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Ksenia Anske

July 23, 2018

Get inside your reader's head

by Ksenia Anske


Reader.jpg
Reader.jpg

When you're blocked, here is a very simple trick that can unblock you.

Get inside your reader's head.

How? Wherever you are in your manuscript, whatever stage you're in, do this.

  1. Print out the section where you're stuck.
  2. Read every sentence, and after every sentence (or every block of the scene if you're in the blocking stage), ask yourself: What's the next question on reader's mind? What do they care about? 
  3. Read the whole section, line by line, while holding in mind these questions. Pretend you're the reader. What do you wonder about now? What about now? What about now? What's the worst you can do to the reader to make them wonder what happens next?

Tell me how this works out for you! It does wonders for me (thanks to my editor who taught me this trick).

Illustration by Henn Kim


THE "ALWAYS" P.S.: My Patreon patrons gets first dibs on these daily writing tips, so if you want early access (two months early) and access to our Discord chats, become my Hamsters at $1 per month, and voila! I'll eat you in borscht!

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TAGS: writing tip


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