Your Reader is a Character, Too

I love it when, while reading a book or watching a video, I see something about to happen, and feel a pang of excitement, fear, despair or wonder. Perhaps all avid consumers of fiction share this with me. I certainly hope so.

It works like this. Two important characters that I have grown to care for in a story are arguing at cross-purpose. The heroine is angry because the hero seems oblivious to her point, but we, the insightful reader know that they aren’t talking about the same thing. Worse, we know that if they don’t work it out soon, one or both will stomp furiously off.

Or, how about this one? Our hero, sure of his facts, sneaks up on the place where the Big Bad is hiding, confident that he will catch the mobster unawares. We readers or viewers, safe in our warm homes know that if he opens the door to face the bad guy, he will instead trip the wire that will be the end of his true love.

We wish we could stop the action. We wish we could reach in and fix it for our fictional friends. And, at that moment, we have become something magical, something a reader would treasure if they made the distinction, and something the writer would be ecstatic to learn.

We have become a character in the story. Once we, as readers or viewers have put that much of ourselves, our emotions, our wishes for a good result, into our read… our view, we are a part of the story itself. And I say that is a wonderful moment.