Writing: Reader Investment (Part Whatever)
Yeah, I know this subject has come up before, but (at least for me) in a slightly different form. Maybe it’s just tedious for others, which is why I will cut after this sentence, but I at least find I need to look at certain topics from as many angles as I can to try to comprehend them-and then maybe use whatever it is I think I’ve learned.
I’ve been talking through e-mail with two writers, one male and one female, about reader engagement. Both of these writers are very fine prose stylists, and they know how to plot, so the focus of the discussion has been scene arcs, specifically getting readers in and keeping them in.
The most obvious answer of course is to say there has to be something at stake, but sometimes that is just so broad it’s not helpful, especially when the world is so different the writer then feels the obligation to paint in masses of backstory first so that the reader can even comprehend how ‘stakes’ here are defined. There is also the possibility that the world and characters are so fascinating to the writer that every tiny observation zings with vast magnetic charge…unaware that the new reader has to, in effect, be convinced to pick up the magnet in the first place.
Emotional engagement is another term often used, but the problem here is that (I’ve really become hyper-aware of this while watching hours and hours of my media tie-in show) it is too easy to introduce false drama, just to get a cascade of violent emotional or physical reaction. The worst of these are over a simple miscommunication that would take anyone five seconds to correct, but the characters are firmly steered away from common sense and in effect the flow of the story comes to a dead halt while they rant and storm at each other, maybe even stomp off and Do Things, leaving the reader with the sense that the story is going to spin its wheels in this same place, not resolving the obvious until the end of the show. The second worst is someone taking affront at a point that has actually already been thrashed out, just so we get another dramatic scene-and again the story is really on hold until they redefine the point yet again. Akin (at least in my mind) to the looooong monster fight that puts the story on hold until they hack the monster to cutties (like there was a question) or the loooooong sex scene that contributes nothing to the story. Both these are dramatic empty calories, storywise.
I sat here pondering openings of old favorites, or books that I think are favorites Out There even if they aren’t necessarily mine, and came to a tentative conclusion: that beginnings with the protagonist in a neutral place, observing (no matter how engagingly and sensorily vivid) but not really affected are far harder to pull off. They are rare. Much more common is the protagonist beginning in a negative space. I don’t mean the sentimental or melodramatic one that we see over and over (the eval villain sacrificing everybody in the hapless protag’s village, leaving the P to pick up the Sword of Destiny and swear vengeance). It can be subtle. Like the opening of P&P. It is a very funny scene, yet it is subtly negative in that the daughters are established as unmarried and therefore in want of husbands. Dune hits young and old with its negative space: a child facing a horrific test that alone will decide whether or not he has a future. What young person hasn’t felt in that “Oh shit” position through academic pressures or whatever? Middlemarch begins in a gently negative space as one sister is being pushed toward a suitor she doesn’t want but her sister seems to fancy, while the one she does want no one favors. Ender’s Game again strikes into childhood fears with the school bully encounter, and then being yanked away from home and put in a lethal living wargame situation…an otherwise kewl situation for young readers especially (live in a real video game? How cool is that?) but Ender is kept too off-balance to become complacent.
In art there used to be a claim that symmetry was dull, that interest was created by kinetic energy-drawing the eye not just to figures or things in motion, but in such a way that the eye projects into the future of that motion. I don’t know if that’s still taught, but what do you think of this observation? That there’s a truth here for writers: no matter how cerebrally engaged with are with the details of our world, our characters, if we begin them in a neutral place, observing and not reacting-that is, not required to react, we have a tougher time drawing the reader in beside us. The symmetry of their life must be askew, kinetic, even if it begins with just a toppling dish.
I’ve been talking through e-mail with two writers, one male and one female, about reader engagement. Both of these writers are very fine prose stylists, and they know how to plot, so the focus of the discussion has been scene arcs, specifically getting readers in and keeping them in.
The most obvious answer of course is to say there has to be something at stake, but sometimes that is just so broad it’s not helpful, especially when the world is so different the writer then feels the obligation to paint in masses of backstory first so that the reader can even comprehend how ‘stakes’ here are defined. There is also the possibility that the world and characters are so fascinating to the writer that every tiny observation zings with vast magnetic charge…unaware that the new reader has to, in effect, be convinced to pick up the magnet in the first place.
Emotional engagement is another term often used, but the problem here is that (I’ve really become hyper-aware of this while watching hours and hours of my media tie-in show) it is too easy to introduce false drama, just to get a cascade of violent emotional or physical reaction. The worst of these are over a simple miscommunication that would take anyone five seconds to correct, but the characters are firmly steered away from common sense and in effect the flow of the story comes to a dead halt while they rant and storm at each other, maybe even stomp off and Do Things, leaving the reader with the sense that the story is going to spin its wheels in this same place, not resolving the obvious until the end of the show. The second worst is someone taking affront at a point that has actually already been thrashed out, just so we get another dramatic scene-and again the story is really on hold until they redefine the point yet again. Akin (at least in my mind) to the looooong monster fight that puts the story on hold until they hack the monster to cutties (like there was a question) or the loooooong sex scene that contributes nothing to the story. Both these are dramatic empty calories, storywise.
I sat here pondering openings of old favorites, or books that I think are favorites Out There even if they aren’t necessarily mine, and came to a tentative conclusion: that beginnings with the protagonist in a neutral place, observing (no matter how engagingly and sensorily vivid) but not really affected are far harder to pull off. They are rare. Much more common is the protagonist beginning in a negative space. I don’t mean the sentimental or melodramatic one that we see over and over (the eval villain sacrificing everybody in the hapless protag’s village, leaving the P to pick up the Sword of Destiny and swear vengeance). It can be subtle. Like the opening of P&P. It is a very funny scene, yet it is subtly negative in that the daughters are established as unmarried and therefore in want of husbands. Dune hits young and old with its negative space: a child facing a horrific test that alone will decide whether or not he has a future. What young person hasn’t felt in that “Oh shit” position through academic pressures or whatever? Middlemarch begins in a gently negative space as one sister is being pushed toward a suitor she doesn’t want but her sister seems to fancy, while the one she does want no one favors. Ender’s Game again strikes into childhood fears with the school bully encounter, and then being yanked away from home and put in a lethal living wargame situation…an otherwise kewl situation for young readers especially (live in a real video game? How cool is that?) but Ender is kept too off-balance to become complacent.
In art there used to be a claim that symmetry was dull, that interest was created by kinetic energy-drawing the eye not just to figures or things in motion, but in such a way that the eye projects into the future of that motion. I don’t know if that’s still taught, but what do you think of this observation? That there’s a truth here for writers: no matter how cerebrally engaged with are with the details of our world, our characters, if we begin them in a neutral place, observing and not reacting-that is, not required to react, we have a tougher time drawing the reader in beside us. The symmetry of their life must be askew, kinetic, even if it begins with just a toppling dish.