The Writer's Responsibility

Though I'm tempted to put a lot more responsibility on myself, there are really only three things I think I'm obligated to do.

Good morning, all, and "happy" tax day for my friends in the US. I suspect most of us feel that the only reason to be happy about April 15 is that tax season is over, but for me, it's also my father-in-law's birthday, so that makes me happy!

See? The bright spot in the gloom! That's me--your little ray of sunshine!

I've been thinking over my personal guidelines for writing book reviews, and that has led me to consider what I look for in a book--and, as a consequence, what I want to write. I started thinking of what I want to write in terms of responsibilities--namely, what are my responsibilities as a writer? What should I feel obligated to provide to people generous enough with their time to crack open one of my stories?

I came up with three baseline things that I expect from the books I read. There are things that make a difference between a decent read and one I will recommend to everyone I meet, but not everyone looks for those things. I'm talking about the three most basic things I think writers should do for readers.

Be Clear

As a reader of fantasy and science fiction, I am pretty comfortable with ambiguity. I think this comfort helps with reading all kinds of work. I walk into any book with a high degree of trust that anything I don't understand at first will be worked out by the end.

Obviously, this is an issue with plot and the more complex aspects of a story. In a mystery, for instance, we trust that we'll find out the butler did it (or maybe that everyone did it) by the end. In a fantasy, we trust that we'll find out who or what the Big Bad is somewhere along the way.

But it's also an issue just with the writing on each individual page.

I just read Fourth Wing, and there were several places where I had to stop, back up, and re-read to figure out what was happening because Rebecca Yarros assumed I knew everything her main character knew and lived within the same context.

Listen, you have to explain things, at least at a cursory level. Just because you're writing in first person present doesn't mean I'm actually inside a fictional person's head. That person still has to explain what she sees. She's telling me a story--she's not showing me a movie through her brain.

A specific example. There's a scene where main character Violet walks into the Archives and starts communicating in sign language to the girl who's managing things that morning, Jesinia. I had to back up and read that bit about three times before I figured out that Jesinia was deaf. I thought maybe they signed inside the Archives as a sign of respect for the quiet of the place or something, but no--it seemed that Jesinia was deaf. That is never spelled out. I had to figure it out on my own.

That lack of clarity is exhausting for the reader. Anything that pulls the reader out of the story and makes the reader do the writer's work should be deleted or clarified.

If you want to let readers try to figure out the big stuff, fine--I have no issue with that. That's what makes a good mystery novel, after all; the reader gets the payoff at the end by figuring out whodunit. But readers should not have to spend their energy on each individual page figuring who's talking to who, how many people are present, why people are using a certain means of communication, etc.

This is why I struggle with magical realism. As much as I love Kazuo Ishiguro, The Unconsoled was exhausting to read. It was like trying to figure out what was happening in someone's dream. My own dreams are confusing enough--I don't need to be stuck inside someone else's.

Get the Facts Right

This guideline probably applies mostly to non-fiction, but with the rise of AI-generated writing, I think it's worth mentioning across the board.

I have played around with AI a bit for my contract work (not for my fiction), and I've listened to some podcasts about its application and explored some of the potential uses for it. I don't have anything against AI as a concept (aside from my constitutional distrust of the robots based on half the movies of the 80s warning us not to trust the robots). But I have heard too many people say that they use things like ChatGPT for "research" to ignore the problems that large-language models can introduce to the books we write and read.

And it's not just AI that can lead us astray. Our own biases and priors can definitely lead us to write flat-out false information, simply because the first thing we find that supports our pre-conceived ideas goes straight into our books.

A semi-famous example of this was when author Naomi Wolf was corrected on-air about her misunderstanding of the legal term "death recorded." She essentially based her book Outrages on her understanding that the term meant someone had been executed, when in reality, it meant that a judge had pardoned the offender. Radio host Matthew Sweet corrected Wolf on-air and suggested that none of the executions she wrote about actually happened.

The biggest problem? The book had already been released in the UK and was due to come out in two weeks in the US.

So this book went through the writing process, fact-checking, editing, and what one would assume to be several layers of reads between final manuscript and publication, and no one thought to make sure this term was interpreted properly.

To be as charitable as possible, it is kind of a confusing term, at least for those of us unfamiliar with the British legal system. I mean, my familiarity with British law starts and ends with several viewings of A Fish Called Wanda and about half the episodes of the police procedural New Tricks. But here's the thing: knowing that I'm not an expert in British law, I would check and double-check every single term I came across to make sure I was using it correctly.

I do think there is one application for the fantasy author here--namely, try to be at least consistent, and avoid ret-conning yourself. Maybe this is where AI could be helpful; maybe it could help find inconsistencies in your work.

But that would require trusting the robots, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

Tell a Story

All nitpicking aside, the ultimate responsibility for any writer is to tell a story.

I think this responsibility applies across categories and genres. In history, the writer tells a story of the past. In self-help, the author spins a potential story for the reader--one that puts the reader on a better road or in a better place by the end. And of course, in fiction, a writer weaves a new story to entertain and maybe explore some other ideas, truths, or questions along the way.

Here's the thing. Most readers don't care much about nitpicky things like clarity on minor details. I would guess, judging by the sheer amount of provably false information floating around on social media, that a whole lot of people don't care much about factual errors, either (though that doesn't absolve the writer of the responsibility to be as accurate as possible).

But story? Readers care a heckuva lot about story.

I did not especially care for Fourth Wing (longer review coming later), but I could see the appeal. There is a decent story in there, even if it does cover familiar territory and use common tropes. And while I might quibble about the execution of that story, judging by the reviews on Goodreads, most readers do not share my perspective. They were just there for the story (and possibly for the sex scenes).

So writer, take comfort. Readers mostly want good stories--past, present, future, or otherwise. They want to see characters struggle with conflict, internal or external, and overcome obstacles (or maybe not). They want to know that the struggle is worthwhile, and that even if they don't have the answer to life, the universe, and everything by the end, they at least got a little closer to it or maybe turned a piece of the puzzle the right way.

Now that we've established baseline standards for my reads, I do have some other thoughts about what I really, really want in a book.

But that will wait until next week.

Remember to file by midnight, y'all!