Reader Power

[Bear987]

Hello!

I'm sort of new to the forum community. I was hoping to find some forums where writer's tread to ask a question I'm writing a paper on. The question is, "How much influence do you believe a reader holds over a writer's literary work?" This interests me, because I myself am pretty self-conscious when it comes to my own writing. I would like anyone and everyone's opinion! Have you had strong enough positive or negative reviews of your work, so much so that you changed your writing style entirely? Maybe you took several tips here and there, but kept your work generally true to how you intended it to be. Anyway, I hope I can get some good input within the week.

[DATo]

I think it depends on the writer's motive when writing. Obviously if a writer is doing this for a living he/she will kowtow to the tastes, sensitivities and inclinations of the reading public; whereas, those who write purely for the sake of art could care less what the public thinks of their work. It seems to me that today the reader's tastes dictate the direction writers take but there have often been times when writers such as Kafka and Dickinson, who had no intention of anyone reading their work, became cultural icons as a result of the public bending to them rather than the other way around. One contemporary writer who is doing some interesting and novel (no pun intended) things and getting away with it is David Mitchell who you may recognize as the writer of Cloud Atlas.

Personally, I hold writers who write for the sake of art higher in esteem than writers who prostitute their talent only for the sake of money.

[Pagano]

Let's be honest here -- we don't write for solely our own amusement. Especially considering we're our own biggest critics. Like anything, we want to evoke a positive response out of people. We want to see our work enjoyed.

Getting acclaim is a drug. My senior year of high school, I wrote a profile on a standout freshman on our varsity girls basketball team. I put a LOT of work into it -- multiple interviews, taking notes at a game, digging through the stat sheets and, no ****, did math on those stats to make them apply better to the story -- so I was seriously hoping it turned out well. Lo and behold, she absolutely loved it. My journalism advisor, not one to dish out praise, well, dished out a good amount of praise. It was topped off with a state award... an award that dozens of other kids won, but hey, I was happy for myself!

Since then, though, it feels like I've been chasing that high. Not necessarily the recognition, the praise, superficial things like that, but just the general validation that, yes, your hard work paid off. I could have written the same article, with the same amount of painstaking care, and without the reader feedback, hell, I might not even remember it. This article became my personal bar. Seriously, I've compared everything I've written since to it. And I haven't written much. In a weird way, it was bad for my writing in the sense that I haven't done as much of it since.

Through all that mumbo jumbo, what I'm trying to say is that the reader very much dictates the writer. Striving for success is natural. Initially, the positive feedback makes you feel GREAT. Yet later, when the dust settles, it puts a burden on the writer to reach that level of their capability. It's frustrating. But, deep down, it's a good thing.

[DATo]

One author I admire for her disposition regarding this topic is Harper Lee. After writing only one book, To Kill A Mockingbird, she ended her writing career. She could have written almost anything else after Mockingbird and sold a million copies, but she didn't. She knew she could never top what she had accomplished with Mockingbird and, as a true disciple of the arts, she did not attempt to.

By contrast, we can find several very famous contemporary writers who write only within the genre for which they are known. Why? Because they know that their readership expects it. Some of this work is banal crap but does this dissuade them? No. Because they are making bookoo bucks by pandering to readers who in most cases haven't the faintest clue of what a metaphor is and couldn't distinguish one from an ape if their very lives depended upon it.

Occasionally we see departures from this trend. One happy example I can offer is the enormously successful, Shawshank Redemption, by Steven King. It makes me sad to think how many other novels of extraordinary quality might have been penned by King had he been inclined to do so.