The structure of a story acts like a pump to increase the involvement of the audience. Good structure works by alternately lowering and raising the hero’s fortunes and, with them, the audience’s emotions.
Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (2020, p. 189)
Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them … We shall call the performance of an act of this kind the performance of a ‘perlocutionary’ act.
J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (1962, p. 101)
…reading is actual collaboration with the writer’s mind.
Ursula K. Le Guin, “Staying Awake” (2008)
Our audiences do not need to be protected from stories; they know when they enter the fictional space.
Hilary Mantel, “Adaptation” (Reith Lecture 5, July 11, 2017)