What Readers Read Into Work Isn’t Your Worry
What Readers Read Into Work Isn’t Your Worry
Write well and don’t fret over it
The Story Writer’s Path
Write well and don’t fret over it
I serve on the board of a non-profit group and recently I sent out an email asking board members to review an attached itemized list for an upcoming meeting. The list covered items of discussion from a board retreat.
One of the board members sent back an attachment with several pages of notes from the retreat, which she’d written up in great detail. Because, she said in her email, I’d requested that each board member do that.
It was lovely that she’d sent the write-up of the notes, but I’d not requested it. I’d simply asked the board to look at the list I’d sent.
What readers read into your work will vary wildly
But this incident made me realize that I can’t control the words I sent out into the world. I can work to be as clear as possible in my writing to avoid misunderstandings. But I cannot predict how those words will be received. I can’t guarantee that readers will get what I think they should.
And the same is true in the world of story. Like listeners misconstruing song lyrics, readers are going to form their own ideas about your story. Our brains are marvelous machines that form images and create ideas as we read. But sometimes the ideas and images we get are not exactly what the author intended.
This is why readers are sometimes disappointed when a favorite novel of theirs is turned into a movie. Because, things don’t look the same. Instead, things look the way the director of the movie envisioned them. And that may be light years away from what the reader thought.
You’re a Writer, You Must Read
Use these suggestions for reading in 2020writingcooperative.com
Some examples that come to mind:
Description
You have a very specific idea of your character’s appearance. You’ve made a pinterest board of an actress she resembles, designed a wardrobe for her. Maybe you even have images on a vision board in your office. You’ve used these visual references to write a description that lifts the character off the page.
She’s got blonde hair, blue eyes, a long, thin, nose, and a small chin, with two pronounced dimples. But your reader forms a different idea — he’s convinced your character has dark hair and brown eyes with a short, stubby nose.
Why does this happen, you lament, after said reader has mentioned this to you, perhaps via email, or after a reading, or even in an online review.
I’ll tell you why.
Just because. Because it does. And it will. No matter what you do.
And so too with anything you describe in a story. You write about the large Victorian your characters live in. Your readers see it as a mid-century modern rancher. Maybe that’s an extreme example, but things like this happen all the time.
Because: Writers gonna write. Readers gonna read.
And sometimes the opposite happens
Years ago, I read an article by author Jean Auel. She wrote about how often she heard from readers about aspects of theme in her novels. And sometimes, often even, she was amused because she’d had not thoughts about those themes whatsoever! But the reader had read lofty ideas into her story.
Again, let me repeat: because that’s what happens.
And it’s a good thing. In the case of Jean Auel, readers were attributing all kinds of meaningful themes to her work. And it held great meaning to them. That’s the key concept here. Readers will find meaning in your work and it doesn’t matter if you initially intended it that way or not.
However, sometimes you may have a message you want to convey and it’s important to you to get it across. And sometimes, in the case of cultural differences, misunderstanding can be serious.
Practicing Gratitude Benefits Story Writing
But not in the way you thinkwritingcooperative.com
If so, try a couple of the following suggestions.
How to prevent reader misunderstanding
Write with as much clarity as possible. This will serve all your readers, from the agent to whom you submit, the editor who buys the book, and ultimately your readers. It will also help, of course, in other workplace and interpersonal communication.
One way to help you achieve clarity: remove qualifier words that add nothing but could skew a reader in a different direction. Words like somewhat, seems, apparently, and so on weaken your prose. Sometimes (qualifier) you want that, but usually (another qualifier) you don’t.
Reread your work. This is easy to do with an email, but will take considerably longer in story writing. Yet, it is also necessary to do with longer works. Nothing beats reading a scene out loud to hear places that don’t quite work.
Consider hiring a sensitivity reader. If you are writing about a specific culture or race that may not be your own, it will behoove you to find an expert to give your manuscript a read. And please note: this is a loaded topic at the moment, and this article is not meant to fully address it. This will be an ongoing conversation for years to come.
Let it go. There’s nothing you can do about it after you’ve expressed your best and clearest thoughts on the page.
Understand the magic. Which is this: you sit in a room somewhere, making marks on a page. A reader sits in another room, maybe thousands of miles away, reading those marks. And she forms pictures in her head that you’ve created. So it doesn’t matter if the pictures are exactly the same. What matters is that she’s reading, and forming pictures, and enjoying the experience.
Because that is the magic of writing. And you’ve created it!