Are chapters with a single character inherently more difficult for an average reader to connect with? (And do you have any tips.)
On the topic of keeping a reader engaged:
Dialog is a great way to balance out a scene of description and action. Dialog allows conflict, information, reveal of character, and so on and so on.
My main character spends two chapters (Ch 2 and 4) alone in the wilderness. (Chapter 3 is in another point of view.) Feedback I get is that chapters 2/4 are well written, all the parts are there, I've done everything 'right' but it's tough for readers to feel connected to the character.
In these chapters, my character has internal thoughts (written as indirect past tense), a couple flashbacks that are dialog, a couple exclamations/talking out loud, and conflict between himself and the environment. In other words, I've tried to compensate for the lack of dialog with other devices. (Perhaps I ended up with something disjointed as a result. Not sure.)
I'm wondering if there's something about a lack of a second character for the MC to bounce off of that is giving readers a hard time being in the scene. What do you think?
I don't plan to add a second character, but if you have any insight into this I will take it on board and let it stew with the other fixes I'm playing around with. The advice I've gotten is to add his thoughts and emotions, but they are already there as indirect past tense.
Incidentally, one of my constraints (and this will sound like a non-sequitur but I don't think it is) is that I don't allow normal swear words in this world. Having my character yell "F***!" during a crisis might work wonders (and the lack of that expletive might be what's missing for the reader) but I'm hoping to avoid standard swear words. It's too early in the book for the in-world words to carry the same weight.
Edit: More feedback from readers in real life has me shortening some of the segments in these chapters, reducing some of the extraneous 'disjointed' bits, and (as always) keeping the character's motivations clear. Two disjointed bits were linked which adds a metaphysical vibe in that paragraph which is cool.
It's getting there.
Also, a few occasional telling words appear to be helpful. (reader: "Does he hate being there?" me: "No, he loves being alone. I showed that." "Oh, yes you did. But I hate hiking." "OK. Look at this version where I add in his feeling as a tell." "Oh! Yes, I get it now.")
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A chapter generally needs a miniature conflict and arc of its own, and as such must have some kind of tension. As you pointed out, having multiple characters makes it somewhat easy, but a character that's alone seemingly can't bring a conflict or arc about.
Here, one has to shift the focus to internal conflict. In the novel I'm writing, I've recently come across such a dilemma, as a couple of chapters of the novel is covering a young girl who's smuggled herself out of her city in a crate... well, sitting around in a crate and scavenging for food and drink when she knows she won't be seen leaving said crate.
She doesn't say a word, however, what she does do is wrestle between regretting her bid for freedom and standing by it, reflecting on the irony of pursuing freedom by trapping herself in a box, thinking about her sister (who was the only part of her home that she truly loved) and dreaming of what she thinks her destination is (setting her up for a payoff when she ends up anywhere but where she intended).
So yes, either shift to internal conflicts, or as I alluded to in the last example, use the alone time to demonstrate the characters' expectations of the future in order to set up future conflict.
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There are quite a few critically acclaimed novels that feature only a single character. For example, William Golding's Pincher Martin tells of how the protagonist reaches a rock in the sea after a ship wreck and later dies there. It is a brilliant novel, and you may learn a few things from it for your own work.
There are also quite a few bestsellers that feature chapters in which the protagonist is alone. For example, Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild tells the (true) story of an inexperienced hiker dying alone in the wilderness. In many chapters the protagonist is alone. It has an Amazon sales rank of #208 in Books and was made into a movie that was nominated for two Golden Globes and two Academy Awards.
Obviously, chapters with only a single character will neither prevent your novel from earning critical acclaim nor prevent it from becoming a bestseller. Therefore the answer to your first question is clearly:
Are they more difficult for the reader?
No. All bad writing is difficult for the reader and all good writing is easy on the reader. It does not matter what you write, only how.
Do you have any tips?
Your preconception that a single-character scene needs to be written somehow differently from other kinds of scenes or is more difficult to write is wrong. All scenes are equally difficult to write well and require the same approach: Get yourself mentally into your character(s) and their situation and employ your mastery of language to describe what you see. If you are really there, and if you have mastered language, there is nothing difficult about any kind of scene. If you aren't, and haven't, all scenes are impossible to write.
Unblock your mind.
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Are chapters with a single character inherently more difficult for an average reader to connect with?
And why that should be? I mean, I don't have the average reader preferences (nobody has, probably, and we could discuss who is your average reader depending on the genre and the demographics) but there is no reason why single-character scenes should be more difficult.
You are absolutely right when mentioning dialog: it is a great way of keeping a scene dinamic and interesting. When done right.
But ultimately you have to be good at writing dialog and dialog must be consistent with your character to work out well. A poorly written dialog can be perceived as stiff, useless or just unimportant, and the "average" reader will bore through it anyway. So, your question can be turned around completely: isn't a well built, single-character scene easier to write?
My point is that for both things there are requirements to meet and pitfalls to avoid, depending on the plot points, the situation and the characters involved. It also tends to depend on the kind of writer you are: someone is more apt to dialog scenes, where someone else is more prone to long single-character scenes and descriptions (I remember someone mentioning H.P. Lovercraft as one of the latter kind of writers).
There are differences in readers too, of course. Some will enjoy your single-character scenes as your protagonist struggle in the wilderness. There is no point in forcing dialog in a scene if you, as writer of the story, feel no need to.
You have to trust your internal narrator telling you that's the way the scene is meant to go.
On a side note, regarding your problem with your feedback-givers not feeling attached with the main character, I'd give it time. That's not exactly a sign of lacking a dialog scene. Personally, I rarely grow fond of a character overnight, so unless your chapters are 50 pages long each, I wouldn't lose my mind over it.
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I suspect you don't have tension; in the sense that the readers are not wondering "what happens next?"
Your character may be cold and scared and (loves being alone? That kind of doesn't fit here), and maybe he needs to get to the stream, but he's not doing anything but plodding to the stream, and that is boring.
If that is all it is, then skip six hours, and he finally reached the stream.
An analogy for this is a sex scene: IRL sex is exciting throughout, but narrated, it is repetitive as hell, and quickly boring, because there are only so many different ways to describe sensations without getting absolutely comical. So yes, walking on the shattered ankle is excruciating. Agonizing. That's it, don't go through the whole thesaurus coming up with ways to say the same thing again and again and again. Skip time to the interesting part.
He sees the stream! Seeing it, tears come to his eyes, he's almost done.
He *reaches the stream, and falls to the ground and pulls himself forward to take a drink. His leg is throbbing, but he shouts in victory.
As for thoughts: I use italicized thoughts all the time; I keep them to the nature of actual thoughts (mine at least), a few words at most.
"The guy with the hat, who was that?"
Alvin. Can't tell him that.
"I don't remember. You mean Richard?"
Other longer thoughts, I narrate in prose, 3rd person limited.
Barry was thinking, if they took the second train, they'd still make it to Rochester with time to spare, but he'd get ninety minutes alone with Sharon, and that might be enough. He just needed a good excuse for Charlie.
Narrating a long continuing state is boring, you need to find the "turning points," what the reader knows will happen next. Think of it as a series of "mindsets" for the hero. Describe the mindset, jump time, describe the new mindset or decision or feeling, jump time, describe the next mindset.
I've described twenty-four straight hours of hard labor in a paragraph, because the mindset didn't change. Then my character was so tired they couldn't go on, and that was a new mindset.
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