[Writerpreneur OS] Lesson 0304: Choose Your Effect on Your Reader To Keep Them Riveted

Readers want to be instantly transported - in fiction or non-fiction, in all genres. How you create this effect is your choice.

Of all early American writers, Edgar Allan Poe was perhaps the most original. He was also the most professional, as one might expect him to be. Without professional technique, originality has small chance of expressing itself.

His little essay entitled “The Philosophy of Composition” is a fascinating read. Like most creative writers who attempt criticism, Poe discusses the problems which arose in his own work.

In this essay he takes a thoroughly professional point of view, and advocates planning to produce a certain effect upon the reader, and rigorously eliminating everything which does not aid in producing it.

This is a hard lesson for most beginning writers. They know only a few tricks of style and naturally want to use them all, in order to vary their work and show their proficiency.

As a result, their product is more like fireworks set off at random than a steady bombardment of the reader’s mind and heart. Their work is more amusing than effective. This is because they try to do everything they can, instead of doing the one thing that should then be done.

An intelligent writer will consider beforehand what the desired effect is, and work to produce that effect - and that alone. This is the moral of Poe’s amusing essay.

Just what do we mean by the word “effect,” as used here?

The word may have several meanings, when we discuss literature.

1) A contemplated result, a purpose. As: The author achieved his effect.

2) A result or active influence upon the reader, whether intended by the author. Or not. As: The effect of his speech amazed him.

3) A striking impression upon the mind of a reader. As: He strains for effect.

4) The impression produced on a reader by a work of literature. As: The poem produced an effect of horror.

5) The general effect, or total impression produced. As: The effect of the whole.

6) The composition or arrangement (usually pleasing or remarkable) which the author creates, hoping to make an impression upon the reader.

Your choice of an effect is the choice of an impression which you wish to make upon your reader, and of the means used to make that impression.

Your question must be: What do I wish to do to my reader, and how can it be done?

In all vivid effects, we find a more unusual state of emotion, with more than usual order.

An effect is therefore necessarily cumulative, or climactic, in literature.

It comprises a series of small units or touches, all chosen and arranged in the order that will best build up to and create the desired or intended impression.

If unsure of your effects, you may test them by reading them aloud. If you find they stir you personally, it may prove that they are good.

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