By Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief for Southern Writers Magazine
As an author, when you are
writing a fiction book, do you think about what you want your reader to take
away from reading your book?
I know authors want the
reader to enjoy their books and buy other books they write.
But dig deeper. Don’t you
want them to step into the world you’ve created, get to know your characters,
one by one. Do you want them to identify with the main character? In the story,
the character will be making many decisions that affect their life and the
lives of others. Don’t you want your reader immersed in the story? Readers
become involved and think to themselves, “Oh that’s good, at least they made
the right decision in this case.” Maybe they will relate so much they will talk
to your character, saying, “Why did you make that choice. Now you have messed
up that relationship. I wouldn’t have done that.”
You see, when your reader
goes deeper into your book, and gets to know your characters, and finds
themselves relating to them, they are then invested in the book; and in you as
an author.
Isaac
Asimov, an American writer and professor of
biochemistry at Boston University. Well known for his works of science fiction
and popular science wrote about 500 books in his lifetime. Many of his books were made into movies and
TV shows like: I, Robot in 2004 with
Will Smith; Nightfall in 2000 with
David Carradine; Bicentennial Man in
1999 with Sam Neill and Robin Williams; and Probe,
a TV series in 1988 with Parker Stevenson. Asimov said, “It is the writer who might catch the
imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to
fruition.”
We
never know when something we write is going to plant a seed or help someone
with a decision they’re struggling with.
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