You Can’t Please Everybody

I think one of the biggest mistakes that a writer can make is trying to please everybody. This is especially true for genres like humour, fantasy, or science fiction where people can have very different ideas about what is good as well as very different ideas about what is or is not part of the genre. The important thing is to realise who you’re writing for and to write accordingly.

Take hard science fiction. Not everybody enjoys the attention to detail and realism present in most hard science f...