Writers: Respect your reader’s mind.
Who are the readers you want to reach? Who are the people likely to want to read your work? These are two very different categories—and hopefully there is some overlap, which is your real market potential – especially if they are likely to pay to read your writing.
Once you have identified that group, assess what style is likely to be interesting and accessible to them – yet one which is appropriate to your material and how you want it to impact your readers.
What is the tone of voice they will respond to? You probably don’t want to joke about crazy people when your readers are therapists. Nor do you want to write long sentences with unusual vocabulary for a more general audience with a high school education. Nor use double entendres with a conservative group.
You want to reach your readers within the capacities and expectations they bring to your writing. You have to have their attention before you can lead them on the journey you are offering.
Be aware of how readers read. Every piece of information you give them they will use to create a mental map of your terrain.
You can start throwing random bits of information onto their blank map. For a while they will hold that info, but if it has no relative location within the map they are building, it will sooner or later be inaccessible to them as they look back on the journey. (“So why did the author tell me the professor always wore blue underwear, if he’s never undressing?) Information becomes mindclutter if it is not relevant, and sooner or later, every coherent reader will clean house and dump the trash. In the culture we’re required to function in, where information is dumped on us uninvited all the time (pop-up screens, billboards, TV ads for things that hold no interest for us), our minds must screen out what is irrelevant to us, if we’re to survive.
Before a reader even starts the journey you are offering, their mapping minds are already clogged. We all have constant internal chatter that we hardly ever notice unless we’re on a meditation retreat and instructed to notice and label the category of each thought and emotion (which all come attached to stories): planning (what will they serve for dinner? how soon? did I bring power bars?), anger (she locked me out of the house! he used my toothbrush), longing (he didn’t care about my new hairdo), judgment (my hairdresser really botched it. That guy is so restless I can’t concentrate), grief (we all carry a lot of grief, only we don’t notice until some of the other internal stories subside).
Internal chatter also includes survival instructions and self-evaluation (fairly constant, and learned first from parents, then from peers and the media: don’t forget to turn off the lights, your nose is too long, how can I compete with Angelina). This is the inner critic – which will find a way to jump on us if we’re not taking it’s bait.
And we’re preoccupied with the worry that comes with the news, our finances and possessions, the desolation being inflicted on the environment, and obligations to friends and family.
In response to all that readers are processing, you may have noticed our cultural movement toward brevity of written communication (texts and twitter) and the simplifying of language (with a loss of description of atmosphere and intricacy, in both construction and vocabulary – not that I’m bemoaning the loss of the stately pace and self-insertion of early 20th century writers like Somerset Maugham). Part of that is the evolution of conventions in language – and perhaps writers’ diminishing trust in readers’ intelligence.
That readers map all the information you give them is why mystery writing works – readers are grappling with every clue. And every book should have some mystery, otherwise readers will get the point early on and quit reading.
Until next time, delight in the process.
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