Authorial Responsibilities (WAS: Nimbus question)

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

I wrote:

> I absolutely do not believe that authors have a responsibility 
> to write for the broadest possible audience. 

> Most popular authors truly aren't pandering; 
> for the most part, they come by their popularity honestly. 

David wrote:

> I'm not sure I fully understand here. First, two small nitpicks: 
> 
> 1) I can see why pandering would usually lead to poor fiction, but 
> not why it is dishonest.

It's not dishonest.  That really was very careless phrasing on my 
part.  Apologies.

What I meant by that was that it is my belief that when popular 
authors say (as the vast majority of them do) that they write their 
works to suit their own tastes and aesthetics, they are speaking
honestly.

In other words, I do not believe that best-selling authors like
Stephen King or Jo Rowling actually sit down at their typewriters
and consciously and deliberately strive to tailor their stories
to suit popular tastes.  I don't think that Rowling decided in
the end to make her protagonist a boy because she thought that 
it would sell better that way.  I don't think that Stephen King
started out his career writing horror novels because he noted
the rising popularity of horror films, saw that few people
were writing the corresponding prose fiction, perceived an open 
niche in the market waiting to be filled, and chose to exploit
it.  I believe those writers when they say that they write what
they write because that's just the way they write. I don't think 
they are lying.

That's really all that I meant by that.

Some writers, of course, *do* "pander," and they admit that
they do.  Many of them also write "how to get published" books,
which try to explain how others might go about trying to follow
their same path to making a living.  That's not dishonest.  It's 
just craftsmanship.  The people who do that, though, are rarely 
*as* successful as the writers whose natural inclinations happen
to intersect with public desire.


> 2) Also, it's one thing to make popularity your goal, another to 
> admit you don't exclude it 

Absolutely.  Writing is communication, after all.  There are
likely some people out there who exclude popularity absolutely 
from their concerns while writing, but I dare say that most 
writers want to be read. 

> My real question though is to do with breadth and popularity. 
> I'm not sure they are the same thing. 

I don't think that they are the same thing, but they intersect
in some very specific ways.  

The example originally up for discussion, for example, was explicit 
sex in fanfiction.  Now, given that fanfic sites have "rating" 
systems and cautionary warnings, and that some people will refuse to 
read fiction which contains explicit sex, or unpopular romantic 
pairings, or non-heterosexual romantic pairings ("slash"), or stories 
which feature OCs, or any number of other things which for whatever 
reason some people do not like (fanfic readers can be very picky), 
the inclusion of any of those things in a work of fanfic will 
automatically reduce its breadth of appeal.

Since this seemed to be one of the issues of concern in this
discussion, I felt some need to point out that *everyone* makes
aesthetic decisions that are going to exclude or displease some 
readers.  You just can't please everyone, and if you tried to
do so, then you would likely end up with something that wouldn't
please *anyone.*

I suppose that the point I was trying to make, buried under
all that verbiage somewhere, was that I don't feel that the
fact that some people really dislike, say, slash pairings ought
to be considered any more weighty a concern for fanfic authors
than the fact that other people really dislike romance plotlines,
or sad endings, or OCs, or divided plotlines which jump back and
forth between multiple POV characters (a la LotR), or whatever
else.  Reader preferences vary a great deal, and I just don't
think it feasible -- let alone desirable! -- for an author to 
try to take them all into consideration.

> Now here we have a new distinction: reader rights versus authorial 
> responsibilities. 

In an open marketplace like the fanfic community, what precisely
*are* reader rights, do you think?

I'm not trying to dismiss the entire idea, you understand.  I'm 
just trying to get a handle on what you think that they are.

> I think if I were a fiction author I would resent readers trying 
> to influence my writing, sure. But I might still feel a 
> responsibility to them. I think they're different things.

They are different things, I agree.

>From the author's point of view, it can be very irritating indeed
when readers will not *trust* you -- a phenomenon which becomes
particularly relevant when what you are writing is serialized
fiction, so that the feedback is hitting you in the face even
as you are trying to write the next installment.

As a reader, on the other hand, one naturally tends to operate
according to the Eileen principle: "Trust no author until she
is *finished.*"

Having been both author and reader, I can sympathize with both
positions.

I said:

> Few people relish the idea of writing to someone else's 
> specifications unless there's going to be a check in the mail.

David replied:

> Now here I must disagree, unless I am one of the few. I don't write 
> fiction, but I do write a lot. I write technical reports for paying 
> customers. I don't think I could do it if I didn't enjoy it. There 
> is a great deal of pleasure to be had from getting across the thing 
> you want to say within the constraints under which you are 
> operating. (Doubtless some of my colleagues would claim that my 
> reports are fiction ;-) ) It's a challenge.

Well, yes.  That's true.  It's part of what makes writing highly
structured poetry -- sonnets, vilanelles, even limericks or
double-dactyls -- feel a lot more satisfying, in many ways, than 
writing free verse does.  It *is* satisfying to work within
certain types of constraints.

"Certain types" is the operative term here, I think.  There are
some kinds of constraints which I find hard to imagine *anyone*
would find all that gratifying to write under.  "I only like this 
particular set of romantic pairings, so no one else in your story 
can be attracted to each other," for example, is unlikely to appeal 
much, unless the author happens to share the reader's particular 
preference.  "I don't like sad endings, so don't write one" is
another.  "I can't stand romance subplots" would be a third.

In terms of the question of to what extent fanfic authors ought
be concerned with the canonical author's feelings, the constraint
would be: "Don't write anything you think that JKR wouldn't like
if she read it."

I cannot *imagine* writing comfortably under that constraint, not
least of which because trying to second-guess what a complete 
stranger's emotional reaction to a piece of fiction might be is 
a totally hopeless endeavor.

David:

> And this type of writing has associated responsibilities you 
> haven't mentioned at all. The responsibility to be truthful. To 
> be unambiguous - ironically enough to ensure as far as possible 
> that what the reader interprets is *exactly* what you intend 
> (surely lawyers and list moderators must have to do this too) 
> and nothing else. . . .

> I don't know if any of this is at all applicable to fiction 
> writing - the only thing I can extrapolate from my experience 
> is that I would like to feel that my readers understand what 
> I'm writing. 

Well, technical or legal writing is a very different animal than 
prose fiction or poetry or essay.  Ambiguity and clarity are enemies 
in technical and legal writing, but in other types of writing they 
are often steadfast allies.  Poetry in particular conveys meaning 
through the ambiguities inherent in the language: through metaphor, 
through double-meaning, through imagery.  We call this "nuance," 
and it is important because, paradoxically enough, it can convey 
meaning that cannot be expressed nearly as precisely *without*
the ambiguity.  

That's where you can get into the "promulgating poor values" problem,
for example.  Fiction often puts loathsome opinions into the mouths 
of characters, or shows characters doing wicked things.  Sometimes 
people object to this on the grounds that it is insufficiently clear 
that the *author* actually condemns these attitudes or practices.  
This, they claim, makes the work of fiction "immoral."

Now, as you know, I have no objection to criticizing books on such 
grounds, or to discussing the ramifications of the ambiguities 
inherent in their presentation.  I do, however, find it a bit odd 
when people seem to think that the *existence* of such ambiguities in 
the text is a Bad Thing.  I am very hard-pressed to think of an 
unambiguous work of fiction that I really consider all that *good.*  
I have to admit that often when I read such objections, I find myself 
wondering whether people would really prefer a work of fiction that 
had been written like a technical manual.  Perhaps, for example, 
there could be a footnote at the bottom of each page, explaining the 
precise intended dramatic significance of every last thing in the 
text?

I don't think that I'd much like to read a story or poem or essay 
that had been written in the same style as a technical manual.  Nor, 
however, would I be at all pleased with a technical manual or legal
document that had been written as a poem.  Different writing styles 
are used for different things.



Elkins