You posed your question from the perspective of the reader, but I feel that what interests the writer will interest (at least some) readers. One of the best pieces of advice I've received on writing: If it bores you (the writer) it's going to bore the reader. So that means, if it makes your toes curl, it's got juice. Others (not necessarily everyone) will feel it too.
There are certainly techniques, like building in cliff-hanger endings to each chapter. And I'm into learning all the techniques. I consider them tools in the toolbox, but what matters to me more is: how do I feel about my characters and story/plot?
A lot of what I write is based on personal experience. The first thing I need to do is move the characters away from people I know into people I wish I knew, and move the story line away from what actually happened to me to what might have happened in a different scenario that reveals something important to me. Personally, I don't want to write a memoir, I want to create something new, something I love, something mine. Right now I'm studying how to write so that I can be worthy of writing the stories and characters I've created.
The following is quoted from the Intro to David Corbett's The Art of Character. Coincidentally, I just now typed it out for myself so I could tack it on the wall in front of my work space. I find it inspirational and exciting.
Every story worth telling in some way mirrors our lives, and to that extent explores four key questions:
Who am I?
Where do I come from?
Where am I going?
What does it mean?
Storytelling is an art. It can’t provide scientific certainty and it shouldn’t try. Though there is considerable craft to fiction, it remains rooted far more in searching than in finding, more wedded to the hypothetical ‘what if’ than any conclusive QED.
As long as we’re alive, the question of who we are and how we should live remains open. No one convinces us less than the person who crows, “I have the answer.” And, ironically, this is precisely why fiction provides a more satisfying depiction of human life than any scientific or otherwise theoretical rendering can offer.
This open-ended quality to life also explains why desire is so central to the exploration of character. Human want can inspire the indifferent, betray the foolish, and undo the steadfast. And nothing is more ephemeral (or self-deluded) than satisfaction. … Even a child can intimate an unsettling sense of continuation to the journey in even the most final of endings, the inescapable presence of an implicit “And then …” Or the more ominous “And yet …”
The importance of character to story lies in this open-endedness at the core of our lives. Stories that emphasize ideas or problems … invariably hit rough sailing the further they drift from the shore of character. Ideas too often serve as a digression from the messy stuff of life – ourselves, each other. For some they provide a kind of false salvation. But the core reality of life remains: We die. Ideas, no matter how “eternal,” can’t save us. And because we can only honestly stand on one side of death, we can never know for certain how our lives will turn out, which is why we experience our existence most profoundly in the interrogative mode, situated in a world premised on … the magical “What if?”
, some not as well as my own and let them slide. It's so interesting, the process of painting what's in your mind in such a way that another person can receive a reasonable facsimile. I find that, when someone repeats my words back to me in their voice, it's kinda like Active Listening. I learn a lot from hearing how my words come across. I often make adjustments and my work improves as a result.
