No one style is going to please everyone, but here's my new personal writing maxim: write like it's the second book.
I like this. I'm also someone who finds exposition at best annoying and at worst (in my own work) excruciating. I've had a lot of thoughtful conversation with beta readers before in which it became clear, on certain stories, that I had to make a conscious choice to alienate some readers if I wanted to be as subtle or as extra-text-dependent as I wanted to be (with some of those editors taking the position that I can't afford to further alienate people, given the pairings and characters I write). But I take pleasure in figuring things out as I read rather than being instructed by some invisible authority, and at the end of the day, I think I'd like to write for people who feel the same.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-09-17 03:51 pm (UTC)I like this. I'm also someone who finds exposition at best annoying and at worst (in my own work) excruciating. I've had a lot of thoughtful conversation with beta readers before in which it became clear, on certain stories, that I had to make a conscious choice to alienate some readers if I wanted to be as subtle or as extra-text-dependent as I wanted to be (with some of those editors taking the position that I can't afford to further alienate people, given the pairings and characters I write). But I take pleasure in figuring things out as I read rather than being instructed by some invisible authority, and at the end of the day, I think I'd like to write for people who feel the same.