Think of the Reader
In 1989 the editor of THE WRITER, a magazine devoted to the interests of writers, asked me to contribute an article. It's a good magazine; I recommend it to those who are seriously hopeful writers.
Now there is a paramount rule that every editor will tell you: Never try to write for an unfamiliar market. Read several issues of a magazine before you try to submit anything to it, or you are bound to fail.
Like many rules, this is only for those who don't know better. I hadn't seen an issue of THE
WRITER for twenty years. So I wrote an article, sent it off, and it was accepted and published, and included in the annual volume, THE WRITER'S HANDBOOK. You see, I hadn't seen the magazine, but I did know how to write. Also, I had seen the prior year's annual, so I did have a notion what they wanted. I wasn't flying blind. But I was flying my own course. As I say in the article: "The writer who passively accepts the dictates of the experts is unlikely to become expert himself." But of course I was dealing with an editor, and if you don't know how editors are by this time, it isn't because I haven't tried to educate you. So what do you think happened? Right: She cut that sentence. This is the original, unexpurgated version.
I mention in this article something that was fresh at the time: my correspondence with Jenny, who was in a coma at the time I first wrote to her. She was to become my leading correspondent. Indeed, keep an eye out for Letters to Jenny, from this publisher. She does illustrate my point about writing. I care about you my readers, and you care about me, and that is a precious connection. May it always be so.
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I am known as a writer of popular fantasy and science fiction, though my output is not limited to that. Thus my view is that of a genre writer who is trying to understand more general principles.
Back when I was struggling to break in to print, I took a correspondence course in writing.
The proprietors knew a great deal about writing, but little about science fiction. No matter, they said; the fundamentals of good writing apply to all genres, and they could help me.
They were half right: The fundamentals do apply, but you do have to know the genre—any genre—in order to write successfully for it. Their ignorance of science fiction made much of their material useless to me. They could not accept the notion that I, an unpublished writer, could be privy to a fundamental they weren't, and in their unconscious arrogance they failed me.
I studied my market on my own, and in the end I made it on my own. From this I derive a principle: There is virtue in being ornery. The writer who passively accepts the dictates of the experts is unlikely to become expert himself. I continue to be ornery, and continue to score in ways the critics seem unable to fathom, as the tone of this essay suggests.
A writer should study his market, and study general principles; both are essential. He should also forge his own way, contributing such limited originality as the market will tolerate. There is plenty of excellent instruction elsewhere on such things. I am concerned with a more subtle yet vital aspect of writing than most: the writer's liaison with the reader.
This can make or break a piece of writing, yet few seem to grasp its significance. This is one of my many differences with critics, so I will use them as a straw man to help make my point.
I picture a gathering of the elite of the genre, who are there to determine the critic's choice of the best works of science fiction and fantasy of all time. That is, the List that will be graven on granite for the edification of the lesser aspirants. In the genre these would be Delany's Dhalgren, Aldiss' Report on Probability A, and Hoban's Riddley Walker, and the finest writer of all time would be J. G. Ballard despite his one failure with Empire of the Sun.
Have you read any of these? Have you even heard of them? No, except that you did like the motion picture based on the last? Well, the critics have an answer for you: You are an ignorant lout whose library card and book store privileges should be suspended until your tastes improve.
Yet any ordinary person who tries to read such books will wonder just what world such critics live in. The answer is, of course, a different world. They are like the poet Shelley's Ozymandias, whose colossal ruin lies in the barren sand. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." Yet his works are completely forgotten.
I am in the world of commercial writing, which means it is readable and enjoyable, and the only accolade it is likely to receive from critics is a mock award for WHO KILLED SCIENCE
FICTION? (I was in a five-way tie for runner-up on that one last year, but there's hope for the future.)
But I maintain that the essence of literature lies in its assimilation by the ordinary folk, and that readability is the first, not the last criterion for its merit. Therefore I address the subject of writing, regardless of genre, from this perspective. What makes it readable? To hell with formal rules of writing; they are guidelines in the absence of talent, and should be honored only so long as they do not interfere. If it's clear and interesting and relates to the needs of the reader, it will score. I like to tell audiences that they may love or hate what I write, but they will be moved by it. Then I prove it. The only person to fall asleep during one of my recent readings was a senior editor. Well, there are limits, and even I can't squeeze much blood from a stone. I am successful in part because I make connections with my readers that bypass the editors as well as the critics.
How do I do it? Well, there are little tricks, and one big secret. All of them are so simple that it's a wonder they aren't practiced by every writer. But they are not, and indeed critics condemn them and editors try to excise them from my manuscripts. I have had many an internecine battle with editors, and finally left a major publisher because of this. I understand I am known as a difficult writer to work with, though no editor says it to my face. I can't imagine why!
All the tricks can be subsumed under one guideline: Think of the reader. Do it at every stage. Every paragraph, every word. If you are writing fantasy, don't use a word like
"subsumed," because the reader won't understand it. It's a lovely word, but unless your readership consists of intellectuals or folk interested in precise usage—such as those who are presumed to read a magazine like this one—forgo your private pleasure and speak more plainly. "All the tricks add up to this." I can with ease overreach the horizons of my readers, but I do my damnedest not to. Any writer who thinks he's smart when he baffles his readers, whether by using foreign phrases or obscure terminology, is the opposite.
When you have reference to a character or situation that has been absent from your recent text, refresh the matter for your reader, so that he won't have to leaf back interminably to find out what you're talking about. Don't say "The List is foolish." Huh? What list? Say "The List of the critics' top genre novels I parodied above is foolish." Editors seem to hate this; they blue-pencil it out as redundancy. But it enables the reader to check in with your concept without pausing, and that's what counts. Never let your reader stumble; lead him by the hand—and do it without patronizing him.
When you introduce a new character, don't just throw him at the reader unprepared. Have him introduced by a familiar character, if you possibly can. In my forthcoming mainstream novel Firefly I start with one character, who later meets another, and then I follow the other character. That one meets a third, and I follow the third. In the course of 150,000 words, the only character the reader meets cold is the first one. Thus the reader can proceed smoothly throughout, never tripping. It was a job to arrange some of the handoffs, but that is my job as writer: to do the busy-work for the reader. Some of the concepts in this novel are mind-stretching, but the little tricks smooth the way.
When I do a series—and I've done ten so far—I try to make each novel stand by itself, so that the reader who comes to it new does not have to struggle with an ongoing and confusing situation. Yes, this means repeating and summarizing some material, and it is a challenge to do that without boring those who have read the prior novels. But it means, for example, that a reader can start with my tenth Xanth novel and read backwards toward the first, and enjoy them all. Xanth has many readers, and this is part of the reason: it is easy to get into, and it does not demand more than the reader cares to give. Perhaps no other series shows a greater dichotomy between the contempt of critics and the devotion of readers. I do know my market, and it is not the critics. I suspect the same is true for most commercial writers.
Science fiction is fantastic stuff. Little of it is truly believable, and less is meant to be. It represents a flight of fancy for the mind, far removed from the dullness of mundane affairs.
Yet even there, human values are paramount. There needs to be respect for every situation and every character, no matter how far out. Every thing is real on its own terms, and every one is alive, even when the thing is as outrageous as a night mare who is a female horse bearing dreams and one is the Incarnation of Death itself, complete with scythe. Can a robot have feelings? Yes, and they are similar to those of a human being. For in the tacit symbolism of the genre as I practice it, a humanoid robot may be a man whose color, religion or language differs from those of the culture into which he is thrust, and his feelings are those any of us would experience if similarly thrust. The essence of the genre is human, even when it is alien.
As I write this article, I am in an ongoing situation that illustrates the way that even the most fantastic and/or humorous fiction can relate to serious life. A twelve-year-old girl walking home from school was struck by a drunk driver, and spent three months in a coma, barely responsive to any outside stimulus. At her mother's behest I wrote her a letter, for she was one of my readers. I talked about the magic land of Xanth, and the sister realm of ElfQuest by another author, and the value of children to those who love them, and I joked about the loathsome shot the nurse would give the Monster Under the Bed if she saw him. I spoke of the character with her name who would be in a future Xanth novel, an elf girl or maybe an ogre girl.
The child's mother read the letter to her, and it brought a great widening of her eyes, and her first smile since the accident. She became responsive, though able to move only her eyes, one big toe, and her fingers. She started to indicate YES or NO to verbal questions by looking to placards with those words printed on them. She made her preference emphatically clear: an elf girl, not an ogre girl!
It is my hope that she is now on the way to recovery, though there is of course a long way to go. It was fantasy that made the connection to reality, her response to my interest and my teasing. I think that fantasy needs no more justification than this. I, as writer, was able to relate to her, my reader, and she responded to me. The rest will be mostly in the province of medicine, but the human spark was vital to the turning point.
And here is the secret I am working toward: Writing and reading are one on one, writer to reader and back again, and the rest of the universe doesn't matter. The writer must know his readers, not the details of their lives, which are myriad, but their hearts and dreams. He must relate. He must care.
When I write to you, it is as if we are in a privacy booth, and we are sharing things that neither of us would confess elsewhere. We love, we hurt, we laugh, we fear, we cry, we wonder, we are embarrassed—together. We feel, linked. We share our joy and our shame, and yes I feel your tears on my face as you feel mine on yours. We may be of different sexes and other generations, or we may match—but we relate to each other more intimately than any two others, dream to dream, our emotions mixed and tangled—for that time while the book that is our connection is open. When it closes we are cut off from each other, and we are strangers again, and we regret that, but we remember our sharing, and we cherish it.
We were true friends, for a while. How precious was that while!