Leave 'em Satisfied

Both of my parents are aspiring fiction writers, so we quite frequently chat about writing on the phone. The other day my dad startled me by saying, "I've figured something out. When you're writing, all you have to do is get the reader interested, keep them interested all the way through, and leave 'em satisfied." It startled me, because it's SO true. This is a revelation I had a couple of years ago. Forget the "rules," forget style, forget plot, forget character. All of these things are just ways to reach the ultimate zen of "keep 'em itnerested, leave 'em satisfied." So easy, yet so hard. I was surprised, though, that my father had come to such an identical conclusion as I had. Is this something all writers figure out at some point? Or are my father and I exhibiting father-daughter brain-likeness?

I told my dad that I thought the "leave 'em satisfied" part was hardest. It requires knowing and understanding what the reader is after and giving it to them, often in spite of their own conscious wishes. Tricky stuff. How about everyone else? How do you keep 'em interested and leave 'em satisfied?

Comments

[Catherine Shaffer]

Oops! That was me! I could swear I put my name on there.

[Erica]

I guess that for me it boils down to the fact that if I'm bored writing it, they'll be bored reading it. If I satisfy myself, if I am interested and enthusiastic about the story and the characters, that will come through. Having other sets of eyes is particularly useful in telling me where I have not communicated that interest and enthusiasm sufficiently, and having other sets of eyes that are knowledgable about the craft of writing means that I get good feedback from the reader about how to rectify that lack.

As an extension of the above point, the more feedback I get, the greater 'database' I have of what works and what doesn't work for doing different things in a story. The more information I have, the better I can generalize about how to do something in a particular story.

Since I'm writing about this, it occurs to me that half of the way I write is pure Zen instinct, and the other half is extremely deliberate choices about word usage, sentence lengths, and rhythm. Rhythm is very important to me, be it the rhythm of speech, the rhythm of varying sentence lengths, or even the rhythm of tension as a story moves from one scene to another. I almost always 'hear' the words in my head as I'm writing, much, I think, as Steven has commented that he always sees the scene or story in his head.

Whew! Quite an info-dump, and I'm not sure how much of it really answers the question you were asking, but there you go.

[Affinity]

A good many vualbales you've given me.