Controlling the Reader
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Have you felt your heart pound with fear during horror movies? Were you on the edge of your seat when the killer was about to stab the woman in the shower? The writer was controlling you. It isn’t difficult to control your readers in the same way. You can control how fast their hearts beat and how fast they read.
You may ask why you would want to control their reading speed. The answer is that fast scenes pull the reader into the action; unending fast scenes tire them. The reader needs slow scenes to rest their minds and emotions. This is when they will reassess the action scene you have just presented.
Let’s look at some samples of how you can control the reader’s speed:
“We bounced up the stairs two at a time, slipped into my room unnoticed, and closed the door without making a sound.”
- That sentence is fast because it has alliteration. (Alliteration is the succeeding sound of using the same letter in different words.) Note the words “bounced”, “stairs”, “slipped”, “unnoticed”, “closed” and “sound”. What do they have in common? They all have the S sound. Also notice the T alliteration in “stairs”, “two”, “at”, “time”, “into”, and “unnoticed”. This is double alliteration, and it increases the speed even more.
- Another way to speed up a scene is with action verbs, such as: “The roller coaster zipped and whirled at lightening speed,” or “The skater swished by in a rush.”
- Slow the scenes with settings, scenery, or by using words with Ws and Ls, like this:
“A little lady watched from the crowd, and glanced momentarily at her watch.”
Note the four Ls in the last sentence and the three Ws. That’s double alliteration and your first thought may be that the sentence will flow faster, right? Sorry, this is a different situation. The lulling sounds of Ls and Ws overtake the alliteration in the sentence to make it slow.
Let’s look at this sentence again, and apply what we know at this point:
“The roller coaster zipped and whirled at lightening speed.”
This is a fast sentence because it has the S sound of alliteration. Right? No. It’s slow because it has one W and four Ls? No, that’s incorrect.The sentence is fast. Why? Because Ls and Ws overcome alliteration, but action verbs overpower Ws and Ls. As you learn to write your own articles, stories, and blogs, these are things you must know.