Saturday, October 13, 2018

Nobody Cares About Our Writerly Philosophical Debates by J.J. Hensely


Writer A:  Prologues are a complete waste of time.
Writer B:  Well—
Writer A: No! They are. I have fifty reasons why and will explain them in detail.
Writing Community:  This sounds like an interesting topic readers would find extremely interesting. Let’s discuss this on social media and set up panel discussions at conferences.
           
Admit it. If you’re a writer, you’re thinking:  Hey, this is a debate I’d love to jump into! This is perfectly fine if the audience is other writers, but all too often we try to pull readers into these conversations and act as if they have an emotional investment in the outcome in our opinions. I’ve seen this happen on social media and in person at conventions and other events.

Somehow, fun and engaging conversations involving an audience spin out of control when a panel of authors gets immersed in a discussion about what elements really distinguish a suspense novel from a psychological suspense novel. Or what is a mystery verses a thriller? Or when can we truly categorize a work as a neo-vigilante-fantasy-noir-literary romance verses a non-neo-vigilante-fantasy-noir-non-literary romance?

These discussions can be long. They can get heated. As writers, we feel passion and we know our passion will be felt by the readers. Except for one thing.

Nobody cares.

I mean, we care. And sure, some readers might not mind getting pulled into the minutia of our world. But, most readers don’t care one bit. And as if it wasn’t enough to subject readers to our ramblings on Twitter and Facebook as well as at live events, we do it on our blogs where we should be engaging our readers. Instead we go on and on about whether we should outline or not before writing a novel.

Sadly, these are self-inflicted wounds and missed opportunities. When writing a post, sending a tweet, or making an appearance, we should to be cognizant of our audience and take every chance we get to relate to them by talking about things they care about. Amazingly, those are things we care about too. However, being writers many of us are introverted by nature and we are hesitant to open up about real life. So writers delve into, and find comfort in, the obscure and the academic. But, we don’t need to do this. Because most of those things readers find intriguing, we do as well. Ironically, we don’t always express the connection as well as we should.

J.J. HENSLEY is a former police officer and former Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service.  He is the author of the novels Resolve, Measure Twice, Chalk’s Outline, Bolt Action Remedy, and Record Scratch. 
Mr. Hensley’s first novel RESOLVE was named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2013 by Suspense Magazine and was named a Thriller Award finalist for Best First Novel. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers.


 
                             
           
           

6 comments:

  1. Hi, J.J.! (waving from Pennsylvania!)

    Good topic. I try to be aware of my audience and speak or write to whatever the group but it is hard to tell. Many readers are also aspiring writers. Most writers are avid readers.

    Anyway, can't wait to read the new book!

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  2. During a recent trip, I talked to many people about mystery writing. No one was interested in sub-genres or even the different between a thriller and a mystery. What they wanted was a "good read" with interesting characters. So that's what I talked about.

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  3. How true! If we want to be read, we need to keep the readers firmly in mind.

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  4. Great post. Very true. When I read Tweets containing such insane things as "I am not writing for my readers", believe it or not, I have a friend who does this all the time. Even disses prologues saying how stupid they are. I always pm him and suggest that it's not a good idea to no avail.
    Easy to fall down rabbit-holes, harder to pull yourself out.

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  5. I'm both a writer of cozy mysteries and an avid reader of all kinds of mysteries as well as
    other books, too. I belong to two book clubs and last year I read 97 books and am getting close to that amount this year, too. When I'm invited to do talks about my series, after I talk about my books, I open up for questions and comments. I often hear from some of my followers asking how soon my next book will be out.

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  6. I find, with the exception of whether is a plotter or panster/organicwriter, audiences don't care much for the writing process and prefer to hear more personal anecdotes and stories. Unless another writer is in the audience, no one cares whether I construct detailed character interviews before I start writing or whether I write in chapters or scenes.

    Best of luck on your newest publication.

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