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With enough Reinforcement injected into your story, your audience will become emotionally involved whether they like it or not, and once you’ve hooked them, they’ll stick around to see where the story takes them.
Reinforcement is a must-have if you want a tearjerker or if you are aiming for literary accolades of any sort. Without heavy doses of reinforcement, any story - regardless of how interesting it appears to be - will fall emotionally flat.
The expression of Reinforcement is one of two things: #1 it’s a literal repetition of an event or circumstance or #2 it is the repeated expression of a condition you want your audience to believe characterized through unrelated events. Both options achieve the same result which is establishing a baseline of belief for a particular storyline condition.
For examples of Reinforcement, I suggest reading either of these two books (linked at right): The Death of Frank and Nora Riley and 13 Character Backstories.
The Death of Frank and Nora Riley is a short story that can be completed in less than 30 minutes. It's an old story of mine I rewrote several years ago that includes heavy doses of Reinforcement.
13 Character Backstories is a collection of intertwining fantasy backstories that are also deliberately loaded with Reinforcement. Although 13 Character Backstories is designed for use in fantasy RPG gaming, it's an excellent tool for writers who are interested in learning how to use Reinforcement to maximum effectiveness.
Both are available for purchase on Amazon and can be read on a Kindle device or the Kindle app.
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