what you have to do is trust your own story

[musesfool]

Whenever he told the story, Rat had a tendency to stop now and then, interrupting the flow, inserting little bits of clarification or bits of analysis or personal opinion. It was a bad habit, Mitchell Sanders said, because all that matters is the raw material, the stuff itself, and you can't clutter it up with your own half-baked commentary. That

Comments

[dragovianknight]

how hard it can be sometimes to just trust the story, trust the readers to get the story.

I'm always amazed by how often in writer's groups, my sister gets comments telling her to explain explain explain. Because apparently lots of writers are mentally deficient convinced readers are mentally deficient.

[musesfool]

Well, sometimes given the feedback I've gotten, I can understand. I have gotten my share of "WTF? Are these people stupid?!" feedback - I think anyone who's been doing this a while in places where you do get reader feedback has. I've also had a lot of years of betas telling me I'm being too oblique, so I've begun to err on the other side, which is just as bad, if not worse, and now I have to cut stuff out that explains too much.

[dragovianknight]

I'm pretty sure some folks would be confuzzled by something as spelled-out as Nancy Drew.

[musesfool]

Bwah! Yes, it's true.