By Books Writer Denise Turney

Good books reach emotional cores. It’s these emotional stories, written by emerging writers and established authors that resonate with Readers most. Even more, readers love stories that fuel them with emotion and transport them away from their everyday lives. But, fiction writers and novelists can’t just transport readers, they have to create characters, dialogue and plots that dig up deep emotion. In fact, emotion may be the key difference that separates average books to read from top sellers.

Characters Drive Storytelling

Other benefits that readers look for in storytelling are for character to take surprising risks and tension, enough suspense to create an emotional connection between characters and readers, whether those stories are among the best books of all time or never made the New York Times best sellers list. Now, here’s a key.

To achieve great storytelling, dialogue, character development and a tense, believable plot aren’t enough. Readers must be able to get inside the minds of your books characters. They need to feel like they know the characters personally. Even more, readers of books need to understand character motivations, fears and strengths.

Elements In Best Books To Read

One way to do this is to have a character make a vow that she does not intend to keep. For example, a real estate manager could vow to her team that she loves her job and plans to continue managing at the real estate firm after she completes her psychology master’s degree when, in actuality, what the manager really wants is to retire and start a nonprofit counseling agency in order to avoid facing a financial scandal that’s on the verge of being exposed at the real estate firm.

But, writers can’t just spring the contrast on readers, they have to build tension and reveal the struggle between what characters say and do. It’s this slow build of tension that’s found in the best books to read. And, it can take years of fiction writing for authors to acquire this skill.

Also, whether it’s an autobiography or work of fiction, writers need to take readers of their books to places that the readers haven’t been before. It’s easy to do this with science fiction books, not as easy with contemporary fiction.

Classic Emotionally Powerful Books

This is where the mental workings of characters helps to strengthen stories. Ralph Ellison pulls this off in Invisible Man. Ellison masterfully takes readers inside the mind of the book’s main character, an African American man who leaves the South and relocates to New York. The move doesn’t bring the man what he’d expected it to. It’s from here that Ellison takes the man into a basement where the tautness, the powerful emotion of the storytelling takes over.

Invisible Man left an imprint on me when I read the book. It was during my youth that I read Invisible Man. Ralph Ellison’s writing skill blessed my soul. Honestly. It did. His writing took me into that basement with the book’s main character. Before I knew it, I was pulling, literally rooting, for that man to do what it took to win, to get back on his feet and rise.

Knowing this, it’s highly recommended that writers who want their stories to become among the best books to read, invest the time to actually read powerful books. Surprisingly an autobiography could help writers spot ways to sharpen their characters.

After all, when you think about it, don’t the best books of all time have such deeply developed characters that the characters feel like real life people? But, don’t just read books until you unconsciously spot the elements of great characterization, keep writing to develop your own voice, your own writing style.

The post Emotional Stories Readers Love To Connect With appeared first on .