Do you really think about the reader?

I'm definitely a "gratification junkie" (I love that term, BTW), and I just don't think like that at all! Some stories speak more to individual readers than others, and if someone says that my writing made them forget their troubles for a while, I'm just thrilled to death that I was able do do that no matter if the story is one of my favorites or not. Enjoyment is 100% in the eye of the beholder.

 

I honestly cannot tell sometimes which is good and which is not. Sometimes what I think is not my best is applauded by another. I am the worst judge of my work. Beta readers are my cure for this disorder.

If i definitely know something does not work when I am doing a re-write of a first draft, or a beta reader tells me so I do not always like the grunt work involved to change it, but I always go after it and polish it until it works.

 

My other enjoyment besides external praise is that I love being the creator. I love that I get to color the sky and paint the leaves on the trees. In one sense I am like the reader, I do not always know how the stories is going to progress. The difference is that if I don't like the progression I get to change it until I do. I often times re-write movies in my head while I watch them to suit my needs.

 

Yes, I too keep the reader in mind. I have not yet published a novel so the process is full of learning and I have no audience but considering I write in a very specific way with very specific concepts I can imagine my target audience being the same kind of people who enjoy Woodward TV, 12 Monkeys, The Mars Volta and Pain of Salvation.


I incorporated a lot of what I read from The Bible, C.S Lewis' books, John Ramirez' real life testimony about Santeria and Mythology so it's a very strange story. I plan on sending it to a professional editor before quearing and after a few months of that I'll see if it's worthy enough to continue or just self publish it. Before the readers though, I've always wanted to please myself with my work.

 

On the other hand, somebody who tells a joke and is so focused on whether or not the joke will 'float' is probably not all that funny. They become stilted and self-conscious. I know, because that's how I tell jokes. I have a good sense of humour, but I am TERRIBLE at telling jokes. My dad was the same. I remember squirming when he told a joke, because he always farted around as he approached the punch line. I think he was worried that he wasn't going to deliver it properly, or that maybe it wasn't all that funny after all. Of course, the joke always fell flat. And yet, when he was being himself and not trying to please an audience, he was a very funny man.

Being a successful storyteller takes more than just figuring out exactly what you think your audience wants to hear. There has to be another spark there ...the love of the tale itself, and the facility to translate that love into a form that other people will also love—even if it's unlike anything they've ever heard before. I firmly believe that.

 

Actually, I think the opposite is true. In my opinion, if you have a story you truly want to tell, you find a way to tell it so that other people will 'get' you and read you. You change how you write (the technique), NOT what you write (what happens in the story.) If some necessary aspect of your story isn't getting through to your readers in your first draft, then don't just remove it from the story. Instead, change the way you wrote about it. Perfecting this kind of editing technique means you can tell any story you want, and people will still want to read it.

 

Yes, that's how I feel as well. You'd think that as a writer writes and gets books published, their books would get better each time and sell more each time, etc. But I think there are quite a few authors out there whose first book is the one people really love, and the subsequent ones are a tad disappointing.

You are a traditionally published author. So ...how do you view the pressure to produce more books? Do you feel this pressure at all? Does it come from your publisher, or from within yourself ...or maybe both? Do you feel that there is a difference between "I wrote a damn good book" and "I am a writer?" Just curious.

I know I will struggle to move on from my first book and the subsequent sequel. When I try to think about writing about something else altogether, nothing comes. Mind you, I'm a bit on the elderly side, and might feel differently if I were, say, in my 30s instead of my late 60s. But I don't know. I put so much of what I love into these books, I don't know if there is anything left. I'm much better at the craft of writing than I was when I started, but now I seem bereft of the love that brought that story to life.

@CoyoteKing said it so well (if you add in @EdFromNY 's point about life experiences) :

 

I think about the reader at a much later stage of draft. As in 'have I reached the surface of sense?' hew...
...

I wish I could write write for the reader- those diary entries - the hard working mother juggling her babies, career, & her vodka. She's always tired. They're a very popular [genre] at the moment, generating a proper sense of community:

'Your baby skills sound like mine!'

'Oh my gosh, your husband is hilarious.'

These people go to book fairs together, I think, and probably they drink coffee, to my mind. Often I read the 'first page' on Amazon & the 'baby poem,' on the back page, scowling like an undergraduate.

The publishers are not exactly vanity press, but they expect a Facebook presence; a flourishing and direct manuscript market, the print to order. Sometimes one of these - the 'press' - gets a big fish, and they flog her to Bloomsbury. Modern slavery bastards. Everybody's really happy for their success. That's extremely painful at a distance.

Somehow there needs to be a male, or a little man, equivalence - 'I love the way you scratch so aimlessly at your ball sack, George, and your self-consciousness in the mirror is most delightful. You, one pointless individual, are like me, oh baby.'

'Ya, thanks Felix. Remember to click 'like' and insert your credit details with your complimentary cookie, we love you.'

Wisdom says break into this market for a life of financial security, embrace the 'us' scourge. I shall find my four babies, two cars and my dirty tennis coach. Keep your hands off me, Boris.

'Oh Mrs Mat your curves are alluring.' I will do it, I'll break in for the reader.

[snort, pig]

I didn't write this, I found it on Youtube, I'm sorry everybody.

 

That's definitely true. Artists aren't just mirrors for popular taste. We all know plenty of times when artists have tried to just give the audience what they want and it falls utterly flat. If you wanted to think about it in the most abstract way then you could say that good art is a combination of what people think they want and something they didn't know they wanted. That seems to be the magic formula. Definitely you need to be confident enough in your own ideas, you do need something fresh and something unique and something that you are really adding to the genre instead of just spinning wheels. But almost no matter how good your work is you can't get away with just being your own thing. You need to fuse stuff together; synthesis not pure creation. Creativity and originality, but within constraints of the present landscape. Never derivative, but never too far from what people are already happy with. Media that is enjoyably challenging but never "out there".

From my perspective that's entirely putting the cart before the horses. To me, what makes a story my story is how it's told, not what happens. Just about any story can be my story if I can tell it how I want. I'm not even slightly bothered about keeping specific events or ideas in my story. Part of that's because I don't plan anything, so I don't really have any specific love of any story element. It just doesn't make sense to me why you'd want to change your writing style just to keep a plot point that isn't a big deal. Toning down the content is definitely the biggest challenge in my work. I should be looking at telling more mundane stories my way rather than trying to stick with my out there events and telling them in a more mundane way.

 

Roger P Breathy's Detective Dick At the Boarding School,
the House of Horror on the Hill trilogy is in no way inappropriate.
Mothers, tuck young daughters up with Detective Dick,
he knows how they tick, in a literary, above the pillow, fashion only.

'Outstanding' New York Times

 

Peow peow peow, peow peow

'Motherf*cker...'

'Ahhh, call in base chopper...'

'Ahhh...ahhh.'

'And on.'

'And on.'

'And a bit more dialogue.'

'Even more.'

Blebba bleb space and planets spinning planet Alpha million miles away, giant rocket. Planets, planets, planets, space and space. Space? I am the hero, in space. I'll keep typing until I hit one million million words then start over and over in space.

 

As I say; changing my subject matter seems to be the better move than trying to make a dick shaped peg fit a round hole.

 

There was a Chinese dude got stuck in a park bench a few years ago trying to answer that very question.

 

@ltp has a beautiful peg, actually.

 

I must have put that badly. I didn't mean changing the writing style itself. I meant creating a different perspective on what you're writing about. If a character is coming across as a pain in the neck, for example, and you want them to be likeable, find a way to make them more likeable. I think that's a better approach than just ditching the character, unless YOU feel they were a mistake from the start, and you can't remember why you wanted to include them.

However, both approaches will result in a good story, I imagine. It's just that I tend to focus on how to make my characters and events make sense to my readers, rather than just dumping them if they become problematic in some way. Like so much else, it's finding that 'eureka' moment and figuring out a technique that makes the whole thing fall into place. That moment can inject enthusiasm and insight into a project, without sacrificing the original plot and characters and/or theme.

 

You put NASA to shame.

 

I think you're right that it's a bit drastic to just slash and burn when things aren't working. But my approach generally is to stick with the way I write and tweak the events until it has the right emotional profile to fit what I want. Yes, I do want things to make sense and work and be emotionally resonant, but most of the time my problems come from a misjudgement as I was writing, that I went with something that was too much for me and not enough for anyone else. In a sense I could say that my failings are more to do with my audience's lack of stomach, then any failing of me as a writer (somewhat joking ). But there really is some truth in that, at least for me. I go too far when I'm writing; I push for what I want to come through and it definitely does. And then editing is reeling that back in until it's something sort of vaguely palatable to others. And when I'm thinking about how to build stories too; I know that when I write I'll push things harder and make them weirder and darker, and so (now anyway) I push myself to aim for simple, basic, generic outlines; the exact kind of plot that a cynic would say a teen romance has and that the readers pretty much expect their books to be. And then once I'm done writing it it'll be weird, but weird within the boundaries of what people want to read. If I plan to be dark then I end up with way too much dark. If I plan to be bright, sunny and normal then I end up with dark and interesting.

 

It sounds as if you write experimentally, to see what works and what doesn't—and then you're fine with ditching the story elements that turned out to be too over the top. I see where you're coming from here. Fair enough. It works for you! However, some of us have a specific story in mind, and we believe in it. The thing is, we need to make the readers believe in it as well.

I just wouldn't want everybody to think that the only way out of the dilemma is to make major changes to the plot and characters. If you change the plot and characters, it becomes a different story. Nothing wrong with that—but it's not the same thing as tweaking the writing so the original plot and character behaviour, as envisioned, becomes more acceptable.

 

Coming in late to this discussion, but here it is:

I have trouble wrapping my head around the concept of "writing for the reader," because "the reader" is such an intangible concept to begin with. Except for book signings and the occasional person coming up to me or writing to me to commend me for the book, I've never met them. I don't know who they are.

Instead, I've taken Kurt Vonnegut's advice, and write for one person. I write what that one person (other than myself, of course) would like to read. For Mr. Vonnegut, it was his sister Alice; for me it is my father. I have that reader in mind when I write or edit. possibly because he was one of the first people who was interested in what I wrote and encouraged me.

Which brings me to another thought. We are all storytellers, and for me, that storytelling experience started young, since I was always reading stories and telling them to other people. I can't remember who those people are now (except for Dad), but I remember that they liked my stories and always took the time to listen to them. I can't thank them enough now for that. So when some moppet comes up to you and asks you to listen to a story, do it, no matter how weird the story is. You may be planting a seed that will grow into a mighty tree some day.

 

Your statement (which I agree with) sums up the whole issue. Writers are satisfying some artistic vision while simultaneously trying to make a buck. I have read books on "how to get published" which state baldly that to be a successful writer, you should look at what's popular on the market at the time, and then write one of those, too. If teenage vampire themes sell books, write about teen-age vampires. If right-wing or left-wing political tracts are selling, write one of those, regardless of your own political inclinations. That's good advice, I guess.

Those of us who are retired, with a steady pension, or those who are independently wealthy, have the luxury of ignoring market trends and writing what we like to write, for whatever readership finds us amusing. It's perhaps relevant that the first professional writer I ever knew was a television critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His oeuvre consisted of synopses of television shows and interviews with celebrities, and he admitted that it was hackwork. But it put a roof over his family's heads and food on their table. I have to respect that. He gave his readership what they wanted.

 

What would make you want to sit down and write a story, if you don't love what you're doing? How can you write simply for 'the market,' if you aren't part of that market yourself? Why would you want to write a vampire story if you don't read or enjoy vampire stories? I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm certainly saying this would NOT motivate me to become a writer. There are lots easier ways to make money, if making money is the goal. I don't see much artistic vision in just producing a currently marketable story, no matter whether you believe in it or not.

 

I don't really have a lot of artistic vision - I'd consider my work a craft, not an art.

And for me, there's a certain challenge in writing within limits. Really, I read almost everything, genre-wise, so if I were to only write what I read, there'd still be a hell of a lot to choose from. But almost all the stories I love are really character-driven, regardless of genre, so I write character-driven fiction, in whatever genre I think I can sell!

 

It was this statement that prompted my post: "If right-wing or left-wing political tracts are selling, write one of those, regardless of your own political inclinations. That's good advice, I guess."

Possibly I picked @JLT up wrongly, but this implies that a writer who wants to sell should write anything people want to buy. That makes financial sense, but, as I said before, that's not what would motivate me to write. I can appreciate focusing stories to appeal to a certain kind of readership or genre. But writing stuff you actually don't believe in, just because it will sell?

I know I wouldn't go there.

On a slightly different tack. Here's an interesting article from three years ago, from a bestselling author with 27 books under her belt. Her understanding of 'market' has changed a lot since she first submitted a book to an agent.

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/how-to-choose-a-genre-when-writing-sometimes-the-genre-chooses-you

 

I don't think I'm a good enough writer to write something on demand. My muse is fickle at best, I can go for months not being able to write anything worthwhile, and then an idea or a prompt or something hits and I'm off, couple thousand words just sort of spill out. Not that I'm Anne Rice and won't accept any advice ("Iain, you're going to have to tone down the profanity a bit." "But they're a bunch of fucking jarheads, for fuck's sake. That just how those fucking fuckers fucking talk!") but the idea that I could just sit down and turn out a romance on cue? It's one of the things I've never liked about the various "Next Top Idol" reality shows. Imagine someone like, oh, Julio Iglesias getting shot down in the third round for failing the Death Metal Growl stage, or Yo-Yo Ma not being able to scratch a record well enough.

In 1985, the monster truck Bigfoot lost a water race to an old-fashioned paddleboat. The big tires enabled the truck to float and make some headway, but the boat still won. The truck's owner then challenged the boat's captain to a rematch down Main Street, but the captain declined.