Reader Trust and Promises

[The Big Peat]

And here I’m a hypocrite because Daphne Du Maurier’s “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” just holds so much, it's so evocative, when really it isn’t; and dreams are such a hum-drum trope, I wonder why it strikes a chord with me and gives me so much trust.

Maybe because you feel some sort of connection to dreams and nostalgia (guessing, not stating)? And you hear that, and it hits the same notes as other things that have interested you?

Which to me is the most important part of the promise:

You the reader and I the author share common beliefs on how life is and what's interesting in it

Sometimes it's "we both think this is a cool ordering of words". Sometimes it's about the image, sometimes it's about the ideas, sometimes its about values, sometimes it's an action scene, sometimes it's saving the cat... whatever it is, I think it all boils down to that. Something that catches the eye and resonates.

For me, prose/voice, interesting scenarios, and interesting actions are the things that tend to grab me most. To look through some of my most recent reads, the thing that gave me a measure of trust about one book is it started with a group of knights fighting monsters invading from another world. That's my sort of idea, so I was in.

 

[CTRandall]

You the reader and I the author share common beliefs

I think there is something to this. When a book has really grabbed me, I feel like it is speaking to me and only to me. There isn't a mass market audience, it's just me and the book. I've read most of the Game of Thrones books but I was quite reluctant about them. The introduction to the very first book felt like it was trying to hit all the standard fantasy tropes and it's entirely accurate to say that, from the start, I didn't trust G.R.R.Martin. In trying too hard, it lacked the confidence mentioned by @Toby Frost and in playing to standard tropes, it seemed to be aimed at hooking a wide audience (which it did amazingly well) without bothering to try and speak to little old me. The quality of some of the characters and the twists and turns of some of the plot lines kept me going but there was plenty in those books that let me down and I still don't trust GRRM.

In contrast, the opening to Quicksilver, the first book of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle instantly grabbed me. The simple prose, strong images and a touch of the metaphysical seem fine-tuned just for me. Stephenson has his good books, his great books and his so-so books but I trust him completely as an author.

"ENOCH ROUNDS THE CORNER JUST as the executioner raises the noose above the woman’s head. The crowd on the Common stop praying and sobbing for just as long as Jack Ketch stands there, elbows locked, for all the world like a carpenter heaving a ridge-beam into place. The rope clutches a disk of blue New England sky. The Puritans gaze at it and, to all appearances, think. Enoch the Red reins in his borrowed horse as it nears the edge of the crowd, and sees that the executioner’s purpose is not to let them inspect his knotwork, but to give them all a narrow—and, to a Puritan, tantalizing—glimpse of the portal through which they all must pass one day."

 

[CTRandall]

Wow, I sure used the word 'book' a lot in the first two lines of that post.

 

[sknox]

>But I'm given to trust a writer simply when they write well.
Yeppers.

A new author has to earn my trust. That comes in layers. First layer does happen in the first pages. If the author writes poorly, including grammar and spelling, then I'm out. While a fair number of books I did not enjoy were written well, the total of books I did enjoy that were poorly written is exactly zero.

The next layer comes in voice, tone, pacing. That covers several of the early chapters; length varies. It also varies by genre. If it's a thriller, then the story needs to get cracking. If it's a fantasy epic, I'm content to let the stew stew. Somewhere along here is also where warning flags get raised. Is the author overly clever, or using tropes unawares, or seems inept at plot development? That's when I start thinking that while it may be possible for me to finish the book, it's probably not going to be worth the effort.

By then--let's call it a third of the work--I'm pretty much all in. There have been a few rare works that just wore me out (ASOIAF is the prime example, but also WOT) and I didn't finish. There's a reason why nobody makes movies that are fifty hours long.

But the quality of the writing really does trump everything else. I've read books I would never have otherwise read simply because the prose carried me.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

"Call me Ishmael" works because the reader immediately imagines the kind of guy this might be. That's the trick.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

They’ve got a sense of the author taking control: “I’m going to tell you that it was 13 o’clock and you’re going to find out why”. Likewise best of times…” works because it immediately tells the reader something impossible: that the best of times and the worst of times happened at once. How can that be? Read on to find out!

This, in a nutshell.