Are You Talking to Me? Addressing the Reader

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week's Refresher Friday tales an updated look at addressing the reader. Enjoy!

In most stories the narrator is telling the story to an ambiguous “someone.” The fourth wall (the reader) is never broken and everything happens as if no one was watching, just like TV.

But sometimes narrators break that wall and speak directly to the reader. Done well, it can make the reader feel as if they’re listening to a story by a good friend. Done poorly, it jars the reader out of the story and reminds them they’re reading a story.

When you think about it, all first person stories are talking to the reader. The narrator is saying “I did this I did that,” so sometimes you can have sentences that feel like the narrator is addressing the reader when they’re actually not. The comments are more like rhetorical questions or musing to oneself.

It wasn’t like they’d shoot me for it, right?

This is fairly common in first person, so it’s not technically speaking directly to the reader. The "right?" could just as easily be the narrator trying to reassure themselves.

Read more »Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com