You can trust your reader as long as your reader can trust you

Here’s a story. My dear friend Mike Odom, a West Texas cowboy, was reading Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. He would have been a young man of the age of the characters in the book, so I was really curious to know what he thought. Mike is an educated man, well-read, an inventor and philanthropist, so I valued his opinion.

“That man doesn’t know how to close a gate,” he said, when I asked him. “No cowboy would close a gate like that.”

Aside from that, I said, what did he think of the book?

“I stopped reading,” he said. Why? Because he’d lost trust in the writer, so the entire story lost its power.

Moral of the story: get the details right! And as long as your reader trusts you in the texture of what you’re writing, you can trust that your reader will follow where you lead them. You don’t have to spell things out; you can just let your scene unfurl and your reader will enjoy the feeling of understanding falling into place. In this lovely poem, Maria Wasson’s vision reveals itself piece by piece.

Light and Flight

See through me. You always do. 

Behind you, I am here. 

You have my back, my front too. 

Looking up, the mountain rises. 

Follow me, I’ll wear my hat. 

Let’s stroll to the bend in the river where the willow weeps golden leaves that touch the ripples and sometimes let go. 

We watch the long leaves. 

Their yellow shapes like little boats dancing in the light waves around the stones, waiting for the pull of gravity downstream. 

You bound for the bunny who has come to drink. 

You delight in the water, wading, lapping the liquid, tasting, drinking the wildness in every drop.  

A cool breeze lifts off the canyon walls, hawk cries, we both look up. 

Clouds part, the curtain drawn, we step through together. 

Click here to purchase Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow by Allegra Huston and James Navé, founders of the Imaginative Storm method, or order it from your favorite online retailer. It’s also available on Kindle and all other e-book platforms.

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Photo credit for the cover of this post: Photo by Genevia Hendry, West’s mansion, Ossabaw Island, Georgia