In the late sixties and early seventies, many novelists and other writers experimented with stream-of-consciousness writing that stretched the boundaries of what readers were willing to read. Richard Brautigan, an Oregon native inspired me to try some fiction that was pretty obscure to everybody except me. While I’m glad I felt free enough to experiment, I soon realized that if no one gets what you are saying, few are going to read very far. You may as well read the phone book backwards. While there is a lot to learn in writing good fiction, it gets a whole lot easier if you don’t try to impress your reader with your dazzling vocabulary or keep readers wondering where in the world (or otherworld) they are. To keep them turning pages, always let your reader know where and when a scene unfolds.
Writing Tip for Today: Grounding the reader in time and space is as simple as always letting your reader know when and where your scene takes place. If you try too hard to impress with poetic sentences that don’t tell a story you’ll confuse your reader.