on Live Write Thrive:

Our goal as writers is to get readers to go on an emotional journey. Readers read to care, to feel, to experience. We need to ask: How can I get readers to go on this journey as played out in my story, especially since each reader’s journey is unique, different from everyone else’s?

There are many factors that impact the success of a story to “catch readers in a net” of wonder, as C. S. Lewis puts it. We want to lure readers into our story net, and that’s always a challenge. However, there are two primary elements that will ensure success.

Annie Dillard said: “There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading—that is a good life.”

For us writers, reading is that precious. But better put: a day spent writing may not be a good day. But a life spent writing … well, that is the good life.

A life spent writing is a life of fishing … in order to catch readers in a net of surprisingness.

So how do we catch them in our nets?