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 […]
How do you want your reader to feel? Read More »
I’m in the second draft of my village mystery and see my main character does a lot of thinking. Thinking is great. I do a lot, myself. But it’s not so great watching people think. Given the soulfulness of my MC’s experience, I can forgive her but my readers won’t. I invited a minor character
We write a sentence. We look at it. And think, ‘It doesn’t look smart. The reader will have guessed our meaning, way ahead. They’ll judge us pedantic.’ So, we Trim. Elide. Remove redundancy – not of words but of meaning. And the Reader sees a gap between Print (on the page) and Intention (in the
It’s all in the mind. Some of it stays there. Read More »
If you write a book without thinking about who’s going to want to read it, maybe no-one will. It takes two to make a book work: the Writer and the Reader. Writing a book without thinking about the Reader is a bit like sewing a dress or a jacket, without reference to the human form.
Tailor your writing 🧵🪡 Read More »