Your Readers Aren’t Idiots

Don't spoon feed them every little detail

I have had a bit of a revelation whilst re-writing my new serial story At the Edge of Dreams. Maybe not a full blown revelation, more a realization that even I do not always listen to what I say in my creative writing classes.

But before I reveal what it is, a little bit about the writing process of At the Edge of Dreams.

The Prologue was originally a stand-alone short story. I liked the idea of exploring the boundary between dreams and reality and it fitted well with my preternatural themes. The follow-on story expanded to become a book. My (then) publisher accepted it but asked if I could add a bit more romance. Halfway through the rewrite, I decided that it was not working and shelved the project.

Sometime later, I decided to self-publish it with the very obscure title, The Iron Tongue of Midnight. In case you are wondering it is a quote from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There was some logic in this as I am a big fan of the play and it inspired some of the scenes in the book.

First lesson: The title of your book and the cover image need to grab the reader and at least give them a clue as to the story. No amount of tag lines or advertising will overcome a poor title and a mysterious image.

The Iron Tongue of Midnight achieved sales of **** all.

My original intention in re-releasing the story as At the Edge of Dreams was to do a quick re-write and publish it as a serial. Bad idea.

Lesson number two: The structure of a serial is different from that of a book. Each chapter in a book needs to end with a question or a minor cliffhanger. All we need to do is inspire the reader to turn the page and keep reading. A serial episode needs to end with an unanswered question that will make the reader seek out the next instalment when it is published.

The original manuscript was disassembled, stripped down ready to be re-worked. A bit like taking a Peugeot 108 and converting it into a rally car; add more power, dump excess weight and the whole thing made more exciting or in the case of At the Edge of Dreams, darker, which brings me to lesson number three and the minor revelation.

Lesson number three. Exposition, scene setting, should be kept to a minimum. This is something I hear myself say a lot but, after condensing three whole chapters of back story and scene setting down to a few small nuggets, it is evident I do not listen to my own advice.

Now the interesting bit.

John A. Brown

wrote one of his detailed and insightful comments on both the Prologue and Episode 1 of At the Edge of Dreams. In these it was evident that he had picked up a lot of the back story and exposition from the story itself and the small nuggets I had left in.

The second point he made was that he asked the question, ‘Why is Kate hiding out in this remote cottage? This was something that I had spent several pages explaining in the original manuscript but, leaving it out has turned it into an intriguing question. I will drop the answer into a later episode.

All of these points raise the question, did I need to write all that back story and exposition in the first place? The answer is yes. Writing a detailed back story for your main characters gives you, the writer, a unique sense of how a character will react to any situation you throw at them. Writing a detailed description of locations is like posting a map and photographs of the places you are writing about on your wall. You can refer to them at any time as your character moves about the setting.

These drafts are very helpful, especially when writing a longer serial, a series of stories featuring the same characters or a book. They are handy references which help you maintain continuity through the story (More on Maintaining Continuity In Your Writing).

What you do not need to do is publish them.

Your readers are not idiots. They are reading your work and creating their own images of your characters and sense of place. Imagine walking into a party and spending the first ten to fifteen minutes looking around the room observing every detail. Then the first person you meet spends an hour telling you their life history (OK, yes, we have all encountered that person) but it is not generally how we learn about people.

When we enter a room we scan it. Our brains take in a few key features and form an impression of the space. When we talk to people we begin to acquire information about them in dribs and drabs. We are continually analyzing their responses, their body language and mannerisms to slowly form an impression of them in our mind. A writer needs to mimic this process, albeit in an accelerated form in a short story, to create believable characters in the reader’s mind.

This is why so much is written about showing not telling in writing. We might not all have the abilities of Sherlock Holmes but we deduce a lot of our impression of someone from what they do and how they speak, what they show us, rather than what they tell us.

Next time you meet your reader don’t treat them like an idiot and hand them a four-page dossier on your character and a handy twenty-page guide to the settings in your story. Paint a loose picture and let them explore for themselves.

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You’ll find links to all of my serial stories here