A writer's job is to screw with the reader. Not to have the main characters have pretty pretty lives or a HEA. My job as a writer is to take your emotions and tie them into a very complicated cat's cradle, jacob's ladder affair. If a story has a happy ending, that's the writer screwing with you. If you are scared that the imaginary person the words are describing will die, that's the writer screwing with you. If you have a cliffhanger that makes you both hurl the book across the room screaming and race to the store/Amazon to buy and/or download the next book in the series, congradulations. The writer has done their job, have a post-screwing cigarette.
Which is why EVERYTHING needs to be viewed from a reader's perspective. Otherwise writing a novel is an excercise in mental masturbation. And the only way to get the right perspective is to give the book to a reader and ask them how they felt during that scene. If it is not what you wanted them to feel, start over.
I believe that LKH lost that perspective several books back from NIC, she regained it somehow for Obsidian Butterfly, and then lost her freaking mind. And her editor.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 07:46 am (UTC)Which is why EVERYTHING needs to be viewed from a reader's perspective. Otherwise writing a novel is an excercise in mental masturbation. And the only way to get the right perspective is to give the book to a reader and ask them how they felt during that scene. If it is not what you wanted them to feel, start over.
I believe that LKH lost that perspective several books back from NIC, she regained it somehow for Obsidian Butterfly, and then lost her freaking mind. And her editor.