Gerone Blomgren's Blog - Posts Tagged "reader"
Fantasy and the Reading Mind
I am a far better at reading than I am at writing. Perhaps this is due to an imbalance in the ratio. Before I ever considered writing anything, I read everything. From all this voracious reading I gained a deep appreciation for authors cleverly manipulating my heart and mind. Like a good confidence scheme, the best of these authors performed this surreptitious slight of hand without the compulsive need to control every conclusion I drew.
To pull this feat off, the author has to lead the reader to conclusions that seem natural while allowing them to fill in many of the blanks on their own. This means holding back on descriptive passages while the impulse is to make damn sure the reader doesn’t miss something critical. I think of Gone Girl wherein Gillian Flynn masterfully drops clues that the reader could very well gloss right over … but they don’t. Other cell phone, what other cell phone?
I don’t know that any particular author has a tougher time at this than those in the fantasy genre. So much of the perceived essential task is world building. Fantasy authors have to be able to color in enough of the differences between the world we know and the world to which we are newly introduced that we won’t throw the book in frustration. On the other hand, most tend to carry this too far, creating an environment so carefully described that the reader comes to no conclusions on their own steam and as a consequence, comes away disconnected and unsatisfied.
For a reader to engage and commit, they can’t feel entirely alien to the environment and yet they have to get to that point in ways that require them to stretch a bit, emotionally and mentally. If a reader believes the perspectives they’ve developed regarding characters, environments, and situations are purely theirs, they will be hooked in a way that cannot be accomplished by simply pointing them in the right direction and telling them, “think this” or “feel that”.
The best authors I’ve ever read get the reader to the right spot on the dance floor by the end of the song, all the while letting them think they were leading the whole time.
To pull this feat off, the author has to lead the reader to conclusions that seem natural while allowing them to fill in many of the blanks on their own. This means holding back on descriptive passages while the impulse is to make damn sure the reader doesn’t miss something critical. I think of Gone Girl wherein Gillian Flynn masterfully drops clues that the reader could very well gloss right over … but they don’t. Other cell phone, what other cell phone?
I don’t know that any particular author has a tougher time at this than those in the fantasy genre. So much of the perceived essential task is world building. Fantasy authors have to be able to color in enough of the differences between the world we know and the world to which we are newly introduced that we won’t throw the book in frustration. On the other hand, most tend to carry this too far, creating an environment so carefully described that the reader comes to no conclusions on their own steam and as a consequence, comes away disconnected and unsatisfied.
For a reader to engage and commit, they can’t feel entirely alien to the environment and yet they have to get to that point in ways that require them to stretch a bit, emotionally and mentally. If a reader believes the perspectives they’ve developed regarding characters, environments, and situations are purely theirs, they will be hooked in a way that cannot be accomplished by simply pointing them in the right direction and telling them, “think this” or “feel that”.
The best authors I’ve ever read get the reader to the right spot on the dance floor by the end of the song, all the while letting them think they were leading the whole time.
