Reading is a means of switching on the imagination. The pictures drawn in the mind, the voices heard and the drama that unfolds can be as real to a reader as anything encountered in life. In many ways it is a better reality, one that is acceptable on the reader’s terms, limited by what they want to take out of it or see within it.
As writers we grope around for the switch that lights the imagination of our readers. The words though must first paint pictures in our own minds, we are after all the first reader. Hopefully these pictures will be seen in the mind’s eye of our readers. We know they will see different pictures to ours, pictures on their terms. The voices too they hear will have different accents to the ones in our hearing, although the words are the same. As long as it paints that picture, produces that voice and above all else entertains we will have thrown that switch.
Phil
Whittlesey Wordsmiths 