The Author-Reader Relationship
Writing for publication is both an intensely personal and shockingly public act. Writers who put their work into the public realm know people will read it and respond to it. This is, of course, why we put it out there. If writers truly didn’t care about readers, we would put our stories under our pillows and forget about them.
But that isn’t what publishing is about. Publishing is an act of connection. It is an intimate, emotional tie between writer and reader. I create the characters but they don’t truly live until you read them. Your experience of them is its own act of creation. You connect emotionally, bringing your own experiences, hopes, dreams, and fears to the table, and the characters that emerge are changed BY YOU. You are the only one who knows what you have experienced, and how the characters took shape in your mind.
If I have done my job as a writer, I have created a hardy, but ultimately incomplete framework–an emotional canvas that is 90% filled in. I can’t fill in 100%; partly because I work in language not cloning, and partly because I don’t want to. I want you to create the last 10%. I want my characters to spring to life, new and fresh, each time they are experienced by a reader.
For that 90%, my goal is to draw a sustainable, reliable picture that is internally consistent, honest, believable, and real. If I don’t give readers enough, they can’t finish the picture. Actions become unpredictable and therefore unsatisfying. Emotional journeys become opaque. The connection cannot be made. On the other hand, if I give readers too much, the work is boring. Your emotional connection stems from the piece of my characters that you inhabit. If I fill them up all the way, there’s no room for you. But I have to give you the springboard so you can jump, effortlessly, into their skin.
When I get a review of one of my books, my first thought is, OF COURSE, “did they like it?” I want to be liked. I really do. I’ll admit that. But then I wonder, “Did they get it? Did I do my job as a writer? Did the characters work?”
It is this second level that, ultimately, sustains me as a writer. Because I’ll never be liked by everyone. The emotional journey of each character is different, and the emotional journey of my readers–which, as I mentioned before, is informed by their own life experiences–will vary. Liking me is ice cream sundae stuff. I love it, but it isn’t enough to fuel the body forever.
This brings me to the review I received today, from an incredibly thoughtful, insightful woman at The Romance Reviews. Here’s a snippet of the review. You can read the rest here.
“I love Inara Scott’s writing, and her well-crafted, passionate characters. And it’s because this story is so well written that I had a hard time with Tori. Her insecurities run deep, and her mother’s wealth of painful lessons have left her believing that she will neither find nor deserve love. Maybe it was because I felt so deeply for her and genuinely liked her so much that her insecurities really bothered me. I was hurt by how much she herself was hurting—and while this is unequivocally the sign of a well-written story, I don’t think I was quite prepared to feel this way about her as a heroine.”
In explaining her rating (three out of five starts) the reviewer goes on to say,
“Coming up with a rating for this story was a little challenging. The tension and chemistry between Tori and Brit really is explosive and passion and tender, and I really wanted to follow their story to the end. However, I wasn’t prepared for just how emotional the story was going to be, or how I personally would respond to Tori’s psychology.”
And that’s where my heart, as a writer, leaps. This is a well-written, honest review that considers both the author’s contribution AND the contribution of the reader. Both combine to make the experience of reading. And while for this reader, the journey was perhaps not the one she was prepared to go down at that moment, I still feel like I scored a 10.
