I am looking for help from all of you! I am currently writing a series titled "The Affair" in Loving Wives. Some emails I am getting are upset about the turn I have taken in the series; I would like to hear more comments, please! I plan to continue this series to at least chapter ten, so feedback would be a wonderful help. Thanks!
In desperate need!
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KillerMuffin
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I haven't read the story, so this comes to you blind.
The story has its own life. You know what's best for your story. Don't change something to satisfy the few because it will not satisfy you are the rest of the silent readers. Figure that about half of the views are unique readers who read the whole thing. Out of that many, how many complain about the twist?
However, you are not writing for yourself, you're writing for an audience. The trick to decent writing is to know your audience and to give them what they're looking for.
Ouch. What to do, what to do? Look back at the twist you've given it objectively. Write down a list of the major plot points so that it reads like a seriously digested version of a news filler. Does the twist make sense? Does it fit with the story or is it something that doesn't really belong? Are the readers complaining because you ruined the fantasy?
I wrote on in mind control called So Much Wind. I get hate mail about it all the time because of the last sentence. Why? I had a fascinatingly wonderful story right up to the end where the guy turned out to be a psycho. I broke the cardinal rule. I pissed off my audience. I knew what they read and I knew what they liked, I'd read enough mind control to figure it out. But I wrote the story to satisfy me, not them. Therefore it suffers and they don't like. I have to deal with the fact that they don't.
So you have to find a balance between them and you. How do you do that? If you ever figure that out, please let us know!
The story has its own life. You know what's best for your story. Don't change something to satisfy the few because it will not satisfy you are the rest of the silent readers. Figure that about half of the views are unique readers who read the whole thing. Out of that many, how many complain about the twist?
However, you are not writing for yourself, you're writing for an audience. The trick to decent writing is to know your audience and to give them what they're looking for.
Ouch. What to do, what to do? Look back at the twist you've given it objectively. Write down a list of the major plot points so that it reads like a seriously digested version of a news filler. Does the twist make sense? Does it fit with the story or is it something that doesn't really belong? Are the readers complaining because you ruined the fantasy?
I wrote on in mind control called So Much Wind. I get hate mail about it all the time because of the last sentence. Why? I had a fascinatingly wonderful story right up to the end where the guy turned out to be a psycho. I broke the cardinal rule. I pissed off my audience. I knew what they read and I knew what they liked, I'd read enough mind control to figure it out. But I wrote the story to satisfy me, not them. Therefore it suffers and they don't like. I have to deal with the fact that they don't.
So you have to find a balance between them and you. How do you do that? If you ever figure that out, please let us know!
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