An interesting post about readers' expectations

[mary_j_59]

Jongibbs linked to this one, and I found it very enlightening - I understood, after reading it, exactly how and why I'd been disappointed by certain books. It's also something to watch out for as we attempt to tell our own stories! Peadarog kindly gave me permission to link to his post, so here it is:

http://peadarog.livejournal.com/79367.html

Comments

[missfloraposte.livejournal.com]

I think that we are definitely conditioned to expect certain tropes to pop up in books, tv, cinema - everything. Even if the trope is then subverted, that is still a way of acknowledging its existence.

I think the TV Tropes site gives a very good definition of trope as distinct from cliche:

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite". In other words, dull and uninteresting."

As for the specific example you have linked to - the unintended romantic storyline - given that shippers can link any two characters regardless of age, gender, species, sexual preference, sanity, etc - I'm not surprised that a reader felt that she was being cued for a romance with a bickering male/female partnership. It is fairly classic - Beatrice and Benedick, Lizzy and Darcy, Maddie and David, Mulder and Scully, etc.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Hehe, you asked permission? :)

reader expectations

[ericoides.livejournal.com]

To me good stories are half-n-half: the writer provides half, the words written on the page. A good writer carefully leaves the other half, `the lines between' open for the reader to fulfill. Again if the writer does a good job, the reader will probably fall roughly into a bell-curve distribution, with most of them identifying with the `main direction/theme' of the work (which may sometimes not quite be what the author intended!)

But there will always be some folks that are on the long tail of the interpretation distribution; that's life. The difficulty comes when your reader response is all over the map, or all clumped over in left field when you expected them to be, er, mebbe a sports analogy wasn't such a good idea---what do you call home base again?

Though with a long time beta you'd expect hir response to be in the middle, which is I think flummoxed this guy so much...but people can and do surprise you. Even ones you've known a long time.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Well, of course! I really did like that post, though; very sensible.

Re: reader expectations

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Oh, I absolutely agree that the writer and the reader work together to create the story! It's also true that people can surprise you.