growing appeal and interest in a writer's work besides tropes and trendy concepts. Thus, here are the top three ways you can build intrigue in your work, and the pros and cons that come with each! Note: this is tailored towards fantasy and #YAFantasyLit in particular, but can be applicable for all sorts of fiction.

Generally speaking, there are three points of entry for Intrigue and Investment in fantasy.

1. Premise

While not fantasy outright, the Book Thief by Markus Zusak was a book I initially struggled to get through because of the narration style. It took about halfway through the novel (and it’s a decent length too) for it to click with me. But I stuck it out because the premise intrigued me enough to keep going, which is to say: historical fiction narrated by a compassionate Death figure? Sign me up. Again, we could do a whole post just about premise intrigue can separately from character, but for the sake of keeping this concise we’re going to bring the two together now.

Because the Book Thief’s narrator, Death, is a character in their own right. A little omnipotent, a little helpless, a compassionate and compelling witness. Your characters start off as blank slates and we know nothing about them. But because I already had a preconceived idea of what Death is like—and the Book Thief actually reaffirmed it and I was able to engage with it on a deeper level. For others who have a more fearful view of Death, it might feel more subversive. When you attach a character (a new, blank concept) to something we already have a concept of (say magic, or elemental powers, or a societal role) we immediately start to marry the two together, and when done right, that can build intrigue and investment.

Basically: it can be a very good short hand. For example, in my own work, I have a pair of sisters as main characters. One is attached to the concept of life and one is attached to the concept of death. They love each other dearly, but — kinda obviously because of their powers — they clash quite often, and they also reflect their powers thematically and personality wise.

For a societal role example, it could be a blacksmith is hired to make a weapon, but as they work on it, they start to worry they’re making something dangerous—and for someone dangerous. Immediately just premise wise, I know what they do, what they’re good at, and what they’re worried about. Premise intrigue means breaking down your book to premise alone, and it’s a good way to see if something is both easily explainable and easily compelling.

But it’s not the only way to build character intrigue.

2. Worldbuilding

One of the biggest, most unique appeals of fantasy is the worldbuilding. For a quick example, Avatar: The Last Airbender is beloved for two main things: its characters development and its worldbuilding. The series also has an amazing plot and characters at every point, but it’s these two things that keep people coming back time and time again.

Sometimes it’s hard to create compelling characters in a short time space (first 10 pages) because that’s a lot of pressure. However, most people who are already interested in fantasy will go to a book for the worldbuilding just as much as the characters. A ‘basic’ (initially not very interesting) character can be given more time to develop and win the reader over if the world surrounding them is super interesting.

However, the best fantasy novels do worldbuilding and character construction seamlessly together, which is to say the characters and world inform each other simultaneously. The Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo is an outstanding example of this, and it’s especially apt when you have a cast of characters coming from different places in your world. They’re all going to have different accents, religions, cultures, etc. It means a lot of worldbuilding, but it will mean your characters feel more defined and your world feels more real and lived in.

One of the few shortcomings I felt like the cartoon, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power had, was that all the side princesses had the exact same opinion on anything loosely 'political.’ They were either isolationist or in the rebellion, and we never got very good reasons for any of them doing other. As such, about 3-4 of the show's side characters felt like they had actually developed personalities, but their lack of a well rounded personality made it feel like they didn’t actually live in their world… and that’s a problem. It left the world feeling flatter, and the characters less interesting too, making them sometimes feel out of place in their own story.

All of this is to say, your characters live in the world, so make how they live in your world part of what makes them intriguing. A runaway revolutionary with magic is going to tether you both to politics and to your magic system. A priest who’s watching the ruler they serve slowly go mad is going to be concerned with the royal family and the gods. These two options could even be the same person, with a little character development and plot! But if your character conflict feels entirely separate from the world they live in, it’s probably going to be a little weak — and a missed opportunity to show off the amazing world you’re building!

3. Characters

Perhaps most straightforwardly, but compelling characters are about conflict. Every character has to have a goal, and more than that, every character has got to have a problem. This is a good thing, because you set the stage for their lives, relationships, and the choices they have! Questions to ask yourself / concepts to consider in order to build conflict:

• How does this part of my world work? Could be an institution or a societal expectation. What about a character where this doesn’t work for them? What are the exceptions to the rule like?
• Relationships are the core of conflict. Who is your character trying to impress? Who is your character being compared to, whether by themselves or by others?
• What is the most inconvenient place for your character to start in? For ex: someone with water powers born in a desert. A prophecy child born to nonbelievers, etc.
• What does your character want? What is in their way? What are they willing to justify doing to get it?
• Messy emotions always make good fodder. Is there anyone your character loves (family, friend, love interest), but also resents or hates? Is there anyone your character shouldn’t feel an attachment to?

Typically in stories, we know the character is going to accomplish their goal. Shift the stakes away from whether or not they’ll win, to how will they win? What they willing to sacrifice to achieve their goal? What are they not? This ties back into “what are they willing to justify in order to get it?”

Conclusion (TLDR)

Conflict is the core of a compelling story or characters. The fantastical engages, but the emotion borne from conflict has to feel real for us to be invested. Brainstorm. Write down archetypes you really like or your favourite characters from other media. Figure out what drew you to them. See what concepts you like for a world, or dynamics you’ve always wanted to see (or ones you enjoy seeing play out again and again). What’s important to you? How can characters explore those concepts?

If it's interesting to you, you can make it interesting to your reader, I promise.