Master storytellers like Jeffrey Archer and Arthur Hailey use simple language. But they manage to grab the attention of the readers right from page one. I'll consider myself a good storyteller the day people believe it's OK to be late for work or postpone deadlines just to finish reading my book.
You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling.
As writers, we do our best to conjure a world so vivid that the reader can practically walk through it - but we're still only using words and relying on readers to do a lot of work of imagining. Providing pictures as well as words offers a whole new dimension to the experience of consuming a story.
In Count Julian I simply proposed to create a text which would allow for diverse levels of reading.
I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.
Everybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.
It is an author's primary duty to entertain. Sling out all the philosophical terms, but keep the reader turning the page.
I know "accessibility" is a term that's kind of thrown around wantonly today, especially with talking about visual media. But I think that the strength of comics [is how they] really allow you to transcend those last barriers between a reader absorbing the information of an experience, and a reader being able to project themselves into the [experience of the] people about whom they're reading.
You put books out into the world, and people form their own visuals and images and attachments to characters; those characters become part of them, and they have their feelings about them.
I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent that the reader would forget that language was the medium of understanding. Of course that's not possible, but it's some sort of idealized goal.
Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level.
When I read books, I actually really love imagining whomever I want to in the character's role. I get such vivid pictures on my own that that is a big part of the experience for me.
I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book.
I can only try to keep the characters interesting; it's up to the readers to decide whether they're still relevant.
Point of view gets me. If I can feel like a character rather than a reader, I'll read that book.
In a graphic novel, you have to allow for a certain amount of freedom on the reader's part to experience it how they choose.
If there is no love between the author and the story, there is no love between the reader and the story.
I want to write a story for people where they finish it, and it sticks with them.
I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.
The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.
The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book.
The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.
The chief difference between good writing and better writing may be measured by the number of imperceptible hesitations the reader experiences as he goes along.
When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image also. We have an emotional connection to the character.
A new reader shouldn't be able to find you in your work, though someone who's read more may begin to.
