I'm curious: how far into the book were you when you came across the sentence that stopped you? It's probably easier to take a pause and allow yourself to be vulnerable if the author has taken their time to establish trust. I read a book once that made a bold pronouncement on the very first page, which raised my suspicion for the entire story (honestly I should have stopped there--I only read it as a favor to a friend and it was... pretty awful). The point is that it was hard to give the writer my trust so early on, and in a time when it seems a lot of writing tends toward short (social media posts, etc) that really limits the amount of time to build it.
I understand the importance of establishing trust early on, but I sometimes wonder if the first task is actually to establish space for the reader rather than immediate agreement.
To answer your question directly, the line that stopped me appeared in the second paragraph of the introduction. I remember thinking, “Well, that’s presumptive.” I didn’t agree with it then, and even now I’m not sure I do.
What kept me reading was not trust so much as the sense that the author was offering a perspective worth examining. Over time that willingness to engage slowly built trust.
That experience was with nonfiction, though. With fiction the threshold is much stricter for me—if I don’t trust the storyteller very early on, I’m usually done.
I'm curious: how far into the book were you when you came across the sentence that stopped you? It's probably easier to take a pause and allow yourself to be vulnerable if the author has taken their time to establish trust. I read a book once that made a bold pronouncement on the very first page, which raised my suspicion for the entire story (honestly I should have stopped there--I only read it as a favor to a friend and it was... pretty awful). The point is that it was hard to give the writer my trust so early on, and in a time when it seems a lot of writing tends toward short (social media posts, etc) that really limits the amount of time to build it.
I understand the importance of establishing trust early on, but I sometimes wonder if the first task is actually to establish space for the reader rather than immediate agreement.
To answer your question directly, the line that stopped me appeared in the second paragraph of the introduction. I remember thinking, “Well, that’s presumptive.” I didn’t agree with it then, and even now I’m not sure I do.
What kept me reading was not trust so much as the sense that the author was offering a perspective worth examining. Over time that willingness to engage slowly built trust.
That experience was with nonfiction, though. With fiction the threshold is much stricter for me—if I don’t trust the storyteller very early on, I’m usually done.