Inviting Readers into Your Stories

I write to accommodate my audiences. With nonfiction, that has been varied, from six-graders to PhDs. From salespeople to poets. From accountants to Disney Imagineers. And, of course, I address a lot of very different audiences with my fiction.

If you don’t set the tone, the vocabulary, pacing, and the interests areas correctly, people may still pay attention, but they’ll have barriers. They will be spectators more than participants. They won’t feel invited in.

I expect everyone feels that way at times. A lot of academic work pushes me to the side, and a big piece of my education (formal and informal) has been learning to expand the circle in which I feel comfortable. Today, I calibrate myself to reading. It takes a few pages for me to get past the language and be immersed in Shakespeare. I need a running start for Brecht, too. 

I’ve learned to move myself past the artificiality of screenplays, so much so that I’ve had to be reminded that they are “white noise” for some readers. (Although someone as brilliant as Frank Darabont, who wrote the screenplay for The Shawshank Redemption, may draw in readers with his elegant style.)

The point is that while we may be able to participate in many areas as readers, it’s important to lower the barriers and invite in those we hope with be audiences for our writing. That means first and foremost knowing who you are writing for. 

For speeches, I always talk to the sponsor asking what was the worst speech to this audience. Then I ask what was the best. But my go-to for all of my writing, I imagine a specific person I’m writing to. (I can always name the person who’s my first audience.) That sets the initial tone, vocabulary, pacing, and interest areas because I can easily imagine reactions along the way.

It takes some doing. Practice, especially storytelling and reading work aloud to people may help if it doesn’t come naturally.

Easier, and often neglected, is what the text looks like on a page. Screenwriters know this, and there are many articles about “white space” and balancing description/action with dialogue. Many novelists consciously break work up with short passages of dialogue (often in rewrites) so readers aren’t faced with a dense page of text.

I can remember coming across a short story I was excited to read because it was by one of my favorite authors, a lyrical stylist who appealed to my ear as much as my head. But not, for this story, my eye. His paragraphs were four or five times longer than for his typical stories, and I labored through the work the first time through. It was only later I realized he’d made it difficult on purpose because the protagonist was suffering in prison.

There are good reasons for making stories uninviting. Showing mania and obsession, especially when in builds, is just one. Often, incantation, rhythm, repetition, and all sorts of poetic approaches can make dense prose engaging and pull even reluctant readers in as surely as I know Shakespeare will grab me.

However, if you don’t have a specific purpose for making your work uninviting for your readers, it’s probably better to serve them in rewrites that simplify reading. That means making paragraphs one topic each and less than a standards (Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced) page. It means avoiding sentences that take on too many ideas and run beyond two independent clauses. (Generally, vary length and keep under 40 words.) Break the page up with dialogue, and ration the monologues. Dialogue is inviting when, by just looking at the pages, you can see the back and forth than implies purpose and conflict rather than exposition.

Parallel construction can provide relief because it suggests comparison. Description, going from big to small (neighborhood, house, kitchen) or general to specific (soldiers, officers, General Patton) also help readers. (Going from small to big and specific to general can work, too.) For a character, balancing experience with reflection provides a good way to get readers to identify.

And for all of these, break things up were it makes sense.

One more thing. Be cautious with the omniscient narrator. As much as I love this point of view in literature, it tends to be distancing and difficult to do well. When in doubt, use third person limited (unless you’re writing young adult fiction, which often uses first person).

Action and dialogue for individual characters can be combined in paragraphs (reducing the need for he/she said) successfully. And there are games that can be played with punctuation (m dashes, ellipses, and italics). 

Good contemporary writers come up with a lot of devices, and it’s becoming more common to see Texting in stories. I haven’t seen anyone recreate Zoom calls in stories, but I supposes someone has. This is new, but not breakthrough. The use of quotes and artifacts (like descriptions of video and clips from newspapers) have been used a long time in stories. 

You are not limited, but you are responsible for those you invite into your stories. (Or choose to discourage.)