10/22/2025
Indigo Recommends: "Sarah Mesle on the Power of Picturing Your Desired Reader" by Sarah Mesle for Literary Hub
"Who is your girl? Where is she going? I learned these two questions from Project Runway, the fashion reality show, which I watched delightedly for several early seasons before realizing that the show’s design advice could be upcycled, as they say, into writing wisdom. Sometimes on Project Runway, a contestant would design a “look” that seemed more a novelty act than an outfit. It was at this moment that a designer might face a judge’s questions: Who is your girl? Where is she going? When a judge posed these questions, they wanted to know: Who, actually, would wear this? Where would someone wear it? The judges wanted designers to remember: Clothes are made to be worn.
So, too, with writing that aims to be read. Reading, like wearing clothes, is an embodied act. It’s undertaken by real people, making choices in real places. Your writing decisions about diction, sentence structure, citation, compression, venue, and more matter to your reader’s functioning; they do so, much like a designer’s choices about fabric, cut, and fasteners. The key part of these questions, as writing advice, is..."
Read the full piece here: https://lithub.com/sarah-mesle-on-the-power-of-picturing-your-desired-reader/
[PD: promo graphic for the article detailed and linked above.]
