Chris Rogers, Author

Writers' Easy Guides: Narrative Style

Your Narrative Style, or “voice” is the way you choose to string words together, the rhythm, pattern, sound, and substance of your sentences and paragraphs. Your unique voice is developed by writing, writing, and rewriting. No other writer sounds quite like mystery novelists James Lee Burke, Ruth Rendell or Dick Francis, or humorists Dave Barry or Erma Bombeck. When an editor speaks highly of an author, they will invariably mention style or voice.

Seductive Style:
The First 500 Words of a Great Book

I call it the four A’s of first attack: attention, awe, absorption, and attitude. You naturally want to entice every reader who would enjoy your story, but you should also want to repel all those who would hate it and should be reading something entirely different. So those first 500 words carry a big load.

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E-Quotient:
How Words Affect the Reader

All too often, we believe readers will experience laughter, anxiety, fear, anger, or excitement by certain passages in our text only to discover they don’t get it. That emotional content is in our own minds when we write, so why didn’t it come across?

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