Questions I'm asked at the store: Entitlement thoughts part 2

[msagara]

Having covered probably the most common reader complaint I've heard over the years in the bookstore, I'm now going to move directly to one of the next most common.

I hate LKH for turning Anita Blake into such an oversexed solipsist. Doesn't she realize that she's losing all her fans?

This one, oddly enough, I have more problems with, for a variety of reasons. And this one follows more clearly amber_fool's question, which spawned the previous two posts indirectly.

The first problem would be: LKH regularly hits NYT #1 with her later books. She is clearly not losing all her fans. The argument made here isn't based on what I can see as objective fact, unlike the previous argument downstream; in the previous post the base fact is: Book 5 or book 3 do not exist, which is immutable.

In this case, however, it's clear to me that LKH's writing choices are not losing her all her fans. An author doesn't climb to #1 on the NYT bestseller list consistently without any fans.

When it comes down to brass tacks (and where does that phrase come from?), what's being said here is: I hate what she's done with the series I used to love. Hate it. Hate it.

And I have no problems with that. But that's not how it's worded (let me just add: I get a lot of the flat-out Hate it comments, and those don't push entitlement buttons for me because there's no point for discussion; the reader hates the book. I can't very well say "no you don't!" and not seem insane or inattentive).

Did I read the early books? Yes. And I enjoyed them. Do I like the direction she chose to go in? No. No, I don't. Did I stop reading them? Yes, because I didn't like what she was doing. Do I hate her? Well, no. Do I make dire predictions for her future career based on the fact that I didn't like where she was going? No. I can see that if I didn't care for the direction Anita was taking, a lot of other people did; she's selling. She has a lot of fans; some people clearly did enjoy where she took her characters, and they wanted to go along for that ride.

I got off the bus.

It's her right as an author to write what she feels compelled to write as long as she has a publisher who agrees that it's viable; hell, it's her right to do so even if she doesn't. It's my right as a reader to stop reading when I don't care for what she feels compelled to write.

What I don't understand are the readers who still read those books, while hating on them so ferociously. The hate-on isn't going to change what she chooses to write because if you read her blog, she's clearly dedicated to her vision. I admire the dedication; I don't admire the results.

So, bottom line for me here is: I don't like where this book is going, and I'm not willing to shed money to get it there.

This, however, is the bookseller and reader response. The author response is different. So I'm now going to talk a little about me-in-my-writer-hat response, because in this case, the author response is a little more visceral.

I write a series of novels, which I distinguish from a multi-volume single story in a variety of structural ways. I try to keep the books as self-contained as possible, while allowing the characters the room to grow or change. I haven't been entirely successful at self-contained writing--but I'm continuing to reach for that in the Cast novels. As I write, and continue to write them, the world does change as consequences of previous actions come to the fore; the characters change as they grow. And here's the thing about that: some of the changes will not be the ones that some of the readers are hoping for. Do I know which changes those are? No, actually, I don't. But I do know it will happen, because it seems almost inevitable.

Am I aware that I, like LKH, will lose readers for making choices that seem natural to me--and don't to some readers--within a series? Yes. Yes, I am.

Does this fill me with joy? Why, no, now that you ask, it really doesn't. No one wants to disappoint their readers. And not just for mercenary reasons, although those exist. It's hard, when you put the time and work into a book. to have it fall flat or fail with readers, especially with readers who liked and supported the previous volumes in a series. They feel angry, or even betrayed, because the characters they loved are wandering off in a direction they didn't anticipate when they started reading the series. And as a writer, I feel insecure and worried because I did somehow have their attention, and I failed to maintain it. I failed to write something that could sell the changes and the story I was telling to that segment of readership so that said changes naturally seemed the only possible outcome.

What I hope is that those readers don't then assume that I'm writing a book that disappoints and annoys them with the intent of doing either; I'm not.

But, like LKH, I have stories I want to tell, and on some base level, they're my stories. I want to write them well enough that they're clear to the readers who read them; I want to make them compelling enough that the story I'm trying to tell works for them.

That's the important phrase for me: the story I'm trying to tell. There are hundreds of ways to fail the story I'm trying to tell. When I see reviews which point some of these things out, it's clear to me that I did fail, and it's clear to me how. Not all of the choices that seem clear to me while I'm writing are as clear to readers who don't have my brain.

But when readers don't care for the book because it's not the book they wanted, as opposed to not a well-executed book, it's trickier. When they are angry--as they are with LKH--about the fact that the books are not the books they wanted to read, it does push my buttons on the writer side, in a way that the reader/bookseller side fails entirely to notice.

I think it's ultimately a losing game to attempt to write novels--or TV shows--to a vocal subset of the readers a writer does have. Because while I understand what some readers want to see, I'm not at all convinced that a story that comes solely from a desire to placate readers, and not as a consequence of a writer's deep investment, is going to work for anyone.

I think a writer has a responsibility to their story.

I think a writer has a responsibility to write that story to the best of their ability.

I think a reader has the right to react to that story in whatever way they react: love it, hate it, fall asleep half-way through it. Throw it against the wall. Refuse to buy anything else by that author Ever Again. Tell people how much they hated the book, and why.

But. I don't think a reader has the right to expect or demand that the story be something entirely different; I don't think they have the right to demand that a writer's responsibility to them is much, much larger than it is to their story, because while a given reader may hate the story, not every reader will or does.

I can tell you what I hated about the LKH books. I can tell you exactly where I stopped. I can complain bitterly about what the books had become. But I don't hate LKH for not writing the books that I wanted to read. I don't, in my anger and disappointment, assume that because I didn't like the books, she should understand what she should have written instead, because it is not, in fact, all about me. I know that she feels strongly about the story she needs to tell. And it's clear to me that there are readers who want to read the story she feels she has to tell.

Comments

[rhyssafireheart.livejournal.com]

<3 and thank you for this.

In fact, you could substitute "online game" for "book" and "developer" for "author" and not change the meaning of this post at all. I wish more forum posters understood that about gaming development (not that I'm in the field or anything, mind you).

As for LKH's books, I never picked them up because even the initial ones didn't catch my interest, and when the hoopla started around what she was doing later in the series, I still wasn't interested. As you said, it's her right to write what she chooses and the publisher to put it out there. Writing a story with little fandom in-jokes and things the author knows the fans will get a kick out of is completely different than writing something only because you know that's what the fans want to read.

I personally don't think I'd want to read the second kind of book because pandering to readers just to keep sales (if that's the attempt) still doesn't mean it's going to be what I want to read. It's doubtful that what reader A wants is the same as what readers B, C, D want. If I wanted an author to write something just to please me, then several of my favorite series wouldn't be nearly as exciting as they actually are.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I think you could replace 'book' with a lot of things in this case. You see something like this in music when bands are accused of 'selling out', which has never made sense to me at all. Isn't making money a part of the whole idea in the first place? Don't you want to be happy for the people who made what made you happy now that they can do it /and/ make money? Pretty much anything that has passionate fans will get this sort of reaction, I've found.

While on one hand, I get it, people are passionate and they care and when a person worries about something they care about they can get a little (or a lot) worked up. I don't like when it gets negative and personal and as if there is some sort of right to have the as of yet unpublished/unproduced/uncreated works. Creating is hard work and it is rarely a smooth process.

[axisor.livejournal.com]

I do believe it was Gaiman that said something like "Authors aren't trained monkeys, meant to write at the reader's demands"

I probably butchered the quote, but that is my opinion too. If I don't like what a writer is writing I stop reading. I struggle enough to get through books I love with everything else going on in my life.

On a side note:

"GET DOWN TO BRASS TACKS" - According to the American Heritage Idiom Dictionary, it first showed up in the late 1800s, believed to refer to the brass tacks under fine upholstery, though other potential sources are that it is a Cockney rhyming slang for "hard facts." A third option "alludes to tacks hammered into a sales counter to indicate precise measuring points."

[msagara.livejournal.com]

re: Brass Tacks: Thank you :)

[shanrina.livejournal.com]

I don't think a reader has the right to expect or demand that the story be something entirely different

I'm not sure if I completely agree with this. If several books in a series have already been published and the author has established a certain tone for the series, then I don't think it's unfair for a reader to expect that the later books will be similar in tone and feel, or at least close enough that they don't feel like a completely different series. This is especially true if the author didn't drop hints about the direction that the story would be going in. Not having read much of LKH's work, I can't say whether or not she hinted at the changes that would eventually take place or if it just came out of left field.

In the end, the story is the author's, yes. But when a reader has come to expect a certain thing from a series brand, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some level of tone continuity. I'm not saying that authors should keep writing something they're not passionate about just for sales purposes (which must be absolutely awful--I can't imagine writing a book I'm not intensely passionate about). But I do think that an author makes certain unspoken promises to the reader (to keep to a certain level of age-appropriateness, to keep a certain gritty feel, to answer a certain story question that stretches out over several books, or even to make sure that when the series ends two characters wind up together). I'm not sure we can blame the reader for expecting that those promises would be kept.

This certainly isn't the case every time a reader gives up on a series, though. For example, I know for me that Goodkind was more of a war of attrition. I kept on slogging through his books until I just couldn't slog anymore, but the things that bothered me about his books are things that were there right from the beginning. In that situation, I would have had no right to expect Goodkind to change his story just for me because, at least as far into the series that I got, he kept every promise he made in the beginning.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I completely agree with this. If several books in a series have already been published and the author has established a certain tone for the series, then I don't think it's unfair for a reader to expect that the later books will be similar in tone and feel, or at least close enough that they don't feel like a completely different series.

Tone is a difficult thing to judge, but I think in this case it's irrelevant. It seems clear to me that if the reader-base grows over time, which LKH's has done, there's no argument that can be made that her work is not working for readers, since no one is forcing hundreds of thousands of people to buy her book in hardcover.

The argument you can make is that you feel the tone of the work has radically changed -- but when she's consistently hitting the NYT list in a position that most authors can only dream of doing, it's clearly a matter of personal preference.

And in this case, a single reader's (or even a vocal minority's) personal preference doesn't trump hers, because hers is clearly working for a larger number of readers.

I don't like where she went. But honestly, when she was writing what I liked, she wasn't NYT #1. She's writing what she likes, and she is.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

But I do think that an author makes certain unspoken promises to the reader (to keep to a certain level of age-appropriateness, to keep a certain gritty feel, to answer a certain story question that stretches out over several books, or even to make sure that when the series ends two characters wind up together). I'm not sure we can blame the reader for expecting that those promises would be kept.

I don't see this. In the case Karen Miller mentions below, when an author writes Book One of a series, I do think there's some promise implied that there will be Book Two, Book Three, and etc., until Book Last. I've written about that before, and while I wasn't perhaps as emphatic as karenmiller was in the previous thread, I do agree, for my part.

However, a promise that an author will finish the series is exactly that: it's a promise to finish. It's not a promise to write a specific story that is somehow intuited by the reader's response to the first volume. The genre does imply that things will stay within a broad set of boundaries. I don't however see how you can intuit a specific promise, even unspoken, that the story will be what you want it to be when it comes to a close.

Unless it's clearly labeled as a Romance, in which case you have every right to expect an HEA.

Can you give me an example of something you consider a breach of that unspoken promise? An example might make clearly what you mean, or how you're using the phrase.

[oakwind.livejournal.com]

I think I disagree with this. While it would be nice if a reader's expectations could be met by the books it isn't something that is the writer's responsibility. Expectations are created by the reader from their unique set of life circumstances, mental/creative abilities, and desires. The writer may see their series quite differently. Each reader most likely has a different set of expectations. Even the word expectations is interesting. I would rather read a book that is going to give me something I didn't expect to keep it interesting. Of course, I also want it to meet some of my expectations, like if I pick up an SF book I want it to be SF. I can still enjoy it with elements of romance, or mystery, or fantasy as long as it is still primarily SF. But beyond those kinds of broad expectations I feel like I am stepping into the writer's world, which they are sharing with me, and as a guest I am prepared to be entertained and delighted.

[djonn]

Disclaimer: I read the first couple of Anita Blake novels (and as I recall, gave the very first one a reasonably favorable review, way back when), but let that series fall by the wayside a book or two before the point where -- according to most of Early LKH Fandom -- the series jumped the shark. I have since glanced into a few of the newer ones in the bookstore, and haven't been inspired to return. (I admit it, I keep looking for the hot sex scenes she's supposed to be writing nowadays...and not finding them. Evidently either I have really unlucky page-flipping skills, or LKH's idea of hot sex isn't mine. But we digress.)

Anyhow. From what I've read of the anti-LKH arguments (and seen in deconstructions of other literary and TV series), the case the anti-LKH faction makes is very, very similar to yours....

....except that where you describe an author's obligation to story, the opposing case argues an obligation to character -- and therefore argues that the paradigm-shift in the Anita Blake books arose because the author forced her heroine down a path that the character, as she'd previously been established, would never have taken.

From a reader's perspective, I think that's a defensible premise. As noted above, I haven't read enough of the right books to judge whether LKH forced Anita into OOC (out-of-character) action when that series switched gears, but I think the idea that inconsistent characterization is a violation of reader expectations is valid, and that it can be usefully discussed in relation to particular works.

An example: when Laurie R. King's second Sherlock Holmes pastiche (A Monstrous Regiment of Women) first appeared, opinions on a key event in the story were very sharply divided, with one camp arguing that King had adopted an extremely out-of-character portrayal of Holmes in order to arrive at the event in question. Myself, I thought the portrayal of Holmes was among the most effective and nuanced I've encountered -- but I could see where the complainers were coming from.

Now the King case is complicated by the fact that she didn't actually create Sherlock Holmes, so there are actually two authors in play: King herself, as immediate storyteller, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as source of the canonical Holmes. If one judges the King series solely by King's own portrayal, then there's little room for objection; the Holmes of the first book and the Holmes of the second are clearly the same character, portrayed consistently from one volume to the next. By contrast, if one seeks to discern whether King's Holmes is consistent with Doyle's, there's more room for discussion. (I think she fully justifies her extrapolation -- unlike most other authors who've tried to pull off that particular plot. But whichever way one comes down, the discussion is clearly a discussion of the texts, not the authors' intentions.)

A further point of contrast: the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film, now referred to by most as a "reboot" of the Trek franchise. Trek fans have several decades of emotional investment in Kirk, Spock, and the "classic" iterations of those characters. Abrams and his writers definitely see them through slightly different eyes -- but via clever writing, they presented the new story in a way that upheld the validity of the prior timeline (and its forty-odd years' worth of associated characterization). In so doing, they afforded viewers/readers a significant degree of respect -- something first-gen Anita Blake fans might argue that LKH failed to do when she paradigm-shifted that series.

[manga-crow.livejournal.com]

Totally agree with this.

Along with character, though, there is also theme. Though I see that betrayed more often in longer running series, especially manga. Naruto, for example, spent a great deal of time at the beginning building the theme of "hard work overcomes inborn ability/limitations" only to have that theme completely contradicted by the second half of the series.

While I've never seen the change in LKH's work as a character reversal (actually, I think Anitia makes a fine villain) but the early themes of "moral choice" and "the price of power" were completely scattered to the winds later on. Personally, I never enjoyed them very much to begin with, so I didn't get worked up about it, but I can see why some people do.

[tammy-moore.livejournal.com]

I loved the early Anita novels and stopped reading them around two books after I stopped enjoying them. It makes me sad to see the direction that LKH has taken the books because I don't think she's ever going to write a book/character I want to read again. I think there's some of that in the LKH anti-fans, like calling an ex in the middle of the night to tell them how much you don't love them.

I think it's also trying to make sense of where the books went wrong for us as readers. Anita and her world worked and worked for me and then, quite abruptly it seemed, they really, really didn't. It's hard not to poke the corpse to try and work it out.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I think there's some of that in the LKH anti-fans, like calling an ex in the middle of the night to tell them how much you don't love them.

o.o

I think it's also trying to make sense of where the books went wrong for us as readers. Anita and her world worked and worked for me and then, quite abruptly it seemed, they really, really didn't. It's hard not to poke the corpse to try and work it out.

I'm down with that, though. I can tell you exactly where and why the books went wrong for me, and where they lost me; I can tell you why they had me up to that point. l can even rant :D.

I have nothing at all against that. Dissecting is what readers often do when things don't work. Poke away; I do, especially when people ask in the store.

But there's a different between that poking (why I hate these books) and the spillover into Why I Hate LKH -- and it's the latter that I see as making hugely personal something that wasn't intended that way.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

What you said, absolutely.
I get a certain amount of flack in my non-fiction life over the issue of women in mediaeval Celtic cultures. The popular myth is that they were all equal, sword-swinging, self-empowered etc etc. The truth is precisely the opposite. There are no reliable early sources to support the popular image. There are no authentic 'pagan' sources that prove that the women were Free! until Christianity arrived. Rather the opposite, in fact. Celtic cultures were very masculine, very divided and no paradise for women, and the arrival of Christianity in fact improved female status somewhat. But people do not want to hear this: they are entitled to their Free Celtic Druidess Ancestors. I've lost track of the number of times I've been ranted at, accused of various sinister agenda, required to justify why I think I know anything (PhD and 20 years teaching and research experience is not enough for some people) and had it explained to me how I am wrong because the speaker's guardian spirits/coven/personal link to a god say otherwise. I understand their feelings, I really do, but they could be polite and refrain from forms of ethnic abuse at the very least.

[djonn]

Idle question on the Celtic-women matter, unrelated to the rest of the thread: are you familiar with the "Sister Fidelma" historical mysteries written by "Peter Tremayne" (aka Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis), and if so, how rightly or wrongly would you say he portrays 6th-7th century Ireland and its treatment of women in those books?

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

The contract between writer and reader isn't "Write what I tell you to" or "I wrote it, you'd better read it", but "I write what I want (subject to editing, etc.) and you read what you want."

Now, I believe that an author should feel obliged to remain consistent to the ground rules within a series, but it's not something that an author required to do. Just as how I feel that once a story went off the rails, I'm no longer obligated to read it. I don't hate the writer for that, but I am disappointed.

One thing I do wonder at is whether writers enjoy having their work critiqued in the same fashion that the classic works are picked at in a school/university setting. I imagine that it doesn't come up in the discussion very much, but I recall doing a term paper on the Foundation Trilogy back in high school (Foundation's Edge had just come out, so I didn't count it).

[snapsnzips.livejournal.com]

This entire discussion is fascinating for me. I'm just a reader. I don't write, and I prefer to read in a vacuum. I avoid reviews prior to reading a book and I often don't want to know what other people think of books that I've loved, lest they point something out that ruins it for me. I also have no desire to deconstruct characters and decisions by characters the way I've seen done on some discussion lists. I prefer to go back for second and third reads and learn more about things through those additional read-throughs.

I also find the constant speculation on lists and forums about who will end up with who endlessly frustrating. Who cares? I want to know what happens period and the constant talking about people "getting together" irritates me. So many readers reduce complex stories to romance novels and get upset when their chosen couple doesn't "get together."

I try to avoid feelings of reader entitlement, although I have been bitterly disappointed on a few occasions by authors I've loved. I have also wandered away from series that have failed to hold my interest, although my level of reading compulsion makes this a high barrier.

I did wander away from LKH after about 6 books or so because my fingers got tired from page turning past all the sex scenes that started to bore me. What I'm reading here in the comments makes me think there's something else interesting going on in the story line though and maybe I'll wander back and see.
(sascha commenting via LJ ID)

[beccastareyes]

I can see people reading series that they once loved after they go in a different direction in the hope that the author will bring back the thing the reader loved about it. But... this is why I read book reviews. If I liked books A-C of an author and hated D and on, then I'll stop buying the series. And maybe keep an eye out every time the author writes something new.

There are also series for which I only buy in paperback, because they are a balance between 'I like this' and 'this annoys me', so I never know what the balance will be.

Granted, there is a fun element to ranting, but I try to keep it to the book, not the author. Mostly the fun is in figuring out why I am having such a strong emotional reaction, working out ways I could do it in a way that pleases me more, and generalizing to other writing.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on LKH -- enjoyed the first few books, then stopped reading. I'm glad others enjoy the direction she took the series and there are plenty of other books out there that are just what I want.

[(Anonymous)]

"What I don't understand are the readers who still read those books, while hating on them so ferociously."

Yeah, I'm baffled by that one. If I have liked several of an author's books but then try one I don't like, I'll often (though not always) give them another chance... but after I've tried TWO books and not liked them, I stop reading that author. TWO books is one book too many for me to keep thinking of this as an author whose work I STILL like, even if I used to like it or liked his/her earlier work.

I gather from their own comments that some readers continue reading a writer when they no longer like his/her work because they're longing to repeat the reading experience they had with the author's earlier work; and each time they AGAIN don't get it and find they STILL don't like the author's newer work, they get upset. This attitude represents a tragically flat learning curve. ESPECIALLY in cases where the reader has had this experience with more than one author. Indeed, it exemplifies the popular definition of INSANITY, i.e. doing the same thing over and over and yet expecting a different result.

Another common reason is that readers get attached to characters and, in a series, want to know how the characters will end up, and/or want answers to still-unresolved questions/mysteries/conundrums introduced early in the series, back when they were still enjoying the books, and which have YET to be anwered. I'm much more sympathetic to this reason for continuing to read a writer whose work keeps disappointing in more-recent volumes, since "wanting to know the end" even after no longer liking the authors work makes some sense to me--especially after a reader has read 700,000 or 1,500,000 words about the characters and their world. (OTOH, frankly, having pushed all the way through to the end of Diana Gabaldon's ECHO IN THE BONE... I now regret the effort, regard it as two weeks of my reading life that I'll never get back, and find I DON'T CARE what happens to the characters or the gazillion dangling story threads; so I'm certainly done with -that- author's never-ending tale.)

[groblek.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on this one - if an author I'm reading takes what I see as an unpleasant change partway into a series, I may stop reading the series and possibly the author (depending on a lot of factors), but I don't see a reason to rant and rail about the author just because I dislke their choice of story.

[slweippert.livejournal.com]

I liked the early books, but got off the bus too when the plot took a turn into boring for me. If I wanted to read lots of sex I can find that in that subset of Romance with all the sex, which I don't read either. IMHO, she turned it into a sexy romance series, which is fine, but not what it was at the beginning.

You make a good point that LKH should take her story where she wants to. I just wish she would have started another series with the qualities Anita used to have. For me, her struggle to keep her humanity against the supernaturals' onslaught was what was so great about the early books.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

For me, her struggle to keep her humanity against the supernaturals' onslaught was what was so great about the early books.

This is exactly what I liked about the earlier books, and the reason that the last one I read was Narcisuss in Chains. I knew at the end of that book that she was no longer concerned with that struggle; that she was concerned, rather, with people who would love and accept her unconditionally as she was.

And that feels real, to me -- but not what I was interested in.

[(Anonymous)]

As an author you have the right to follow whatever muse moves you. However, as a reader I expect to purchase a book that has been proofread/edited, dare I say it, polished. While I didn't like the direction LKH took her characters in, what really burned me was how poorly crafted her books became. Really, you're on the best seller list but I find instances where you use the incorrect form of the possessive, fail to conjugate verbs correctly or you repeatedly use the same adjective in multiple adjacent sentences. Not cool. And I hate to say it, I sort of feel like the best seller list is the kiss of death to some authors - I don't know if they become divas and refuse to have thier books edited or what, but the quality often drops off pretty noticeably once they are on the list.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

While I didn't like the direction LKH took her characters in, what really burned me was how poorly crafted her books became.

This isn't so much a problem with the author in most cases, though; in theory the publisher has proof-readers, line-editors and copy-editors to catch things like this before the book sees print.

I would love to say that I'm enormously careful and never make those mistakes when I submit a book - but I wouldn't be able to say it with a straight face. I always miss something.

[nicbemused.livejournal.com]

I have to say that as a reader and an aspiring writer, I think a writer should be aware that certain actions will likely lose the trust of their audience.

If a writer is writing a trilogy, stopping after book two and then spending a decade going, OK, am going to write it now, right after this next project, if you could all please remind me of the canon for my series. No, really, this time. No, really this time. There is an author whose other 2 series I've read and loved who did this and I will not be buying another trilogy of hers until it is finished, because I have no trust. Follow-through, helpful.

A writer should not switch genres in the middle of the series. If one is writing a hardboiled urban fantasy detectivish series, one should not be making an abrupt shift into paranormal erotica. Especially if one is bad at the erotica part. Consistency, helpful.

A writer should not FORGET THEIR OWN CANON. Characters should changer neither names nor sexuality between books. Consistency, helpful.

A writer should do their research. If one is going to write about abuse centered cultures of violence, reading up on the psychology of the abuser, victim, and survivor might help. (I might have made it at least one book past Incubus Dreams had LKH bothered to research. I'm a professional counselor and her abuse and violence responses in Narcissus through Incubus DROVE ME UP THE WALL they were so off, and I have a really good suspension of disbelief most of the time.) Research, helpful.

A writer should not tell irritated readers that they are only irritated because they are too stupid and "mundane" to understand the wonderful dark plotiness of their new direction. Professional behavior, usually helpful.

It is also helpful if the writer has a friend who tells them when there is excessive self exposure happening. Now it might just be the psychology training talking, but if every hero in your (extensive) series looks basically the same, acts basically the same and has the exact same favorite sexual position (this isn't necessarily LKH although she resembles some of this), your fantasy life may be showing a leetle too much. (mostly I find this amusing, but it does break the 4th wall for me).

[coraa.livejournal.com]

For me, it's always boiled down to: the author is entitled to write whatever they want, and I as a reader am entitled to like or dislike it (and say so).

Which is to say that if—to make up an example—an author wrote two volumes of a trilogy as lighthearted medievaloid fantasy and the third as gritty modern technothriller, I'd defend their right to do so... but I might very well say, "I hated the direction the third book went, and I don't recommend it."

I don't think that readers ought to take it personally when an author does something they don't like (unless the author actually comes out and says, "I did this to piss off my readers," in which case it is a bit more personal), but on the flip side, I don't think the author is entitled to positive response, either.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I don't think that readers ought to take it personally when an author does something they don't like (unless the author actually comes out and says, "I did this to piss off my readers," in which case it is a bit more personal), but on the flip side, I don't think the author is entitled to positive response, either.

I don't think an author (any author) is entitled to positive response either. I'd say my response in the case of the later LKH books was an unmitigated negative one. But in your example, you're focusing on the fact that you disliked the book that she wrote; you're discommending it. That pushes none of my buttons; as a writer, you've got to accept that your work is not going to be beloved, and might even be hated.

But when I hate a book, I don't hate an author, and it seems to me that with LKH in particular (and a little with GRRM), that's not the case.

[janni.livejournal.com]

But I don't hate LKH for not writing the books that I wanted to read. I don't, in my anger and disappointment, assume that because I didn't like the books, she should understand what she should have written instead, because it is not, in fact, all about me

That is usefully clarifying to me. Because every time I've run into anti-LKH discussions online, they've made me uncomfortable with the degree of anger directed not at the story, but at the author.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

That is usefully clarifying to me. Because every time I've run into anti-LKH discussions online, they've made me uncomfortable with the degree of anger directed not at the story, but at the author.

It (obviously) bothers me as well--I don't even like her books, but I always feel an almost visceral need to defend her =/. I also do this with the Twilight books, and I couldn't finish the first one. That's more an in-store battle, however.

[uneide.livejournal.com]

I can understand falling in love with characters, with their worlds and their struggles; haven't we all done that at some point? Where it crosses into entitlement for me is when the reader seems to imply that they know best.
A few years back I had one particular series of stories I would update weekly, and a decent following. I made the mistake of making my email address public, and while much of the feedback was positive ( or when negative fairly objective critiques) it was the type of attitude you describe that I couldn't get over.
I received hate mail telling me that a character would never do the things I'd had them do, or feel the way I'd written they were feeling.
That they, the reader knew better, and that I was writing them wrong.

I can understand people not liking a particularly facet of a character, a certain storyline or an event that changes where they thought the story was headed. What I can't understand ( and frankly cannot stand) is someone telling me that they know my characters better than I do, simply because they don't like the direction that they are heading in.

The other issue I have is that people expect characters to be static sometimes, to experience no growth. For me part of the joy of writing is that I don't always know the ways that a character will evolve, but I enjoy finding out. Knowing that specific decisions and events WILL change who that character was, and that his reactions and behavior will likely be different as a result.

As a writer my goal is to tell the story in my head in a way I feel is faithful to the story AND the characters, not in the way my readers feel it ought to have been written.

[dmdomini.livejournal.com]

Some folks have already touched on it, but with the Anita Blake series, as far as I can tell, what it came down to (in me at least, but which I think is a reaction mirrored in a portion of other readers) was a perceived bait and switch.

"Anita Blake" is a brand; it was even marketed as a brand, a series of novels about this "Anita Blake" character. The first nine books had a specific mixture of elements, with the mystery Anita had to solve or plot as the driving force, with a few side romantic/erotic subplots around the sides for spice. With Narcissus in Chains and the later books, the mystery became a subplot, and the erotica came very, very heavily to the fore as the driving force of the books. After nine years, and nine books, fans can get pretty emotionally invested in a series, and when you pick up the next installment of your favorite series only to find it's actually shifted subgenres and demographics--without specifically telling you this by a change in marketing or title or the like so you can bow out before you start reading the book--you kind of feel like a bait and switch was pulled on you. You went in expecting something that 9 books and 9 years of experience have taught you to expect. You really, really wanted another installment of what you had before. And instead you get something different--that still has the brand name attached to it, some how, some way. Bait and switch. The reader feels betrayed.

And like others have pointed out, the reaction really is sort of like breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend...they spring something out of the blue on you, something really big, and they're suddenly not the man or woman you began dating years ago. (That doesn't say it excuses bad behavior of ex fans either, any more than becoming vicious to an ex after you break up with them is acceptable.) The Anita Blake series went through a sudden, abrupt shift in focus, and suddenly a certain set of people who had loved and championed the series for years felt...baffled. Surprised. Confused. Very, very disappointed. It's easy for this to turn into bitterness, and vitriol on the web.

I agree with the person who mentioned how the Merry Gentry series, which are the same "kind" of stories as the newer Anita Blake books, doesn't really bother anyone because it's a new series that started out that way in the first place. And I do think it's because there was no previous brand that was being thrown out the window. Thus far, you sort of know what to expect from a Merry Gentry book. There was no previous standard to judge it by. It makes it a lot easier to accept a set of ideas or way of writing that vastly deviates from the before established "norm" (such as a prior series by that author) if you make sure to call it out some way.

Jacqueline Carey is actually pretty good with this; while she's almost completed 3 trilogies of Kushiel books (which is her best known world), but she also has Santa Olivia which is SO different in style and tone that it's hard to believe it's still the same author penning it, and the Sundering duology which is sort of a reply to the tropes set forth in LOTR and copied everywhere since. She has set expectations with fans that yeah, she'll write the stories she wishes to, but she'll be clear on marking them so that the reader knows if it'll be a Kushiel book or not.

So I think setting expectations for a reader by making it clear where the switch will happen--because I also agree that it's not a writer's job to endlessly slave for their fanbase without bothering or being "allowed" to explore and grow and tell new stories--is something to ponder if you're a writer planning to do a series, or a writer planning on being prolific and building up a devoted fanbase over the course of decades. That way, you can set expectations beforehand, and avoid the whole fan outcry fiasco.

Although I do suppose there's still a point in that despite the fiasco among a vocal portion of her fandom, she's still a bestselling author. I'm still pondering what forces are at work there.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Although I do suppose there's still a point in that despite the fiasco
among a vocal portion of her fandom, she's still a bestselling author.
I'm still pondering what forces are at work there.

Some of the readers here (two who quit reading, one who didn't) have said in this thread that they didn't perceive it as a bait and switch, which is to say, they didn't feel that it violated the character as she'd been written. Two didn't like the direction shift, one didn't mind it and kept reading. The fact that they still sell, and the fact that three people here said they didn't feel like it violated character, implies that this isn't an overall betrayal; it's a personal reaction to the text. And I get that, because I respond strongly to fiction--but at the same point in time, I respond to the book.

I'm guessing that a number of people didn't mind it and kept reading, and some of them came to the series expecting it to be what it became, so they didn't have the extreme hatred about the shift in character--just a desire to read the books.

Yes, this is late. I realize that. Sorry!

[ben roth (from livejournal.com)]

Your post overall is reasonable and fair, except for one aspect of it; if an author establishes a series as having a certain level of quality, a certain type of story or tone, etc., that readers enjoy and want more of, then when a new book comes out they will buy that book. You can say all you want about "Well, if you dislike what direction the series has taken, you should quit buying the books," but the problem is that YOU HAVE TO BUY TO FIND OUT. If I read 10 Anita Blake books and then the 11th is suddenly bad sex-filled and without plot of any kind, it's not until after I've purchased, read, and been given a bad taste in my mouth from the book that I will know about the change and that AB is no longer the type of book I want to read. Of course, it becomes even more complicated; as a reader, my response is naturally "I can't believe she did that with the book!" and I assume that everybody else had the same response as me. Along with my assumption comes the belief that, with all us vocal fans banding together to complain about what was done, the author will recognize where they went wrong, so to speak, and fix it in the following book. And so I buy the next book as well, slightly skeptical but hoping for the best. Yet the next book is even worse!

My point is this; If you have a number of well-written books with characters that I like, you've built up a certain amount of trust. Whether your books shift in a direction I dislike slowly or quickly, it takes a bit of time for that to fade away; I'll give you a few extra chances. Most people are like this. So, it is not reasonable to expect that once an author makes a change, that the series is different all of a sudden, readers will know when to stop. There's always the hope or expectation that the author will go back to writing what originally hooked us in. In this respect, it's far, far worse than an author who writes crap (from the reader's perspective) from the beginning; after the first book sucks, you quit reading. Books that turn to crap later, however, already have a lot of momentum behind them because you want to find out what happened to the story and characters you liked.

So, the bottom line is this: it really is fair for readers to expect that an author maintain consistency in their series. If they want to change the tone, they should quit writing those books and start something else. LKH started another series, the Merry Gentry books, and they were the exact tone that AB turned into later. I read the first book, realized it was going to be what I didn't like about Anita Blake, and stopped. I do not have any problems with LKH for writing the Merry Gentry books, because her writing in them was honest; she set the tone from the first book for what they were going to be like. I do, however, intensely dislike her for the way she changed the Anita Blake books. She should have either stopped writing them rather than deciding to change the type of book completely or written something on the side (Merry Gentry) as her sexual creative outlet and kept Anita Blake true to its roots.

I fully believe she has ruined the series, regardless of the fact that it hits #1 consistently. The technical quality of LKH's writing has decreased and she has not remained true to the character or tone of the series she started. This is my opinion not only because the books took a direction I do not like, but also because I have the objective belief that a best-selling series should not be transformed into something else. The fans of the original books are what made LKH a best-seller, and she did betray them by using her fanbase to justify the publishing of her poorly-written sexual fantasies.

Regardless of what sales figures imply, popularity does not imply quality. I think AB is a perfect example of that statement.