Or, Why Writers Are Idiots For Thinking Readers Care
You’ve got your readers. You’ve got your writers. You’ve got your readers who are writers and writers who are readers. You’ve got a whole bunch of other categories of people, too, but these are my focus today.
I’ve talked to some readers. A small sampling, yes, but more than five. They all say the same things.
“What do you think about the book?”
“I liked it.”
“OK. What did you like about it?”
“I don’t know.”
For readers who don’t like the book, substitute sentence two with “I didn’t like it.”
That’s what I get. If I push hard, I can get a “I don’t like happy endings” or “I like that guy.” Anything more comes from me feeding answers and getting a “yes” or “no.” Don’t even bother asking about grammar or descriptive techniques. You’ll get stares blanker than a deer in headlights.
It’s not that readers are idiots. They just don’t care as much as writers do. If they’re reading what I write, they’re reading for entertainment, not enlightenment. All they care about is whether the book was entertaining. After closing the cover, they walk away with a good or bad feeling. That’s pretty much it. Good feelings lead to reading more of my writing. Bad feelings lead to reading less. If they remember my name at all.
But here I sit agonizing over world consistency, balance of characters, varying sentence length and grammar minutiae. I do it because writers who are readers tell me I have to or my readers will hate me. Or writers will hate me and bad-mouth me and my work on their blog reviews.
TT: That’s a bit of a stretch. I don’t know any writers who would stoop to name-calling. I do know lots of writers irritated by poor writing skills. I’m one of them.
I’m here to tell you, readers don’t know what goes into creating a good book and they don’t care.
Most readers don’t recognize a plot inconsistency when they see one. If they do notice (because I’ve pointed it out), they say “Oh, I saw it but I figured it would get answered eventually.” Rarely do they remember whether it did.
This is good and bad.
It’s good because our audience is far less judgmental than we believe. Except for that one person who hates everything, including our book, and has nothing better to do than spend four hours explaining why on Amazon. God will take care of that person, one way or another.
It’s bad because it tempts us to be lazy in our writing. Why work so hard if I can get away with doing less and still win? Well, I can’t fault anybody who thinks this way. I’m tempted to do it myself. Except… even though I write for entertainment, I want to enlighten, too. I want readers to enjoy my books, but I want my books to set the bar a little higher. I want readers to walk away thinking “I liked it” and mean it so much they quietly compare it to the next book and find that one wanting. Readers should demand more of us.
Until they do, I’ll do it for them.
The New Authors Fellowship 
I’ve been trying to say this for several years now to say this and have been roundly accused of not caring about the craft of writing. Most readers think about books the way I think about movies. I don’t care about the nuances of camera angels or actor marks. I just know when a movie grabs me and when it doesn’t. Craft is essential. It also works best when practically invisible to the end user.
Tim, we can be ostracized together. I’m ready.
I know, getting reader repsonses is like pulling teeth. Ugh. Yes, we should demand more of ourselves because our readers really do, though it’s more subconciously than obvious to them.
Coffee Sunday with My Dear Friend inspired these reflections. She’s an avid reader but had no idea what goes into creating a book until we met.
In the years she’s listened to me talk about craft, her standards have gone up but even now she often can’t pinpoint what bothers her about books she doesn’t like and what grabs her about books that do.
Reality is, most readers *do* care about the *impact* of whether you use good technique or not. They simply don’t know how it is you either sucked them into the story and kept them turning pages, or what it is you did that bored them to tears or kept them from being able to get into it. For knowledgeable guidance on that, you have to turn to editors.
Readers really do say “I liked it” to stories that had an exciting plot, a likeable, relateable hero/heroine, where the story is shown to them in POV so deep, and descriptions so crisp, they forget they’re reading and are right there, becoming the POV character for a little while.
“I didn’t like it” typically means you either bored them to death, had an unlikeable, unrelateable hero/heroine, told too much, didn’t get deep enough into the POV to hold the attention of modern audiences, or plain used language they couldn’t understand and that made them feel stupid, or conversely, you constantly talked down to them and treated them like an idiot. It could also mean, though, that you did everything right, but the topic/conflict hit a nerve.
Perhaps I should say “they don’t care about craft as much as I do.” 🙂 That’s as it should be.
I do agree that the invisible craft drastically ups the odds of getting the “like” even if the reader doesn’t understand why or why not. I believe it is both an art and a science. Obsessive craft will not wow your readers necessarily, especially if the plot is lame or slipshod. However, sloppy craft does interfere.
In truth, my Husband is a reader – thus prone to the “I like it” response group, and has just started learning bits of good craft, but he has figured out to tell me when something pulls him out of the story, interrupts the flow, like potholes in the road. He may not know why (which sometimes takes me a while to figure out how to fix it), but he will tell me when he feels like he’s been pulled out of the story. For me, I try to focus on that instead of obsessively hunting down all the adverbs.
Editors -the best of them- try to analyze and figure out the subtle elements that sway the readers.
Very well said, Ren. It’s up to us to figure out what makes people “like.” They shouldn’t have to.
Not to step on toes, but I think this is mostly true for books that don’t impact the reader in some way. I would dare most readers to apply the “meh” principle to The Lord of the Rings, or some other story with such a mixture of beautiful prose and powerful theme.
So perhaps the “meh” responses are for “meh” books…?
I love Tolkien as much as the next nerd, but for every one person who’s read The Lord of the Rings, I’d bet there’s at least 10 who couldn’t get past the first chapter to even notice the themes.
I myself skip everything in italics. 😉
I know this is a blasphemous admission for a fantasy writer, but I have never finished Lord of the Rings. I have tried three times to read it and have yet to get past chapter 7. I made it through the Hobbit, and found it okay, but I wasn’t nearly as impressed with Tolkien as with Lewis.
Let the hissing commence.
I’m a language nerd, a mythology nerd, and a Anglo-Saxon history nerd. I’m also an amateur anthropologist, so I love detailed descriptions of races. It stands to reason that I love Tolkien. Still, the man couldn’t write a fight scene to save his life, and some of his dialog is pure often-clunky exposition. On the second reading, I’m tempted to over some of the dialog scenes because of the style, and one of the reasons I enjoy the movies are for some of the fight scenes.
Reminds me of an interview I saw with someone at Pixar. He said that if the animators do their jobs properly the audience won’t even notice the animation. The job of the animator is not to draw attention to the animation, but to support the story.
That’s why I love Pixar. Those guys know their stuff. Plus, The Incredibles is, well, incredible.