Writers are readers too. We read books just like you, and have the same apoplectic fits you do over novels – sometimes worse ones! We know a good book when we read one, and we absolutely cannot stand when a good book derails.
Questions Writers ask
When Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001, what struggles did he face? What parts were easy? Was he able to do it in 80 days? 50? 18?
One?
What about when Tolkien wrote? I know he wrote his books as letters he mailed to his son in the RAF. Did he sit in his study from 6 pm to 8 pm every night, with ink, quill and a candle? Was he like a modern day Scrooge, hunched over an empty desk save for a solitary piece of paper? Or was his desk littered with scraps of this and that?
I always wanted to know that kind of stuff.
Questions Readers ask
I always hated when writers would start to go one way, then suddenly go in another direction. I read a book about a man once who was smart, an exceptional military commander. The book was a champ at leading you in one direction, then flying the other way. He starts out his military career making his men crawl through jungles, not trusting intel reports. You see the other armies just walk to the destination, la de da.
There really themactically no reason to include that scene, unless the protagonist was going to learn from it. You WANTED to see them ambushed and blown away, the commander vindicated. Instead, you find a plot that… vaporizes. It promises much, fails to deliver, then vanishes like morning mist.
In a later scene a Buddhist monk tells the protagonist, “I believe you can walk on air.” The protagonist walks away, and after a minute realizes he’s stepped off a stone path.. and literally is walking on air.
And can’t do it ever again.
I felt cheated as a reader by that. What was the point of promising something unique, then…. “well, he goofed it up.”
Readers don’t want books about people that cheat themselves out of success, or screw up badly unless there’s a redemption later. We want the protagonist to succeed. If you write a novel where the protagonist manages to mess up everything life hands him, I guarantee you’re going to upset readers, because you implied a reason to care about the protagonist, then systematically removed every reason to like them without trading something in return.
What Readers and Writers Both Want
Readers and writers both want books that deliver on their promises. Did you have an interesting setup? A promise of things to come? Deliver on those.
The aforementioned novel went nowhere because it promised the man was more than the average man. It implied he could do special things. It implied he saw things others didn’t, and you were filled with intrigue.
And then none of that happened. Far better to have never written the novel than to write one that promises big payoffs, then dumps the reader into an unsatisfying conclusion that the man rejected all of that because it didn’t fit his worldview.
What bugs you as a reader?
