What's your role in your reader's life?

About this episode

Ann Kroeker explores how clarifying your role in a reader’s life transforms your writing.

What's your role in your reader's lifeRelease Date: December 2, 2025 In this episode, Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach, explores how clarifying your role in a reader’s life transforms your tone, structure, and connection on the page. Using real-world analogies and examples from Anne Bogel, Annie F. Downs, and Lisa TerKeurst, Ann shows how to choose and calibrate a voice readers trust—whether you’re a knowledgeable friend, a teacher, a tower of authority, or a fellow traveler in the field. In This Episode You’ll Discover: Why defining your role makes writing more intuitive and effective How to spot a voice/role mismatch that’s holding your manuscript back The “knowledgeable friend” approach that helped Anne Bogel find her flow How Annie F. Downs’ “coffee with a friend” brand guides tone and content Lisa TerKeurst’s 4 voices for authors: Tower, Teacher, In the Field, and In the Pit When to avoid the “In the Pit” voice (and what to do instead) Practical tone tweaks: contractions, anecdotes, sentence fragments, vulnerability A quick exercise to test multiple voices and choose what fits How to align structure, examples, and word choice with your chosen role Ways to iterate based on reader…

People in this episode

Host: Ann Kroeker

Guests: Anne Bogel, Annie F. Downs, Lisa TerKeurst

Topics covered

• writing
• reader engagement
• voice in writing
• author roles
• tone and structure

Keywords

• role in reader's life
• voice/role mismatch
• knowledgeable friend
• coffee with a friend
• 4 voices for authors
• tone tweaks
• reader response

Mentioned in this episode

Products: the Tower Voice

Books & works: Writing Coach

More episodes of Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

• ”Oh no! My book was written by someone else!” · May 27, 2026 · 6 min
• Dear [favorite author] · April 20, 2026 · 7 min
• Are Abandoned Projects a Sign of Creative Weakness? · March 25, 2026 · 12 min
• Don’t want to say it yourself? Put a frame around it! · March 22, 2026 · 8 min
• Do you really want to write “quietly”? (It’s an AI favorite) · February 27, 2026 · 9 min
• Whose Voice Is on Your Pages? Human vs. AI Writing · February 11, 2026 · 21 min