Schroedinger's Author

[sqbr]

(This is a tangent I got into while writing Good writing doesn't solve all problems and decided needed it's own post. EDIT: Disclaimer 4a applies *sighs at self*

Something I find annoying in these sorts of discussions is that people act like there's either there's a single objective "goodness" that all works are judged by, or the perception of a work is almost random and completely out of the authors hands.

Obviously different people react in different ways, and the effectiveness of writing depends a lot on shared reactions to things like metaphor and the associations of words, as well as values and expectations etc. Everyone gets something different out of a story, there is no one right interpretation, and the author can never entirely predict what people will get from it. (This sort of thing is what leads to a lack of diversity in "objectively chosen good stories" when your editors are all middle class white men etc)

But.

If reader reactions were completely arbitrary anybody could be a good author. Random collections of words would be as popular as Shakespeare.

Instead, part of the skill of a good author lies in being able to craft words in a way which speak to multiple people an effective way. You can't completely control that effect, nor should you want to, but you can shape your words to make your sad scenes sad, your funny scenes funny, and your allegorical works allegorical and have a decent hope that that will be the general effect. Some of this is unconscious and difficult to control on purpose, but despite what it feels like sometimes we are not actually passive receptacles of stories from some platonic realm.

I'm not a talented or experienced writer by any means but as I see it, part of the trick to good writing is to write from what you know, let your own feelings and experiences flavour the text with a sense of authenticity. But another part is being able to imagine how your writing will affect other people. For example, if you pepper a humourous piece with in-jokes noone will laugh at it but you and your friends. I sometimes have remind myself not everyone thinks in maths metaphors.

Obviously you can't be held completely responsible for all reactions, people are weird, from not getting the point of satire to claiming your book told them to kill someone. But I think you can make an educated guess as to the general reactions of groups of people. A good and thoughtful writer will try to consider the reactions of all their possible readers when writing, not just the people who think like them (though this may just end up with them saying something like "This book probably won't appeal to teenagers and I can live with that").

EDIT: I'm NOT saying you should never write anything offensive. But I think most authors do have an upper limit on how much offensiveness they are aiming for/willing to put up with in a certain work, and in judging that level you have to consider the different reactions of different sorts of people. And I think if you know that what you're writing is going to seriously hurt people that's something you should consider, though you may decide that this is unfortunate but a necessary price to pay given the worth of your work (they may disagree)

One of the more obvious differences between writer and reader are things like race, gender, nationality etc. What may seem "cheekily edgy" but not actively offensive to a man may be like a sexist slap in the face to a woman. Light hearted playing around with stereotypes about a country/religion etc may seem fine and fun to those not in that group but unreadable to those within it. This is the logic behind the (in my opinion flawed) "That's not funny" response: the humour of that joke relies on the hearer not empathising with/understanding the butt of it (but to go back to my previous post you can think something's funny and still think it's offensive and shouldn't be said).

But there are other differences too (here is where my argument gets onto shakier ground!(*)). Age is a major one: one of my more unpopular opinions is that works written by adults for children should be carefully vetted (by authors and parents) since often adults are capable of seeing beyond false ideas that children will take in uncritically.

Some of the more controversial questions are about whether or not there's any way to say if a story encourages violence, sexism, etc(**). I'm not sure, and as a fan of horror I definitely think it's more complicated than just denouncing any book which contains actions or ideas we don't like. But I don't think the question should be dismissed out of hand because there's "no way to predict what effect a book will have". There's no way to predict it for certain or in all cases, but perhaps it can be predicted with reasonable certainty in most cases, and personally I think that's the best we can do for the consequences of any action.

An example I saw given once was that the first edition of a story about a suicide resulted in some readers committing suicide. Being aware of this the author put in a foreword in the next edition saying something like "Please do not commit suicide". Bizarrely, the context in which I saw this example being used was someone arguing that that was wrong because it interfered with the Art, and it's not the authors responsibility to worry about that sort of thing. But I think that in rare cases like this where you know the consequences it is your responsibility to worry about them, and weigh them up against the worth of the work. There have been times I've been inspired to write satires of stuff I've seen around me, but I've been pretty sure people I know would take it personally (even if it wasn't actually based on them) and decided not to. Which is not to say noone should ever write biting satire based on their friends, but they have to take some (not complete) responsibility for any hurt feelings that result. Writers are no more immune from ethical responsibility than anyone else.

And here we cycle back to the point of my previous post: Good writing doesn't solve all problems :)

Also, since people ALWAYS assume this sort of thing is promoting censorship (beyond individual parents maybe controlling what their kids read, which you're welcome to disagree with): No, I'm saying it's something authors need to think about, and readers have a right to complain about. There are many things in the world I think are unethical but don't think should be banned.

And I'm not saying authors are totally responsible for the consequences of their works, or that those consequences can be accurately predicted or even figured out afterwards. But I think in those cases where they can be predicted (and which those are is a matter of much debate!) the author has some responsibility for them. That doesn't mean they should never write anything which will have any negative effect, just that they need to weigh up those negative effects against the positive ones.

(*)I would be very curious to hear from people who agree with the first half but not with the second, since this seems to be a common POV and it's not one I entirely understand.
(**)This is different from deciding if the author is in favour of these things, which is generally an easier proposition though by no means always clear