You hear about the Elders, the dragon riders, the magical fire-sword Brisingr; what drags readers in is not the story but the symbols and their slow unfolding.
The effect is transporting – Sacco drags readers into war-torn Bosnia and gives them both a sense of place and a sense of urgency, and like the best journalists, he's got an eye for the rich, contradictory, infuriating people who can make you care about something you ought to care about.
Yet this domesticated bourgeois pet would never, as it were, lose a capacity to bare its teeth and drag the reader back into the wild.
They have just reached the first word, perhaps attracted by the picture, the extracted quote, or any of the other presentational devices used to drag the reader to the story.
Don't forget that when writing: drag your reader through the mud and they will celebrate the slightest glimpse of sunshine.
Early biblical narratives were written this way and preserved because it was a Dragnet style of "just the facts" and because they were like this, it was easy to pass down the narrative, and drag the reader to the point of the text as well.
And it drags the reader into "Flesh and Blood," too.
Sticking to what she does best, Beauman drags the reader into breathless melodrama.
Stylistically, the story initially seems like a bit of Millhauserian whimsy, but it soon drags the reader into a realm of blackness reminiscent of Kafka.
He introduces an overwhelming cast of characters with wacky names (Wolf Loner, Morton Opperly, Rama Joan, Tigerishka) and drags the reader around an exhausting number of locations in their pursuit.
