Let’s say you were house hunting.
You’ve got two small kids, two incomes, a decent budget. You’d like something with four bedrooms so you can have room for a home office and/or craft room, a garage for tools and the car, maybe a yard for a dog.
“I’ve got the perfect place for you,” says your plastic-smiling realtor. And she takes you to a decent but otherwise nondescript home. “You have to see this.”
You look around. “Um… the yard’s sort of small,” you point out.
“Yes, yes,” she says, ushering you through the living room.
“Does it have four bedrooms?”
“Sure,” she says, getting a little impatient. “And a garage. Sort of.”
“How’s the school dis…”
“Ta-dah!” She’s standing in the bathroom, and she moves her hands with a flourish… pointing to the toilet.
You blink. “That’s a toilet.”
“It’s a PLATINUM toilet.” She looks proud enough to bust. “And the SINK is platinum, too!”
You’re staring at her like she may be high at this point. “Um… okay. But how’s the school district?”
She is now obviously frustrated. “The kitchen sink is platinum too, you know. So are some of the doorknobs.”
You are really uncomfortable. Apparently platinum is a thing around here. “It’s lovely,” you say, hoping to mollify her. “Can we, er, look at the bedrooms?”
She grudgingly gives you the full walk-through. The house is serviceable, no question, but you wish that the owner had spent the money they’d blown on platinum-plating the plumbing on fencing the yard, or built an actual garage instead of the currently open carport. So this house will definitely be a no.
What does all of this have to do with your writing, you might ask?
(Or you might not. I was piling that on with a trowel there.)
It’s about reader expectation. You want to spend as much time working out your novel as you need to, giving care and attention to the craft of the novel. That said, if you spend half an hour fretting over whether or not to use a semicolon or a colon in a sentence, you need to ask yourself if this is a genre or an audience that is going to care about your deliberations, or is this going to be the proverbial platinum toilet: something you think is amazing, but your buyer won’t care about.
Some examples of possible platinum toilets:
Description. If you’re writing literary fiction or historical fiction or some genres of romance, a certain kind of in depth and often poetic description can be very necessary, and will be missed. But if you use that same language in, say, thriller, some Westerns, some horror, and some sci-fi, you’ll find your readers looking at their watch and wondering about the next listing.
Pacing. You’ll notice with movies, stories like The Remains of the Day aren’t break-neck thrillers and The Fast and the Furious doesn’t allow for a lot of introspection. Which camp does your audience fall into? What are they in the mood for? And how can you satisfy it with your work?
Voice. It’s great to sound unique. It’s bad to become so “unique” that it’s almost unrecognizable and incoherent. This often happens with sci-fi writers who want to create their own worlds and languages, or people who want to use a lot of dialect. That said, there are some readers who want voice above all things, and some authors who have made their living on voice. I adore the voices of Erin Morgenstern (author of The Night Circus) and William Gibson (author of Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer) for very different reasons. Again, though, these books are more about voice than they are about genre, and if you love books with sharp plots, these authors aren’t your go-tos. Be judicious.
Darlings/self-indulgences. You may have a joke you love that you’re determined to shoe-horn into place. Don’t. You probably have a scene or character that doesn’t quite fit, but you still love it, so in it stays. Really… don’t. Because it won’t seem nearly as cute to the reader, and you’ll be the one paying the price.
Bottom line: always keep the reader in mind.
You are the first reader, the creator, and the first draft is always for you. But ultimately, the purpose of publishing is to communicate with readers. The purpose of economically successful publishing is to connect with an established and growing fanbase. You’ll only be able to do this by focusing on what you do best, where it intersects with what your audience wants… and leaving the platinum plumbing to somebody else.
Who do you think is your audience? And what do they expect from authors they enjoy? How can you better serve them — and what are you doing that isn’t addressing what really matters to them?
About Cathy Yardley
Cathy Yardley is the author of eighteen novels, published with houses such as St. Martin's and Avon, as well as her self-published Rock Your Writing series. She's also a developmental editor and writing coach, helping authors complete, revise, and get their stories published. Sign up here for her newsletter to receive the free course Jumpstart Your Writing Career.
I’m so guilty of the self-indulgences. I need to build in a “darling” editing pass. And William Gibson! I forgot how much I love cyberpunk. Gonna go re-read Neuromancer.
I re-read Pattern Recognition every year. It has some of my favorite writing ever. :)
Hey Coach, great stuff. And I get your point about losing focus. However, as the spouse of a realtor (a real pro, at the top of her game), may I play devil’s advocate?
Being around realtors socially, I often hear the catch-phrase, “Buyers are liars” (not from a client-respecting pro like my wife, mind you… just during realtor-ey party mingling ;^). And through numerous anecdotes, I’ve come to see the meaning. Client’s often speak about their desire for excellent schools, solid construction, and quality mechanicals, as well as for it to be economical to heat and cool. And they’ll give a top number, never to be exceeded. An earnest realtor might well show a dozen houses that seem to fit the bill… to a collective yawn and a “meh.”
All too often, they’ll hear that said clients looked at and made an offer on a house with another realtor (or that they’ve gone “direct” to a For-Sale-By-Owner). And they’ll know said house to not only be above their highest price-point, but to fit none of the criteria articulated. The realtor will know it to be shoddily constructed, poorly insulated, needing a furnace and a roof, and to be in a marginal school district. And all too often they’ll hear though the grapevine that the customer just LOVED the granite countertops and the soaring vaulted ceilings (regardless of the expensive to heat it).
I believe that no matter how often readers mention loving books that are poetic or well-written, or how much they dislike sappiness, what they really want is good storytelling, and to be moved. (So maybe sometimes “book receivers are deceivers”?)
I like your solution, to focus on improving what each of us does best. And, for me, that “best thing” can only be storytelling (yeah, try as I may, I doubt I’ll ever be poetic). So I’ll stick with the mantra, tell the damn story. I’ll strive to make myself laugh and cry, and to peel back my heart and let it shine.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this gig, it’s that I’d better please myself. Sacrificing that in order to please others is a recipe for misery. Thanks for the excellent points of advice here, and for all you’ve done to help me come this far along, Cathy.
Well stated, sir! I feel like it’s all about balance — probably in writing and life, now that I think about it. It’s like being in a relationship with your readers. You don’t want to slavishly cater to your reader, any more than you’d want to slavishly cater to a significant other. At the same time, you do keep in mind what they’re interested in, and focus on how to make them happy *without sacrificing your principles*. It’s not a compromise of your personal integrity, but it is, in my opinion, a lot of conscious choices that take your “unit”, you and your reader, into account.
Thanks for commenting, as always, my friend!
Cathy–thanks for your post.
In talking about the audience for a book, and that audience’s expectations, you name concerns that any writer should be mindful of. But I think it’s worth mentioning that the first audience for anyone seeking a commercial publisher is made up of agents. Trouble is, reading what agents describe as their dream authors and books has a lot in common with what Vaughn Roycroft says of home buyers: many of them are liars. In their agencies’ websites, they offer up lists of high-minded abstractions–freshness, a strong voice, a rooted sense of place, etc. But as far as I can tell, agents mostly react by instinct. It’s like the Supreme Court Justice (can’t remember which one) who said he couldn’t describe pornography, he just knew it when he saw it.
Genre writers need to learn the rules of their particular road, and then figure out some way to offer a fresh spin. Other writers probably do just as well to heed the common-sense advice you offer, and then follow their own instincts.
Great post, Cathy. Genre expectations have come up several times in our WU Book Dissections. For example, I was disappointed by the superficiality of the characterisation in one of our novels, but was reminded by others that the audiene for a sci-fi thriller would happily sacrifice depth of characterisation for action and suspense. Your “toilet” examples are helpful!