Re: Clue bats

Jonathan L Cunningham <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

green_knight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Catja Pafort) wrote:

Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:

The more subtle you are, the more you narrow your potential readership.

I think that works up to a certain point, and from a certain point you
begin to *lose* readers.

I think you mean that the other way around: that the less subtle you
are, the more readers you get up to a certain point, then you begin to
lose them for being unsubtle.

Didn't I say that? You understood what I meant anyway. It's not
indefinitely scaleable where less subtlety = more readers. It's a bell
curve: at one end, so obscure few people get it, at the other, so
obvious it's boring, in the middle, pleasing a variety of tastes.


If every plot point is telegraphed, and if you
can tell how the book will end by reading the first chapter, you'll
probably lose more readers than you will gain.

I'm not too good at picking up subtle (compared with some of the people
who posted here) but, judging by what seems to sell best (and is in the
bookshops) you can be far too obvious for my taste and still be a best
seller.

There's a lot more that goes into being a bestseller than subtlety.
People may forgive a lack of subtlety if everything else is to their
taste, *but* I think it's a false conclusion to say 'the public buy
this, the public want this' because quite often the real attraction
might lie somewhere else.

I can't reproduce all the 'something elses', so I don't think I can get
away with sloppy prose and a generally unsubtle approach.



On the other hand, the more that narrower readership will appreciate it,
so you have to strike a balance. Be just subtle enough that /most/ of
your target audience will get it. That usually means being about as
subtle as a brick through the window.

Only if that *is* your target audience.

My point what general. Whatever audience you want, you have to strike a
balance. The balance is different for different audiences. Your balance
will be different from mine. I don't see what you are disagreeing with.

The assumption that one reaches the majority of one's target audience by
the 'brick through window' level. The majority of *my* target audience
will be put off by it.


Mine goes in sequence myself, friends who have a very similar taste,
people who have a vaguely similar taste...

Ok, so you strike a balance that pleases yourself, people with a similar
taste to yourself, people with a vaguely similar taste...

I still don't see what you are disagreeing with.

I hate books that hit me over the head with a clue-by-four. Which means,
whatever your perceptions of 'what works for a wide audience' I won't
write them. I don't know how to write them and write them well.


There's no harm being more subtle if you can do it without it taking
away from something else - but that's not easy to pull off, if it is
possible at all.

Of course it is possible, or my bookshelves would look a lot barer.

It was this that forced me to reply.

How do you know there are books on your bookshelf which are more subtle
than you can appreciate? And why do you like them, if you don't
appreciate their subtlety?

Firstly, you were talking about a fixed point ('as subtle as a brick
through the window') so I took the 'being more subtle' to refer to that;
and yes, my bookshelves contain a good many books - many of them
successful - that meet that criterium.

Second, I've owned some of these books for about twenty-five years, and
I enjoyed them _then_, when my reading tastes were not overly
sophisticated - as proven by the fact that some of the books I read and
loved then were *not* very sophisticated at all (but had other redeeming
features.) Every time I've picked them up since, I have enjoyed
something else about them, and enjoyed them more. I am not arrogant
enough to think that I have yet reached the bottom of those books, and
am confident that if I read them again, I will discover *further*
subtleties.

I do not have to appreciate something fully and in all nuances to
appreciate it. I just have to find _enough,_ and find it on re-reading.

I have this vision of you skipping whole paragraphs because they don't
make sense, but you like the other paragraphs that you buy the book
anyway.

That would irritate me a lot.

It would irritate me as well, and I don't think I've ever met anyone
doing that consciously. The closest I've come is skipping plot threads I
am not overly interested in - the next time I read Ken McLeod's
'Cosmonaut Keep' I am going to read only half of it because the other
half struck me as being entirely predictable and totally pointless.

On the other hand, I'm probably not as disturbed by skimming as you seem
to be. I started reading complex books fairly early, so I am used to not
'getting' them in their totality. I might have read Gulliver's travels
age twelve, but I certainly didn't understand all of it. I'm not even
sure I'll understand all of it _today_.

Also, this might be a function of reading in a language that you're not
immersed in - you'll come across a good many words you've never heard,
at least at the beginning, and while you _could_ look up each and every
one of them, it's not very productive.

I am not made uneasy by the thought of missing things and can enjoy a
book without understanding all of it.


Some things are ok - most people have parents, a large majority have
children (or were children). But, e.g., a subtle in-joke about
rock-climbing is going to be missed by all but a few rock-climbers and
their friends.

You say that as if it's a problem. People missing references is only a
problem if you hang your plot on that - if you write a murder mystery

No, that's nailed the point I am trying to make.

I am saying that people missing references is a problem even if you
don't hang your plot on it. [More below.]

So it's a problem for you. Fair enough. I would say that it's not a
problem for a majority of readers. Specifically, if you don't realise
you're missing something, why would you be disturbed by it? It needs a
very transparent text to make me believe I didn't miss anything in it.

It is the books I understand most fully that I like least. Since even I
do not write books solely for myself, I assume that in anything of a
satisfying level of complexity there will be bits I do not understand.
Maybe I can understand them in discussions with other readers, maybe I
need additional information about the author, maybe I get them with
growing general understanding, maybe they will always remain a mystery
to me: but I assume that they will be there; and I will be disturbed by
their absence, because it means there is nothing more about the book to
discover. As a re-reader, that makes a book far less valuable for me.

(I have been known to re-read immediately on finishing the book.)


and the reader will only spot whodunnit if he's an experienced
rockclimber or astrophysicist, you might have a problem. (And a large
following among rockclimbers.)

In that case, you *definitely* have a problem; I am taking that as
understood, and going further.

I said 'might' because I feel that even in that extreme case - I cannot
think of any other genre where overall enjoyment of a book might be as
closely coupled to a very limited number of passages; and even in this
genre I have read books that made me go 'oh well, I couldn't have known
that, *but what a fantastic book*'



The solution here is layering. You can put as many in-jokes as you like,
as long as they don't distract from the enjoyment of the book. Look at

No, I disagree.

Why are you disturbed by something which does not distract you?
Something you might not even notice?

I honestly cannot follow this.


I am not saying that layering is a bad thing. I am saying that layering
is a solution (one solution) to trying to strike that balance I
mentioned.

But for any given reader, either the more obvious layers are
unnecessary, or they are necessary and the subtle bits will be missed,
and so are a waste of words.

You're saying that as if any given layer will fulfil one function only.
And you might have a much more narrow definition of 'waste of words.'
There will *always* be filler in every book, and often it's necessary to
control the pacing. Some of that filler will be necessary to add
necessary subtlety - if the protagonist always works out the solution,
notices only plot-relvant details, cuts his interaction to only the
necessary, you will end up with a very poor book indeed. A murderer who
carries only the clue in his bag is easily unmasked; one who has fifteen
items, any one of which might be a clue (or not) means that those who
spot it will go 'oh, clever' while those who don't can go back and say
'oh, clever' on rereading.


There is some middle ground (not previously mentioned in this thread)
where the less subtle reader will go, "Doh!" as he gets the subtle bits
once he reads the unsubtle bits. If *every* reader (eventually) gets the
subtle bits and appreciates them, then that's good.

I think it's a process most readers will go through - but in order to
put enough subtle bits in for each reader to appreciate, you will need
to put in a greater variety, because not everybody will get every bit.

Let's say you put in ten subtle bits. The readers who get nine or ten
they didn't get first time round will be happy, the readers who only get
one or two won't. Put in thirty, and most readers will find nine or ten.


I don't think it is easy.

*Nobody* said writing was easy. Much less writing subtle prose.



Terry Pratchett - even people who miss nine out of ten references
*still* find plenty to enjoy, because there's just so much of it.

No, here I disagree.

I do agree that (especially in his earlier work) there were so many
references that you could miss a lot of them. But I know people who
missed too many - and didn't find plenty to enjoy.

But enough people *did* find plenty to make him a best seller. That
doesn't mean everybody did.

And, as Brian pointed out, not everybody who understands them enjoys the
books - but the point is that you can enjoy them without understanding
large parts of the layering system. I don't feel he's using fewer
references in later works, but he's less obvious about them. (I don't
like the first two, and would like the next ones better if they were
written more in the style of the later books.)


The other thing is that the better you write, the more subtle you can be
without compromising the story.

That I do agree with. I'm not sure that that is where I want to put my
effort though: I'd rather improve other aspects of my writing, rather
than concentrate on making subtlety work.

For me it's a guiding principle that goes through everything I do - I
try to use more refined language, to use telling detail instead of
lecturer the reader about my worldbuilding, to use small acts for
characterisation instead of blunt statements, to build the plot out of
small events instead of grand gestures.

I don't think I am working on anything that *cannot* be described as
'subtlety.'


That depends on your descriptive skills and how much you trust your
readers to work things out;

Not a lot! :-)

Given that my readers are I and people who share my tastes, I do trust
them. I am learning to trust them more, because for a long time I was
writing books that trusted the reader less than I want to be trusted.


if you're using impenetrable language, readers are more
likely to say 'what? huh? that wasn't in the text! I didn't see an
arrow. There was only a silver streak of death that sang - oh.'

I don't understand this last paragraph - what point you are making. Is
it a sudden switch,and you are ending up by agreeing with me?

On past form, you should consider that unlikely.

Incidentally, impenetrable language and subtlety are not the same
things.

There's no coincidence to my inclusion of that point in this post.


Catja

--
writing blog @ http://beyond-elechan.livejournal.com
.

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