How do you want your reader to feel when they put your book down?
David Cornwell, better known as John le Carre, wrote to Sydney Pollack about the Night Manager*:
“…I wanted to give the reader the satisfaction of knowing that at some simple level personal courage and personal humanity had triumphed.
I wanted him also to feel a sense of outrage…”
When you’re writing a book, it’s good to be as clear about what you want your reader to feel, as about what you want to say.
*A Private Spy, The Letters of John le Carre, Penguin/Viking 2022.