It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’
I was always a big reader, even when everything was bad and miserable.
I am a slow reader. I always loved words, which is a strange thing given that I couldn’t actually read them.
I tend to spend a lot of time building characters that the reader will believe in and sympathize with.
Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.
The unsaid is a powerful tool. It invites the reader into the narrative, filling in gaps, interpreting silences and half-finished sentences, and seeing the hidden fear in someone’s eye.
Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader’s experience. If it’s a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it’s a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.
As a reader, I read quite widely.
I am an avid reader.
I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem – you are the voice in the poem.
I don’t have a great eye for detail. I leave blanks in all of my stories. I leave out all detail, which leaves the reader to fill in something better.
Well, for people who want to write best sellers, the best advice I can give is to say that the novel has to engage the reader emotionally.
What I loved about romances was the character, and I think I still bring that to my novels. What romance taught me was that the ‘who’ will always matter more than the ‘what.’ It’s fun to come up with plots, but I want to make sure the reader cares about who it’s happening to.
I’m very aware of the presence of a reader, and that probably is a reaction against a lot of poems that I do read which seem oblivious to my presence as a reader.
My normal life is, I love to travel and I travel as often as I can. I don’t stay in one place too long. But I’m an avid reader; I guess you could say I’m a bit of a bookworm.
I’m a professional non-fiction reader, that’s what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampire and witch moment, courtesy of Anne Rice, whose books I read and loved.
One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.
There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write, when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader… He has to die! I can’t have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective.
I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.
Serial novels have an unexpected effect; they hook the writer as well as the reader.
Ideally a book would have no order in it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
I surrendered to a world of my imagination, reenacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me. I became a very active reader, especially history and Shakespeare.
My mother often mailed me articles from ‘Reader’s Digest’ about advances in DNA chemistry. No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.
The best critics do not worry about what the author might think. That would be like a detective worrying about what a suspect might think. Instead, they treat the reader as an intelligent friend, and describe the book as honestly, and as entertainingly, as possible.
I have to have three or four books going simultaneously. If I’m not impressed in the first 20 pages, I don’t bother reading the rest, especially with novels. I’m not a book-club style reader. I’m not looking for life lessons or wanting people to think I’m smart because I’m reading a certain book.
I’m a fan of meeting readers face to face, at reader events, where we’re able to sit down and take some time to talk. Too often, at regular book signings, I meet readers who have traveled six or eight hours to see me, and I’m unable to spend more than a few short minutes chatting with them as I sign books.
I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera.
I think the danger with using the term ‘trilogy’ is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader’s mind.
I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia’s appearances to the reader’s imagination.
People who have had a stroke and are recovering from it love being read to… especially by someone who is a good reader – it does help them to get better.
Naturally, the reader has access only to the events I show and the way I show them, but as has been said, there’s generally a good deal of ambiguity in that presentation.
I read the ‘Deadpool’ series back in the ’90s. I’m not, like, a huge comic book reader, per say, though. I’ll check out ‘Archie’ when I’m in the grocery line, but that’s about it.
Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it.
Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
The first paragraph of my book must get me my reader. The last paragraph of a chapter must compel my reader to turn the page. The last paragraph of my book must ensure that my reader looks out for my next book.
I believe that if the story is fleshed out and the characters more believable, the reader is more likely to take the journey with them. In addition, the plot can be more complex. My characters are very real to me, and I want each of my characters to be different.
I don’t think anyone wants a reader to be completely lost – certainly not to the point of giving up – but there’s something to be said for a book that isn’t instantly disposable, that rewards a second reading.
An ideal reader is someone who doesn’t know what on Earth you’ve been doing, who will look at it with absolute freshness and go, ‘Oh, so that’s what you’ve been up to.’
Really good writing, from my perspective, runs a lot like a visual on the screen. You need to create that kind of detail and have credibility with the reader, so the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details. That comes out of seeing.
I feel like if you really know the ending right from the beginning, you can add so many subtleties and little things later that will pay off and be more consistent and more rewarding for the reader.
I suppose people might consider me a ‘loose’ reader, as I seem willing to read anything of quality thinking and prose.
I think that you have to keep the reader front and centre if you’re going to write something that people are going to love and be entertained by.
Just as I know the usual rules of law enforcement, I also know the exceptions and invoke those frequently. I don’t feel a need to bog the reader down with an explanation of why the procedures are realistic, as long as I know that there is, in fact, an explanation.
I was a big Nancy Drew reader. Nancy figures it out. Case closed.
Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.
Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.
I’m an avid biography reader.
Writers write for one reason: to create an emotion in the reader, to reach across and make them feel something. You want a reaction. Yeah, it’s nicer when the reaction is to throw flowers than it is to throw brickbats, but you have to accept both equally.
I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.
I am an avid reader of Sidney Sheldon thriller novels.
In October 1920 I went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, with a free commission to develop the linguistic side of a large and growing School of English Studies, in which no regular provision had as yet been made for the linguistic specialist.
It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.
I used to say, read as much as you can. Now I say, read the best that you can, the stories that resonate with you, the books that are important to you. Try to read, not only as a reader, but also as a writer, to deconstruct how the author is telling his or her story.
With ‘Attachments,’ my goal was to write a really good romantic comedy. I wanted the reader to be smiling throughout.
The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story.
I remember that feeling when I was a young reader: finding books that were set in Sydney with Australian characters was incredibly exciting.
