Words can fall hard like a boulder loosed from a cliff. Words can drift unnoticed like a weed seed on a breeze. Words can sing.
Shannon HaleRead
I’ve always believed that as an author, I do 50% of the work of storytelling, and the reader does the other 50%. There’s no way I can control the story you tell yourself from my book. Your own experiences, preferences, prejudices, mood at the moment, current events in your life, needs and wants influence how you read my every word.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Storytelling is a collaborative process between the author and the reader.
In this quote, Shannon Hale emphasizes the idea that storytelling is not solely the responsibility of the author; rather, it is a joint effort with the reader playing a crucial role in interpreting and internalizing the narrative. Each individual's personal experiences, emotions, and circumstances shape their understanding of a story, highlighting the subjective nature of literature and how it resonates differently with each person.
Themes
StorytellingReaderAuthorInterpretationNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion, one might reference this quote to highlight different interpretations of a story.
More from Shannon Hale
All quotes →The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling a story I'm not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I'm forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I'll have written something that is better than I am.
Shannon HaleRead
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I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.
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