Let me take some pressure off you: as a writer, you can’t do it all. You shouldn’t. In fact, readers don’t want you to. They want to meet you halfway.
What do I mean? All writing is a collaborative experiment where the writer and reader work together. It’s a partnership of sorts where each side needs the other, relies on the other. Readers depend on writers to create the world in which a story happens, and writers depend on readers to fill those worlds using their imaginations.
Now, a lot of writers think their job is to do all of the work for the reader. But it isn’t. If you try to do all of the work, whether through over-narrating, exhaustive exposition, or giving meticulous description that rambles on and on, you’re missing it. Skilled writers learn, usually by trial and error, that their job is mostly to jump start readers’ imaginations.
I want to share with you two ways you can do that.
First, focus on moving their hearts instead of their heads. The best stories are those that move us. That’s why they are memorable. There is some longing within every human heart for connection and emotion. Figure out how to tap into that and your readers will plunge headlong into any adventure with your protagonist. But, remember, it must also move you. Like T.S. Eliot wrote, “No tears the writer, no tears the reader.”
Give your readers experiences before information. No one wants to read a book that’s mostly descriptions that do little more than showcase a writer’s ability to string words together. Life doesn’t happen in all exposition, and neither should your book. That’s what the old axion “show, don’t tell” is all about. Readers want to experience your story. They want to lose themselves in it. That want that world and this to come so close together that they can’t tell the difference between the two. Help them to experience the world you’ve thrown your characters into and their imaginations will tap into it.