Category: Contract with the Reader
The Willing Suspension of Disbelief
When a reader picks up a novel and begins to read, there is an unspoken agreement that occurs. The reader agrees to accept what she…
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The Reader as a Silent Observer
There is an element in writing fiction that is invisible to readers (if the craftsman is successful) but is at the very heart of the…
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What Your Reader Cannot Possibly Know
What you donโt know as a writer, your reader has no hope of knowing. I will sometimes see phrases in stories like โher hair was…
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Slow, But That’s OK
I spent most of an hour one morning earlier this week re-keying two pages of my current manuscript. Two pages - double spaced Arial ten…
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Why Readers Read
The best stories take a turn at some point, early on.ย There lies some element, a phrase, a texture, that strikes the reader as so human,…
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