I re-watched Sleepless in Seattle a few weeks ago.  I was flying home to Georgia to visit my family, and it was one of the complementary selections on the in-flight entertainment system.  (The choices were Annie, Frozen, a straight-to-video Tinkerbelle flick, or Sleepless.  I chose Sleepless.)

I enjoyed the movie—as I enjoy all Nora Ephron films—but about halfway through, I noticed something I’d never picked up on before.  Whenever Annie (Meg Ryan) needed to park, there were always four car lengths of open curb in exactly the right place.

No need for parallel parking.  No backing and filling.  No circling the block and hoping for someone to vacate a spot.  Always an empty parking space precisely where and when she needed one, and always four car lengths long.  Enough room for Annie/Meg to zip right in on the first pass.  No muss, no fuss.

It was a simple bit of movie magic, and one that made perfect sense for that genre of film.  In the context of a romantic comedy, the ever-ready parking slots were both expedient and completely understandable.  When you have less than two hours to create and resolve the complications of a human relationship, you don’t want to waste precious minutes of screen time having Meg Ryan search for a place to park.

I get that.  If I had directed the movie, I’m sure I would have solved the problem the same way that Nora Ephron did—by leaving four car lengths of open curb at the end of every driving scene.

But I’m not in the business of writing and directing romantic comedies.  I write techno thrillers.  In my genre, the goal is not to simplify the world.  As I see it, the goal is to show the world in all of its gloriously messy complexity.  Military hardware and tactics?  Complicated.  The international balance of power?  Damned complicated.  Global Geopolitics?  Unbelievably complicated.  The frailties, ambitions, and prejudices of flawed human leaders? Insanely fucking complicated.

Given the kind of books I write, it only makes sense that at least some of those complexities should be reflected in the stories I create.  Anything less would amount to spoon-feeding my readers, which would be an insult to their intelligence, not to mention a complete waste of my time.

I suspect that most readers of techno thriller fiction would agree with me on that point.  So you might be surprised to learn that the mainstream publishing industry does not agree with me at all.  It turns out that acquisitions editors for the major houses don’t want any of that nasty complex stuff in the novels they publish.  At least not in my experience.

Over the past ten years, I’ve been asked variations of the same question from editors representing nearly every major house.

Is there any way to sort of “streamline” the political arc of this book?

Do you think the readers will be able to follow all of that technical information?

Aren’t all these subplots a bit confusing?

Couldn’t we get to the meat of the story quicker if we left out the historical underpinnings?

What do you think about drawing your protagonist and antagonist in sharper contrast?

Every one of those editors was doing his/her best to communicate through wink-wink-nudge-nudge circumlocution.  Trying to ask the real question without ever having to speak the actual words.

The real question is this…

Can you please dumb this book down?  You’re completely overestimating the intelligence of the book-buying public.

My answer to this carefully-avoided query has always been the same.  No.  Not at all.  Not ever.

If an editor wants to talk to me about pacing, I’m all ears.  Character motivation?  Lay it on me.  Dialogue?  Description?  Theme?  Readability?  Language?  Absolutely!  Any of those. All of those.  Whip out that blue pencil and let’s edit the hell out of this thing.  I’m willing to rewrite.  I’m willing to polish.  I’m willing to rip out twenty-five chapters and rework the whole damned thing.

As long as the goal is to weave a tighter, better, and more meaningful story.  But if the intent is to dumb the book down, on the (false) assumption that readers are idiots, my answer is not just no.  It’s hell no.

I happen to believe that the world we live in is complex, chaotic, and utterly fascinating.  The politics are not cut-and-dried.  No real person has the purity of good or evil depicted in cartoon heroes and villains.  Sometimes cultural conflicts fester for decades (or even centuries) without reaching any kind of lasting resolution.  And we can’t expect every detail to be tied up in a neat bundle by the time the end credits roll.

I also happen to believe that readers are smart enough to understand all of those things.  That they can sift through the chaff to find the kernels of wheat.  That they enjoy a story that isn’t written for the lowest common denominator.

And when they come to the end of the book’s journey, they don’t expect to automatically find four car lengths of open parking at the curb.