Why Your Readers Don't Get Your Story -- A Blog About Trust · 12:30am May 21st, 2016
Trust me on this.
(Teee hee hee.)
So before we even start, I need to show you a picture. This is a blog about trusting the writer when reading, and why that’s not the reader’s responsibility (OR IS IT? Nah, it’s not). So look at the picture first, and think about it.
Context: fanart by SuperScratchKat, who apparently loves the Lyra I write in fics like Long Story Short, Things Went Down continuity. I always find his fanart to be incredibly fitting to the stories themselves, as they're about the characters being horrible. So he draws them like this, like actual monsters. It's an actually accurate visual representation of the character's personality, which I think it's neat. It's also something he did for free, which is, like, the best.
Done? Good. Now, let’s talk about why people don’t get your story, which is something I've never actually suffered that much -- remember: I write silly comedies -- but that I've seen a thousand times. And, as a reader, I've experienced this, which is even more important.
That's right, this is advice to writers that can (and should) be given only by the readers. Fucking heresy, I know, but bear with me.
One of the worst things a writer can experience, I believe, is readers missing the point of their story. And the reason for this is – how do you react? On the one hand, people are reading you. That’s awesome. You love that. All writers are divas, and this is, like, free attention you're getting. How great is that? You can bask in your own glory now.
But on the other hand? They’re not understanding it. They think that your gimmicks are mistakes, that your narration is faulty, that the clever foreshadowing is a continuity error and I swear to fucking God, if that guy accuses me of being sexist one more time for having Luna say that EXPLICITELY WRONG LINE THAT IS TAKEN AS EVIL IN-UNIVERSE I’m going to kill somebody.
It’s called SUBTLETY, you – amazing – readers of mine. SUBTLETY. I KNOW IT’S WRONG, I’M THE GUY WHO WROTE IT. AAAAAAARGH.
AAAAAAAAAARGH.
Christ. This sucks so much. OH, WHAT SHALL WE DO? HOW CAN WE SOLVE THIS HORRIBLE PROBLEM?
Worry not, for I have the solution:
You can’t solve it.
Well, that was fucking easy. Here, this is Present Perfect’s reaction to my RCL interview, which y’all should go and read now. Apparently, 3,000 words of me talking are a lot. I’ve written comments longer than that, but then again, I’m apparently infamous for rambling in some circles. Bah. BAH.
Naaaaaah I'm kidding you. You sorta can solve it Hooray!
Subtlety is a really hard thing to master – some smarter folks have talked about this before, and in fact you'll find me in the comments – and getting it right is an art on its own. I'm talking about a particular kind of subtlety here: the kind of gimmick, of tool, that relies on fooling the reader. Stuff like unreliable narrators, twists, meta-narrative, intentionaly breaking the rules of storytelling... All that stuff. You know what I'm talking about. Smart stuff.
Here's the tragedy: even if the subtle elements – the things that demand attention from the reader, the things that some identify as mistakes but actually aren’t, the things that they don’t get – are done perfectly right, some readers won’t understand them. Shit, if you’re not lucky, most readers won’t get it. The smarter your fic, the more chances this will happen, if you like to be underhanded.
Does this mean that the readers are dumb? Hahah, no. They’re smarter than you. They’re always smarter than you. Unless you’re, like, scary smart, like Ghost of Heraclitus or Bad Horse. Then they’re probably dumber. But you’re not any of those guys, so they’re out to get you, dude.
Wait. You gotta look at another picture, now.
More fanart from Superscratchkat, as you can see. This is actually for A Train, on Fire, Full of Orphans. Again, this is a surprisingly accurate representation of the characters. I don’t seem to write good people that often, do I?
Looked? Good.
See, the thing is, it's not that they don't get it, it's that they don't even consider the idea that there's something to get. They could get it if they wanted, but they don't -- because plain simple, they don’t trust you.
That’s a harsh truth that everybody has to learn: the readers' default mode is assuming that anything that doesn't follow the norm is a mistake. Because, in the end, that’s what subtlety is, is it not? It’s about doing something that feels wrong, or incomplete, and strange – and then revealing what is really going on.
This is easier to explain with an example. Ahem:
Imagine that one of your characters has bad memory. That is a plot point in a later part of your story – the great reveal in the last chapter is how Rainbow Dash was MISREMEMBERING the whole affair! Twilight never said that she was a dinosaur in disguise. Dash just assumed it, and then she was fooled by her own bad memory!
Mind blown, right? Only no, it’s not. ‘Cause one person noticed this particular bit of foreshadowing, and they didn’t go “oh, hey, Dash is misremembering this – that’s going to come back to bite her in the butt!” They rather go “man, this author can’t get their goddamn story straight.”
That is unfair, to a point. (Oh, by the way, read the interview and leave me sweet comments; I spent seven hundred words explaining in HIGH DETAIL just how much I fucking love the color pink.) You’re busting your ass off, and the UNGRATEFUL readers aren’t giving you a chance to prove yourself worthy!
Sucks, I know. But readers aren’t at fault here. Everybody does this.
In the end, this is about trust. It’s a real shocker, I know – it’s not like I told you from the very beginning. But it is! Have a comic this time.
Long picture, so click on the thing! This is actually based on a blog post that I wrote, where I experimented with slapstick via two characters fighting comically, and apparently some random people liked it, or whatever. This is not a scene of the blog itself, it’s sort of an interpretation of it or something. Art!
You need to earn that trust to use this particular brand of subtlety that involves faking a mistake. To play with the conventions of the narrative genre, the readers need to assume that you know what you’re doing…
…But to do that, they need to know you first.
That’s why people like, say, Stephen King can get away with doing weird stuff. Because people assume that Stephen King know what he’s doing. He could publish a book with just the word “FLABBERGASTED” repeated again and again for the first hundred pages, and people would still read it, and they’d imagine that this all happens for a reason.
And really, it’s perfectly normal that readers do that. We’re all readers, a lot of us are writers, and there’s simply too much stuff out there to read it all and give everybody a fair chance. Go read this stupid interview already Christ almighty why aren't you there already GOSH.
So you read a couple words, and judge by what you see. There might be exceptions – if somebody recommends you a story, for example. Or if you already know the writer. But then, as a reader, you’re trusting the writer already, so this is cheating! You’re assuming that there might be more to the story than what you’re seeing, because the story was recommended. There are expectations behind this, and so you give the fic the benefit of the doubt.
If you go in blind, though? You assume the worst. This is a filtering mechanism, a self-defense sorta deal, if you want to call it that.
And there’s just no way around it, because it’s a necessity if you want to navigate the world of reading literally anything that exists. Readers need a way to take the bad stuff from the good stuff, and that is assuming that anything that doesn't look perfect is, in fact, not perfect. If it's white and in a bottle, you call it milk -- and if you're trying to subvert the whole thing by actually having weirdly colored Cola inside that bottle? Tough luck. They're all gonna call it milk.
So then, what? Do you need to assume that only your previous readers will like your stuff?
Well. Yes. And, also, no.
It’s one of the ways to get around this, of course. If you have fans, then by definition they trust you – or they like your stuff enough to forgive any “mistake”, and then find out what was going on. But this sounds hard to achieve, and kind of frustrating, I suppose.
Another to avoid people not trusting your writing is proving them immediately, via quality writing, that you can be trusted. I know, one can call bullshit on this ("Oh, hey, what if you just write like a genius?" Great advice, jackass!) but that’s what writing is all about. If you’re good enough, you can get out with pretty much anything.
Borges could have started his writing career with The Twilight Saga and I would defend it as a masterpiece, because it would have a deeper meaning. Pratchett could have written Digital Fortress and I wouldn’t even insult him for getting Spain so damn wrong. Read my fucking interview.
I ran out of stuff to link here and there are a lot of words with no pictures. So, uh. This.
So, if your writing shines by itself, most people will assume that you know what you’re doing – but not all. Even being a genius, even like this? Some readers will assume you’re an idiot.
Hey, but what if you hide the foreshadowing a little better, so nobody notices? That’s another option. Use the story itself to cover it up – make the foreshadowing a joke, make it weird, do it in a way that it flies under the radar but it’s still in the reader’s memory.
Of course, that’s hard as balls. But, hey. Writing! Art! Welcome to the world of posting stories on the Internet!
Ruthless, man. They’re all ruthless.
But in the end, I believe that this is just another way to grow. I go the easy route – I write straightforward stuff, and so, I worry not about subtlety. You clever writers have it worse, but when you make it? I assure you: it’ll be great. That’s life, all in all – nobody expects anything from you unless you start with an advantage, and it’s your job to prove them wrong. But fuck it, darling, ‘cause you can do it.
Maybe that’s the silver lining in this entire thing? Really, everybody can do this. It might take a little bit of effort, but it’s always worth it. And while earning somebody’s trust through the internet might sound impossible, you’d be surprised!
It’s easier than you think it is. It’s perfectly possible. They don’t trust you yet, but they will.
And I know this by experience. After all, by now at least two entire people have read this entire fucking thing, and, while (in my opinion) true, the whole blog was just an excuse to brag about fanart and my interview. Read the fucking interview. GO READ IT.
I'm reminded of a fic I wrote once, long ago, that had a plot twist toward the end of shyamalan proportions (this of course predating his discovery of the plot twist by some years): The character narrating the story knows things that she shouldn't have been able to know, and when this is pointed out to her, she realises that she's been living the life of her dead twin sister. Smashing stuff.
I released it unto the world and was overjoyed at its reception by the masses, until someone piped up and said "Why did you do that at the end just to cover up a plot hole?"
To say I was annoyed would be an understatement.
I suppose this proves your point.
This is something I struggle with. I love being subtle about anything that's not suppose to be audacious and I suck at it. I fully know it's my own issue it's just that... Well, yeah, I suck at it. BUT THAT'S NOT EXCUSE NOT TO STAND UP, TRY AGAIN, AND WORK ON IT- Something I always told my friend, repeatedly, is that if you have to explain to the readers what you're doing, then you might as well rewrite your story.
Which is kinda why I'm rewriting the Changeling Doll, because I completely and totally butchered it into a confusing pile of shit.Lord I wish I could casually crack funnies at the rate you do. I'M NOT JEALOUS, YOU'RE NOT SEMPAI. STUPID SEXY NOT SEMPAI-Basically, I agree.
Gosh, Aggles, I trusted you not to shill your interview every other paragraph yet look where we are :(
(Okay but the screencap made me laugh.)
I worry about this all the time. I'm getting to a point where I'm wanting to pull the wool over my readers' eyes more often than not, writing AUs and things that go purposefully against canon for dramatic effect. And I basically just count on people to already know I'm a good writer, and trust that I know what I'm doing. <.< Which isn't the best way to go about things, but I'm lazy as hell.
Still, you're right about using good writing to make writers trust you. I've even said outright, in numerous reviews, "If anyone else had done this, I would have quit immediately, but this is (and let's be honest, it's almost always Pascoite), and I trust him." When I'm reading a random fuck story by DingleBrony69, I don't trust him. I have no reason to. But if the intro to the weird shit is stable and interesting, I'll be willing to throw him a bone until the end, to see if Twilight Sparkle was feigning ignorance the whole time instead of just being that dumb. And if his writing is utter shit, I'm going to assume he has no idea what he's doing and DNF. :B And that's the world we live in.
Huh, I in no way ever have this problem. Nope. Totally not. Super long 3-10k word opinion posts and rants? Nah~
But hey, if I was such a person, I'd probably be in the opinion of "it's my time and my words and I'll post opinionated novels if I feel like it!" though. But I totally don't have that problem, so, like, yeah... totally can't conceivably relate to such things.
Eh, humor is like a penis. Not all fit all people and either leave them unsatisfied or hurt them in all the right ways. For everything else there's pre-readers, the often overused flappy bits that queef out sounds that may sound similar to that of a chuckle or your story gave them aids. Either way, even the best jokes fall limp in the driest of assholes. Or something I guess, you can't please everyone but you can at least check your shit to avoid spoiling a story like a bad rash.
Well, that's enough forced genitalia analogies from me. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on a lot of what I've missed over the months. Until then though, queef on, Arogon. Queef on.
Dat fucking Pinkie Pie though, UNF!
Yeah, so real replies tomorrow, but till then:
3959940
Okay, I gotta admit it: that's a new one.
3959949
Wh--unf?
Oh God.
Oh God this picture is not porn, is it.
IS IT.
I remembered part of a blog post where you mentioned how you had done something subtle, and I was going to call you out for lying, but then I remembered the subtle thing was the Spike doing something and the Mane Six caring more about that something than saving the world fic that you never actual wrote, so I don't actually have basis to call you out on being not-subtle.
So.... you want us to read the interview?
Just kidding! I did! And I'll even believe that thing you wrote about being a very handsome man (because in the mirror, we're all awesome).
Good advice all around. Stuff like this really should be posted around the internet more often, if only to show people how to do it right.
This all sounds really familiar. It's true, but I feel like I've seen it before. Maybe in that other blogpost you said you're in the comments of.
Yeah, this is a major issue when reading stories on the Internet. You described it pretty much perfectly, especially the catch-22 of trust only coming with a reputation for competency... which has to be earned by getting people to trust your writing. The worst part is that there's no guarantee which story someone will look at first, so it's not like you can say to start basic and branch out into more clever and artsy stuff later on. Because of how Fimfiction works, that later stuff will be what new readers will see first!
Speaking personally, the worst part is when I write something I'm not sure I understand. Especially ethical questions involving stable time loops.
Oh, and I'll read the interview in the morning. For now, I'm headed to bed. Thanks for the excellent rundown on this subject.
3960006
The focus on Pinkie's hindquarters in the left part of the image makes it potentially perceivable as porn by those who want to view it as such. Of course, the same could be said of some still frames of the show, so you're in the clear.
ECH JESUS ILL READ THE INTERVIEW JUST PLEASE KEEP YOUR DEEP LAYERS OF INTENSE SUBTLETY AWAY FROM ME AND MY FAMILY
(oh nooooo you ran out of fanart to link who here could possibly dooooooo something about thaaaaaaaaaaaaat)
(guess i better get to woooooooooooooooooooooork)
thanks for bragging about me dawg ;)Oh, it goes much deeper than that. There's a cognitive bias called Fundamental Attribution Error, which states that unless a person has specific reason to think otherwise, they will always judge another person's actions / successes / failures in all walks of life as being a reflection of their personality rather than their circumstances. That guy's not got a very good job? He's obviosuly just lazy, and had every chance everyone else had, and just didn't bother to try. That other guy over there just punched a guy apparently for no reason? He's a thug and an unstable idiot; it could never be you just don't know what happened between the two of them.
Just little automatic judgements, all the time. It's terrifying how ubiquitous they are once you start looking for them. Even the thing you're talking about here is part of it - I don't understand this story? Well, the writer's a moron.
3960006 Everything's a kink to somebody.
OK OK, I READ IT, GEES!!
You're a self centered pink gender confused (you did refeer to yourself as a man and a woman more than once in it) bastard, that's what you are.
But yeah, the blog is rather accurate, I'd say. Something to keep in mind when/if I actually come to write something here.
Loved Flip a Coin and She Smiles, btw. One of my favorites.
Rather than go to all this trouble, it's easier to just assume nobody other than you will actually like your stories. Then when you see that three guys actually do love it, you feel much better about yourself.
So, in short, we should assume that our readers are morons, and we should hold their hand through anything, unless of course we've written something that would bore all but the most intelligent readers.
Not really, but something like that.
But in reality, there are only two situations in which I found that things like plot twists and foreshadowing work. One is in a one-shot story. It's short enough that the readers suspect that the whole thing was planned at once and that everything was intended to be there. The other situation is in a story that is long enough to get the reader love it before anything subtle is introduced.
Other than that, most readers will completely miss everything and then get confused when reveals and resolutions start making sense of the story.
Sad, but true.
3959917
>"Why did you do that at the end just to cover up a plot hole?"
That hurts my soul... I feel for you bro.
I feel like I shouldn't read your interview
I'm not sure why
3959917
This made me actively angry by proxy, man. Holy shit. This is the worst reaction to an ending I've ever seen.
3960086
Oh, I write subtle shit in my stories, but the stories themselves are straightforward. Smile for the children, Rarity is a critique to the idea that children should be treated like saints and never held responsible for their acts, and A Gay Old Time is a melancholic exploration on a generation that was never allowed to have a childhood (the CMC), and their inability to pick up the torch and continue life like the adults that came before them.
But if you read the stories? They're just comedies, and rather crass, to boot. So if you don't get it, it doesn't matter -- plot is so straightforward that you don't see anything weird going on... And so, if you notice it, you don't think it's wrong. Call it straightforward subtle, call it me adding themes to my stories in such a way that nobody fucking picks them up.
Any way -- yeah, I write subtle sometimes, but the story itself is always super simple, and so no readers think I'm an idiot... most of the time. There's a scene in Gay Old Time that's purposedly written confusedly to reflect the mood. People think I just don't know how to write. Hate the sin, love the sinner, I s'ppose.
3961554
Funnily enough, I joke so much about me being "a pretty princess" and "a strong woman who needs no man" that I made sure to start the interview by stating that I am actually a man because otherwise people might get confused. So, funny how you picked it up anyway!
3960223
Tell me 'bout it. I wrote a story talking about divinity, and what it means to be a god. Never a-fucking-gain.
3963732
I know right? It's one thing to not get a subtle implication, but to not realise that the twist is actually a twist takes a special mind.
3962186
I thought I was the only person who read like that!
Edit: And now you're telling me that A Gay Old Time was meant to be more than an epic comedy? My world is a lie.
3960222
Fuck, I forgot to reply to this.
Anyway: yeah, the main core of this blog was written as a comment on Bad Horse's blog. However, I felt that it was something big enough to deserve its own blog, so I put it in here and developed the idea a little more.
I also couldn't resist the meta joke of talking about trust and subtlety and betraying both of those ideas at the same time, with the whole interview gag. THE BLOG WORKS ON MANY LEVELS.
3963789
When it comes to the melancholy, many characters state (in a really jokey way) that they're fucked up in the head. Twist is the most blatant one, but Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are another great example. As per the generational thingie, Pinkie has a speech near the end of that story where she implies that calling her for help is cheating, in a meta sense -- she's almost a Deux ex Machina, providing the solution to the entire mess, because she thinks the way a protagonist should think.
Only Pumpkin Cake seems to pick up on this, as by the very end of the story she thinks like Pinkie, and so she manages to one-up Filthy Rich (correctly predicting what he was going to do). But even then, she doesn't manage to win completely, so she's not ready to be a protagonist.
It's really meta, I guess, but the theme is pretty much stated word by word by Pinkie and Twist. Also, the literal structure of the story reflects this, as the climax comes in the second-to-last chapter, because the main characters fucked up, and so by the end of the fic they are forced to look for the paramedics again.
In other words: structure-wise, the ending comes too soon, because the main characters aren't ready to be main characters. They are not mature enough, and so, the climax of the story came one chapter too early.
Climax. Came early.
The story itself is a metajoke on premature ejaculation.
And here, I drop the mic.