I often tell my students that reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer’s alone. Moreover, our understanding of both works becomes richer and deeper as we hear this dialogue playing out; we see the implications for the new work, while at the same time we reconfigure our thinking, if only slightly, about the earlier one.
The reader must also use their imagination in order to assist the author in creating a worthwhile, entertaining story.
