Fire Captain Obvious
(Fire him with this much fury.)
Let me outline a nightmare: the reader gets to the end and says, “I don’t get it.”
Fair enough. Now, let me paint a WORSE nightmare: the reader, in the middle of the book groans and rolls their eyes. “I get it,” they say.
I’m getting shivers just thinking about it.
Welcome back to our weekly, fun-hearted yet extremely applicable LOL Tips (Laugh Out Lore…no?…maybe?…workshop it with me in the comments, I promise you won’t hurt my feelings if you let me know it’s a little dumb; most of what I write the first go-round is a little dumb. That’s why I have you lovely guys.)
This week’s lesson: trust your audience.
It’s really easy to worry about that first nightmare—but what if the audience doesn’t get it? then all my hard work is futile!—and to pendulum swing to the other nightmare, which is explaining absolutely.
Every.
Single.
Thing.
Again, trust me, that’s a far worse nightmare. If stuff is underexplained, at least you’ve got the reader asking questions and thinking about it. (Not that it’s good, but throw me a bone.) But if everything’s explained overtly and repeatedly, the reader may feel like the author is underestimating their intelligence (which is not what we’re saying, we just care deeply, but they don’t know us) and can pull them WAY out of the story. After all, in real life, things generally aren’t spelled out. We have to take a few facts and a WHOLE LOT of subconscious detective work. So, trust your readers’ understanding of implications, allusions, subtext, previous experience, and even gut feelings.
For example, take two people, X and Y.
X tells Y, “I love you.” Y coughs and walks away.
*Awkward.*
A writer might be tempted to add a line, The problem was that Y did not love X.
But we SEE that. We didn’t need it said to us. We Sherlocked our way to that conclusion, even though it happened in a split second and we didn’t really have to sweat it.
I’ll give you a better one that, one in an actual big-budget movie that we’re going to call Smack for three reasons
I am about to do a little smack talk.
I don’t like to smack talk other stories by name. That’s just mean.
I actually really like the movie and don’t want to dissuade people from watching it.
Smack sounds really funny.
Anyway, in Smack, the MCs are trapped in a tunnel that they’ve blockaded, and the antagonists are breaking down the door. The blockades finally give, these terrifying villains burst in, and one of the MCs says:
“They’ve broken through!”
We literally just saw that.
Yep. So don’t feel bad if you slip into it. It happens even to the best.
Now, sometimes it can be a whole lot subtler than that. But I’m not gonna talk about that right now because you’ve stuck with me this long, and I want to respect your time and leave you on a big ugly cliffhanger.
Tell me how to make “LOL lessons” a better series title!! Or come up with something far more brilliant from scratch. I’m open.
See you in Pt. 2
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