J.R. JohnsonGrounding the Reader
Every writer has strengths and… not strengths. One of the areas I personally like to work on is grounding, which is where you invite readers into a scene and help them feel at home in your story.
In this episode of the long-running podcast Writing Excuses, Erin Roberts, DongWon Song, and Mary Robinette Kowal focus on ways to do just that.
Writing Excuses 21.09: Grounding The Reader
Grounding a reader starts in the very first lines of a story. Where are we? Who are we with? What kind of story are we in? Our hosts explore how emotion, context, and sensory detail work together to create immersion, and why action alone isn’t enough without an emotional lens.
It’s only 20 minutes long and includes a helpful writing exercise to get you going.
If you’ve realized that (for example) just being dropped into the middle of a gunfight wasn’t enough to engage your audience, or your reader said “I wasn’t quite sure where I was at first,” this advice could help!
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