This is really interesting. Can I ask how you choose your readers? Those two primary people you mentioned? I always see authors talking about those people they get to read their stuff as its being written, but I've never seen anyone discuss how those people are chosen... unless they're hired readers, which I have actually spoken to, but I'm not sure if that's the norm...
My husband, my first first reader, was a given because we're moved by ridiculously similar things, and he has a slightly different take on the way those things are expressed; I would talk with him about world-building things long before I started a book, and he'd point out possible issues with balance and power, and answer military questions (he's an old, die-hard, wargamer).
My second first reader, Terry, I started corresponding with on-line just after Hunter's Death, and I read a lot of what he wrote about that book, and the books that followed; what he got out of those books was what I'd hoped I'd put into them, if that makes sense.
Some readers will get things that I didn't consciously do; some will love the book for reasons that I would never have dreamed of while writing it. But in the case of Terry, he picked up a lot of what I (hoped I had) laid down, and he was moved by the things that moved me. So at some point, when the kids were only a bit older and it was much harder for both my husband and I to find the time, I asked Terry if he'd be willing to read things and give me some sense of what was, or was not, missing.
He has a couple of interesting ways at looking at pacing -- as a reader, he notices it in ways that I don't -- and one thing about his reading that's always been painful is that he's pretty much always right when he argues with me about length (i.e. he generally tells me when I have no hope at all of reaching the end in the page count I'm trying desperately to reach it in).
But in both cases, they had a feel for the work and what I was trying to do with it -- and I knew that if it didn't work for them, it was going to work for no one at all. It helps that they really like my writing, and I probably wouldn't have first readers who didn't (although this might work for writers who have a different temperament). This is probably not the ideal, because ideal would be a broader reader-base -- but if I try for broader, I often end up mired in things that don't work for the book itself, and that's paralyzing for me as a writer.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-05-27 03:12 am (UTC)My husband, my first first reader, was a given because we're moved by ridiculously similar things, and he has a slightly different take on the way those things are expressed; I would talk with him about world-building things long before I started a book, and he'd point out possible issues with balance and power, and answer military questions (he's an old, die-hard, wargamer).
My second first reader, Terry, I started corresponding with on-line just after Hunter's Death, and I read a lot of what he wrote about that book, and the books that followed; what he got out of those books was what I'd hoped I'd put into them, if that makes sense.
Some readers will get things that I didn't consciously do; some will love the book for reasons that I would never have dreamed of while writing it. But in the case of Terry, he picked up a lot of what I (hoped I had) laid down, and he was moved by the things that moved me. So at some point, when the kids were only a bit older and it was much harder for both my husband and I to find the time, I asked Terry if he'd be willing to read things and give me some sense of what was, or was not, missing.
He has a couple of interesting ways at looking at pacing -- as a reader, he notices it in ways that I don't -- and one thing about his reading that's always been painful is that he's pretty much always right when he argues with me about length (i.e. he generally tells me when I have no hope at all of reaching the end in the page count I'm trying desperately to reach it in).
But in both cases, they had a feel for the work and what I was trying to do with it -- and I knew that if it didn't work for them, it was going to work for no one at all. It helps that they really like my writing, and I probably wouldn't have first readers who didn't (although this might work for writers who have a different temperament). This is probably not the ideal, because ideal would be a broader reader-base -- but if I try for broader, I often end up mired in things that don't work for the book itself, and that's paralyzing for me as a writer.