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

[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.

[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.

[tammy-moore.livejournal.com]

I think that's because it's a one-to-one relationship for the reader, but not for the author. So it feels almost like a peronal snub rather than an impersonal artistic or business decision?

[eagle]

Given the complete character reversals that real people in real life sometimes go through, I find it difficult to find firm ground from which to argue that a character would never have done something. People do some fairly unexpected things, and every once in a while will do something like walk away from their life and principles and adopt different ones. Characters therefore probably need the freedom to do that as well occasionally, at least insofar as fiction is a mirror of life.

I do see the sort of shift that you're talking about, but apart from the cases that are just bad writing (shoehorning a character into the plot, for example, or not maintaining consistent characterization), which I think are no more or less objectionable than any other type of bad writing, I think "the character would never have done that" is often an expression of objection to a change in genre. A lot of readers are fairly attached to their genre (or, more generally, pick books based on the match between genre and mood) and don't like to be surprised.

I suspect a genre shift is part of what's going on with LKH. The initial Anita Blake books started as a sort of noir urban fantasy, then turned into vampire romance (this was somewhat signaled), and then turned into paranormal erotica. Noir urban fantasy to paranormal erotica is quite a shift; it's not quite up there with having one's hard SF space exploration turn into portal epic fantasy, but it's a change of direction that's going to throw a few readers off the vehicle. I think a lot of the "Anita wouldn't have done that" reaction is really "Anita wouldn't have been the protagonist of paranormal erotica," which translates into "what is this paranormal erotica doing in the noir urban fantasy series I was enjoying?"

[shanrina.livejournal.com]

Yes, what she's doing now is clearly working for a lot of people (including her), and more power to her for that. But I don't think that her presence on bestseller lists means that the tone of her more recent books is the same as it was in her early books. I wasn't specifically talking about LKH in my earlier comment because I haven't read them all--it was more a general comment on reader expectations. I've come across so many critiques of her books that say very similar things (Anita doesn't feel like Anita anymore, she used to be about hunting down the monsters instead of sleeping with them) that I just have to wonder. Even the book you mention as having been your last Anita Blake book further down, Narcissus in Chains, is the one that a good portion of them say was their last as well.

What I also find interesting is that some of them still read her Merry Gentry books. I'm not as familiar with them, but from what I do know the feel seems to be somewhat similar to the later Anita Blake books. When I've asked them why, they'll say that the series always was what it was, while Anita Blake went from being about one thing to being about something completely different. Clearly not everyone minded the change. Some may have welcomed it. But I don't see the growth of the reader base as an indication that she's been writing the same kinds of books the whole time.

Of course, it's entirely possible that I've just happened to run into a statistically anomalous group of people when it comes to LKH's books, or that I just attract extremely vocal LKH detractors. However, having read the summaries of some of her more recent books and having read some of her older books, I do think there's a decent chance that there really is something different there.

[djonn]

Two quick thoughts:

First, it seems to me that part of your case presumes that the author has the full dimension of an extended series plotted out in advance...and that it's not subject to change. Some authors have made it clear in various public fora that they do, in fact, plan that far ahead (Jim Butcher, for instance). Others...not so much; in many cases, it's not unknown for authors to plot series arcs based on the number of books in the current publishing contract.

[Complicating the equation in LKH's case: I gather from a number of secondhand sources that the changes in the Anita Blake series coincided with a decidedly messy period in the author's personal life...and that a sizeable chunk of LKH's original fanbase attributes the changes in the books to fallout from the life-events. This at least raises the possibility that LKH changed the series template in mid-stream -- for reasons that may not have been connected to the internal evolution of the work(s). Now on one hand, as the author she's entitled to do that...but on the other, I think readers are entitled to frustration at a change not well foreshadowed in prior books.]

Second: as others have noted downstream, there's a genre shift involved here, and that has additional "branding" implications. To switch similes completely, I'd be right to be upset if I bought a box of cereal labeled "Lucky Charms", only to get home and find out that there were Cocoa Krispies or Grape-Nuts in it instead. Isn't it reasonable for readers to be upset if they buy a book in a series that's been marketed as "vampire fantasy" and it turns out to be "paranormal erotica" instead?

[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?

[shanrina.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean that the reader should be able to intuit a specific story from the first volume; that would be a big red flag for me personally. But I actually think allbery said it very well, even though they were responding to a different comment: the Anita Blake books started out in one subgenre, moved to a second, and are now sitting squarely in a third. I don't think it was unreasonable for early AB fans to expect that the series would stay roughly in the same subgenre. Now LKH has become associated with a different subgenre than she used to be, so new readers know what's coming. Everyone has a different idea of what could constitute a breach of unspoken promise, but I think "this series is going to stay roughly in one subgenre" is a pretty fair assumption for a reader to make.

For a musical example, there's the band Linkin Park, who released multiple albums with songs that didn't have any swearing in them. This wasn't a particular selling point for me, but I know it's really important for some people. Their most recent (as far as I know; I don't pay attention to music anymore) album, however, did have some swearing on it, and there were reviews that criticized them for that the same way there had been reviews that praised them for not swearing in earlier songs. Were they required to keep all of their songs swear-free just because their earlier music was? No. But people who considered their lack of curse words to be an essential component of their music viewed it as a promise--this band was "safe" in terms of language, and they wouldn't have to worry about hearing things that they found objectionable.

[shanrina.livejournal.com]

I was talking more on the level of a series of books than on a single book--if we're just talking about one book, then it's definitely better if the reader can't see every little plot twist coming. :) But you said it yourself--if you pick up an SF book, then you want it to be SF even if it has elements of other genres in it. So if I pick up, say, the fifth book in an SF series after reading the previous four, I don't think it's unrealistic to expect that that book will have some things in common with the previous four.

[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]

Second: as others have noted downstream, there's a genre shift involved here, and that has additional "branding" implications.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that LKH's sales popularized and defined erotic paranormal as a mainstream powerhouse. When she began her books, there were entire chapters of foreplay, for want of a better word, so there was always a high sex content; even within the first five volumes, if you read them, this was evident. Her sales numbers climbed, she was moved from Ace to Jove, and shortly after she hit the NYT gunning, there were a lot of LKH-alikes.

So I think in this specific case it's not entirely fair to accuse her of genre-drift; I think, as I said, she was the Terry Brooks of selling that sub-genre of paranormal.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I suspect a genre shift is part of what's going on with LKH. The initial Anita Blake books started as a sort of noir urban fantasy, then turned into vampire romance (this was somewhat signaled), and then turned into paranormal erotica.

I think this is a fair point -- but in my response to djonn, I've pointed out why I think it's not as easy or clear-cut in LKH's specific case.

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

I know of them and have read bits. For me, I'm afraid, they fall into the pure fantasy camp.

[amber-fool.livejournal.com]

The newer books /are/ different than the older books, but part of that is that the characters have grown, which I think was part of the point. You can see, if you go through the whole thing, how they got from point a to point b. And with the addition of a lot more sex (which was, in my understanding, a lot of the unhappiness people had) started off kind of like a snowball rolling downhill, and just got a lot bigger, right around Narcissus in Chains. But there is a definite progression to the changes in the series. They're just very significant changes.

I'm one of those people who are still a fan. I like the older stuff more, the newer is more of a guilty pleasure. Like junk food. But I enjoy it.

[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]

But I actually think allbery said it very well, even though they were responding to a different comment: the Anita Blake books started out in one subgenre, moved to a second, and are now sitting squarely in a third.

For new readers coming in to the series, this is a totally valid point. However, as I've said in this thread, LKH practically defined the mainstream paranormal & sex subgenre because she moved her character into it. Was there paranormal erotica before LKH? Probably.

But there was Fantasy before Terry Brooks, as well; Brooks was the author whose work, and the marketing of said work, created the modern Epic Fantasy sub-genre as a publishing category. LKH can't, imho, be accused of switching genres in this case because that genre in a broad publishing sense didn't exist before her.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Isn't it reasonable for readers to be upset if they buy a book in a series that's been marketed as "vampire fantasy" and it turns out to be "paranormal erotica" instead?

I promise this is the last time I will say this *wry g*. It is entirely reasonable if they're upset by the marketing, yes. HOWEVER, "paranormal erotica" as a publishing subgenre in the mainstream did not, imho, exist before LKH. There was always plenty of foreplay in the first several books; it's not like they were totally absent the sex; LKH's huge success in carrying that forward in her storyline is what made that genre hot and hugely commercially viable.

If you're the first-of, it's carving out a new niche or territory, rather than moving out of a "branding" position, imho.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I think that's because it's a one-to-one relationship for the reader, but not for the author. So it feels almost like a peronal snub rather than an impersonal artistic or business decision?

This is a very, very good point.

[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.

[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.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

That makes perfect sense to me. And yes: I don't hate authors personally for the books they wrote (or didn't write). I can't imagine disliking an author as a person except for things they did personally (as opposed to with their fiction).

[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.