At this year's UW-Madison Writer's Institute, the first sentence of each winner was read. That's where the whole story, the central issue, the character's mission start, don't they? It creates the atmosphere, orients, and disorients, the reader. One speaker, Chris Chambers, said reading is interactive, and he is right. We're witnesses to a story, but not passive, and the greats make us feel as if we're looking over someone's shoulder as events and emotions unfold. Looking at a screen can be passive, with a static or moving camera. Last year's Time Out of Mind frequently had a moving camera yet never quite took off. That is, in a sense, okay, because it did create a world, though we couldn't interact with it. With reading we always interact. And it's on our own terms, or is it?
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