A good storyteller isn’t the person who tells the story and the characters, it’s the one who believes in the story enough to make their readers feel it too. For the story to stick in someone’s mind, an author has to reach out through the pages, relating directly to the reader and their life. You can tell a whole story about a different world, realm, planet, or universe, but unless you help your readers see it, it will be boring and not relatable to your audience.
I’ve found that if you use 1st person, readers will be more drawn into the minds and bodies of characters and worlds because it feels as if they’re there, alongside the characters, fighting for the same things. Third person can be good too, if the book shares their interests and perspectives throughout the plot. Both can draw a reader into the book, making them part of the world, making them part of the story.
However, before you can make your readers believe your book, you have to believe it first. If you don’t believe in yourself, in the characters you’ve created, and in the entire world you’ve designed, your novel will seem flat and uncertain. You have to believe that in the pages of your book are real, live people with hearts and minds of their own. They create the novel, they make the world they live in seem real. An author has to believe that their characters are alive and fighting their real battles, and their book is a window to that world.
There’s a quote by Thomas Fuller, saying: seeing is believing. For books, I want to say the opposite: Believing is seeing. If you truly believe that the book has real characters and that their world is genuine, you will start seeing it in your mind’s eye. Never stop believing!
Stay magical,
