Successful columnists connect with their readers by offering not just the tale, but the “teller,” a person with a distinctive voice. One of the building blocks to develop your voice is narrative lens: the way you relate your readers to your story.
Use these “narrative lens” choices to shape your readers’ connection to you, and to your writing.
- How close you get to your story: Do you tell it in the first person? Second person? Third person?
- Where in time you place your story: Past, present or future?
- How you relate to your readers: What forms of address do you use? What social, cultural and rhetorical references feel appropriate?
The bottom line to guide your choices: What kind of impression will you make on your readers with your choice?
Taken from Connecting as a Columnist: Your Voices, Your Choices, a Webinar by Rick Horowitz at Poynter NewsU.
