The thing is, the reader doesn't want to hear about bad times.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.
If significant amounts of time go by without suspenseful action - which is often most powerfully motivated by backstory - the story loses momentum, and readers lose interest.
When you face up to bad things in the past, the most important thing is not to allow them to happen today or in the future, and as storytellers, we must play our part in that.
It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.
I'm not really a good reader. What I mean is, I think I'm not one of those people who can read a story and analyze it just like that.
Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.
Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.
Every publisher or agent I've ever met told me the same thing - that Irish readers don't want to read about the bad old days of the Troubles; neither do the English and Americans - they only want to read about the Ireland of The Quiet Man, when red-haired widows are riding bicycles and everyone else is on a horse.
One thing we never did with 'Bad Company' was talk down to our reader. And we certainly don't do that with the new story, 'Bad Company, First Casualties.'
Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
No opposing quotes found.