Years later the memorial was constructed so that we would never forget what happened.īy Nikodem Nijaki – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Fascist militiamen lined them up along the bank, ordered them to take off their shoes, and then shot them so that their bodies fell into the river and were swept away. In Budapest, Hungary there’s a memorial along the Danube River to honor Jews killed during WWII. When there’s a demolished building to capture, why settle for a shoe? Why zoom in that far? What makes a tightly cropped shot of a single slipper more compelling than a wide-angle shot showing the range of the devastation? In both of these situations, various media outlets snapped pictures and filmed segments of empty shoes left behind by the victims. Not long ago it was the attack on a mosque in Christchurch that stole the headlines and broke our hearts. We woke up on Easter Sunday to news of Catholic churches and hotels being bombed in Sri Lanka. We worry that pinpointing things too clearly excludes some of our readers. We think that in order to make EVERYONE care about our stories, we need to keep our descriptions generalized and nonspecific. That they care about your characters and their problems.Īnd because our potential audience is wide and diverse, our instincts can lead us astray here. One of the biggest challenges a writer faces is ensuring the reader feels your story. Today, I want to talk about how it applies to writing. It’s a principle that applies to all sorts of things in life. Aiming at a specific point increases the likelihood of landing a good shot. It might not be a perfect shot, but it’s certainly better than swinging your arrow wide right. But if you aim at a small point on the target–say, the bullseye–and you miss, you’re still likely to hit the target. If you aim in the general direction of a target and miss, you’re likely to miss by a lot. Mel’s talking about fighting the enemy, but the principle applies to target shooting as well.
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