Nancy Kress Readers Quotations

Questions that require answers are what keep readers going - and the place to start raising those questions is with your very first sentence.

Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation.

Overpopulated fiction can be so confusing that readers put the story down. Under-populated novels can seem claustrophobic or boring. You want the right number of characters for your particular work.

Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more clearly they see it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Thus, a dog should be an 'Airedale,' not just a 'dog.' A taste should not be merely 'good' but 'creamy and sweet' or 'sharply salty' or 'buttery on the tongue.'

It's very hard to write a story with only one character. This is because readers want to see your protagonist interacting with others. We come to know people through their interpersonal relations. Even Jack London, in his classic short story 'To Build A Fire,' gave his lone Arctic explorer a dog so that the character would have someone to talk to.

In fiction, a reaction shot is a brief portrayal of how your character reacts to something that someone else has done. In contrast to more direct character building, your guy doesn't initiate the sequence; he completes it. Exactly how he completes it can tell readers a lot about him.