7 Ways to Make Readers Stop Reading

Readers, not you, decide when your story ends

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Billy Collins, a former US poet laureate, was asked how he knows when a poem is finished.

“A poem is finished when I discover its ending, where I don’t want to say any more and you don’t want to hear any more,” Collins said in a recent interview for The New York Times Book Review. That’s a good way to think of nonfiction writing, too. …