Audience Vs. Critics (Writing what you want vs what others enjoy)

Ah, yes, thanks for the heads up. I was unaware.

 

I have to leave what I love. NO DOUBT.

 

Soooo, getting back to the thread topic...

You may be conflating a couple different things here.

"A guy told me"? Meh, unless this is a best selling author you thoroughly admire, I'd take that with a grain of salt. And if it is a person whose advice you respect, then maybe pull some threads out of the message and use those while leaving the rest of the advice on the shelf.

What your father seems to be saying is, great movie vs commercial blockbuster. It's really nice your father is giving you this kind of advice because he cares and he has some insight. Not everyone is blessed with a close relative they can discuss their work with in a meaningful way. There are many more threads to pull from there.

Then we come to style vs valid critique. Just be careful you are saying thank you and moving on when the critique is about your writing but you don't think it's helpful, and when the critique is valid but you are too in love with your darling writing to recognize when your style needs work.

My uninformed opinion because I haven't seen your work:

You can make politics relevant beyond current events if the story is good. There are a more than a few timeless books with political tropes and themes. And there are some which had at least a half century of relevance before the messages were no longer relevant.

Things that date one's novels: characters smoking in spaceships, a character in the future stopping to use a pay phone, and flying cars. (I have flying cars in my WIP and I don't care. )

 

I really don't think this is true. Limiting your readers in anyway means less sales. And there are plenty of books that appeal to the masses. We must be on different writing paths.

 

Yes, the 'greatest' pleasure is people from disparate (is that the word) backgrounds finding the write appealing, even more so when they have an original perception:

'It's man's inhumanity to man, son.'

'Umm, yeah, completely my message, thank you.'

 

I think it's perfectly fine to write for the general reader and to write for a specific audience so long as we're writing what matters to us. I don't think we should ever assume our work is too advanced for the masses however.

Edit: Changed my post a bit because I couldn't find the post I meant so I may have dreamt it up or something

 

It's certainly possible we have different goals, but I think we also might be working from different presuppositions. Do you see genre as limiting your readers? Do you write a book that appeals to every genre, every age group, every race, and so on ad infinitum? I find it hard to believe one can feasibly do that in the first place, let alone do it without sacrificing artistic integrity, and write something of quality and coherence without diversity hires and shoe-horning.

I'm not judging you. I just find it hard to believe you write with no specified audience in mind at all. No restrictions. And it doesn't have a negative impact.

I don't include (insert color) characters to appeal to (insert color) people, because I have no interest in appealing to shallow individuals who can't get into a book if there's no (insert color) in it. Now, maybe you don't do this either, but I'm just explaining how and why I limit myself.

 

I don't think genre has to limit a potential audience. I don't typically read or write much genre, but who doesn't love Ray Bradbury? And look at Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I picked that book up just as soon as I heard people talking about it. And it did win the Pulitzer. If these authors aimed for a limited audience in any way, the world could have missed out on some great stories.

 

Are you saying Ray didn't aim to write sci-fi? Or are you saying he didn't aim to write sci-fi that was inaccessible to those who weren't hardcore sci-fi fans? I mean, Bradbury had to at least know there are people who don't like sci-fi and therefore don't read it.

I'm not sure what you write, but just as a general example, if one's writing a how-to guide or an instruction manual, I suppose it would be a really good idea to make it as accessible as possible.

 

The authors I gave as examples were of course writing genre and well aware of it. But they didn't limit or want to limit their readers (Again, why would you not want people to buy your book?) and even writing genre, their work reached the masses.

 

I'm really tired right now and honestly not in a good mood lol, so I'm going to agree to disagree with you. This conversation can be had some other day, but thanks for sharing your opinion with me.

 

They were writing for their specific genre audiences, rather than everyone. People who write hard sci-fi don't tend to give much credence to how romance readers will take their books; romance writers don't tend to care how horror readers will take theirs.
That's what Foxxx is getting at. That they have an audience and they serve that, rather than trying to serve every audience, which inevitably results in tripe. The Road blew up because he committed to what he was writing, and to who he was writing it for, and thereby produced something good. It didn't blow up because he made a conscious effort to include something for every type of reader.

 

The argument on self vs critics in writing really is based off of the type of literature you're presenting. If you are writing objectively (presenting evidence to support a claim) then critics will either support you or do everything they can to take down what you're arguing with evidence of their own. In which point the argument of who is right and who is wrong is based off of the quality of the argument and the evidence being provided from it (i.e. reliable source). At which case you can either conform to the fact or agree to disagree, but either way the fact remains the fact.

For example, if I am arguing that smoking marijuana causes cognitive degeneration in adolescents I am going to have to present evidence that supports such claim. In my case, I am using statistics and quotes from the National Institute of Health, the Center of Disease Control, and the DEA to support my side. Critics may favor me because of how much credibility my evidence has, while others may try to introduce evidence from third-party "researchers" in order to dispute my claim. At which case I point out ethos and provide evidence from reliable sources that debunks their evidence by a landslide; thus making my argument objectively victorious. Will the critics against my claim agree with me with either a meager or massive amount of evidence that I might throw on them? It depends on two things, their ignorance and the research done on the matter. If there isn't much research out on the matter, then really the argument is no longer objective - you're just basing it on what you feel is right. However, if there is a plethora of research from credible sources that cannot be disputed and the critics still refuse to believe the data... Then they are certainly ignorant, which provides you justification to simply shrug your shoulders and walk away from the discussion altogether.

Creative literature, on the other hand, is a completely different beast. Conformity should be based off of objective critique; meaning critiques that correct you in the laws of English. Corrections in grammar and spelling, for example, are objective critiques in creative literature. When it comes down to the logic of the story, its a mix of subjectivity and objectivity. Here is an example:


(Skip to 3:45 of the video)

Subjectively speaking, I felt very displeased with the logic of ramming someone who was going to sacrifice themselves to save a cause in the "name of love." But some may feel that the love of two is more important than the lives of twenty. I can say that objectively, in a real-world scenario, they would of let the ship crash into the canon which would save the rebel base. Or, in alternative, the pilot who crashed into the supposed-to-be hero would face some form of punishment for endangering the rebels... In this case, neither happened. So, I would argue that the scene (and the movie in general, based on other scenes I've found both subjectively and objectively displeasing) to be fallacious.

As for other aspects of a story (i.e. the decision of a character to not pick lever A) are entirely subjective. People can disagree with what a character says and does, but still think that the story itself is a good one so long as something happens in response to said character(s) action. It may be an unexpectedly good outcome, it may be the outcome we all expect, so long as you execute it logically (i.e. not like star wars) then it really shouldn't matter what critics think about the character. If they want to benefit you, they have to benefit the entire book.

tldr: I'd care for objective criticisms, not subjective ones.