What do writers owe readers? If anything. IYO.

Cafe Society
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There may be spoilers. Fairly warned, be thee, says I.
The recent threads on the Wheel of Time got me thinking about Robert Jordan (and George RR Martin). Specifically, what do author’s owe their readers? If anything.

I know the dope has a number of writer’s and I’m interested in their take, certainly. And everyone else’s.

Okay, I don’t think GRRM is my bitch, but part of the covenant, I think, is, once you have an audience committed to following your work, the author should make every reasonable effort to hold up their end. Of course, reasonable is going to mean different things to different people, and I don’t mean GRRM hasn’t done that.

Robert Jordan, on the other hand, did not do that. In my opinion. I believe that after the success of the first few books RJ deliberately extended the series solely to make money. I don’t begrudge him wanting to make money, we all do, but he did so in a way that damaged the story and gave the readers nothing of value in return. I also believe he changed a storyline solely to spite readers that had correctly guessed his foreshadowing.

Both things, IMO, broke faith with his readers.

A lessor complaint is with Brandon Sanderson’s finish of the WoT series. The resolution of the Big Bad storyline (and it isn’t the Dark One). The villain has been built up through the entire run as a serious threat and is dealt with within a paragraph. This was a major let down for me and is crucial to my complaint.

The writer, any writer, is not beholden to the audience to move the story in any particular direction to please the reader. However, the audience does deserve better than, for example, “the bad guy died falling off a horse”. I’m not saying a character in a story deserves more, that decision belongs with the writer, but the readers who have followed the story deserve a better narrative.

I don’t expect anyone to debate this particular series or author, I’m interested in the writer/reader dynamic and your views.

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I’m both (unpublished at this point) and I will refer you to Neil Gaiman’s succinct and memorable post on the matter, as it matches quite closely with my own point of view:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html

ETA that I feel this applies both to the writing process and to the specific development of plot points. It’s MY story (or THEIR story, if I’m a reader) and the story goes where the author wants it to go. If enough readers have difficulties with that, and the author needs book sales to continue surviving, it is perhaps wise to consider whether the direction the plot goes is a saleable one, but it is, in the end, always the author’s sole choice.

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They owe the readers to not waste their time, I’d say.

4

Correct punctuation.

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Nothing. You’ll notice that writers get paid for writing and readers pay to read.

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Every time you use an apostrophe to make a word plural, a puppy dies.

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There is no contract that can be pointed to, neither written, oral or even implicit insofar as contracts must be agreed to by both sides. When reviews are plentiful and easily accessed online, I don’t think readers have a leg to stand on. I don’t see the ripoff.

If somebody annoys you consider them your guru, teaching you the virtue of patience. As Rowling’s wizard books grew longer and longer, I eventually lost interest and stopped reading them. That’s ok: I don’t think less of her, nor must I satisfy my every impulse.

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I think Danielle Steele owes me $5.95 for one of her piece of shit novels I bought.

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it’s true George R.R. Martin is not my bitch. But I’m not his bitch either. Readers may not be entitled to an author’s work but an author isn’t entitled to readers either.

The reality is both sides need the other. An author without readers is never going to be a professional writer.

Patricia Wrede once wrote a column asking her readers to buy the first book she was writing in a trilogy. She pointed out the publishers do not make iron-clad commitments to series. If the first book doesn’t sell, they’ll cancel the contract. So the reason that future books get published is because the readers paid for the first book. If readers insisted on waiting until a series was complete before buying into it, then authors would have a lot of unpublished books.

A professional author owes it to his audience to act like a professional. If people are paying you money, do the job. If you want to write without any commitment, then publish your stuff for free on the internet.

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Indeed. You do not owe it to GRRM to read any of his books ever again (regardless of how many you may have already read).

Yet I’ve seen many people saying that this is exactly the approach they take–declining to start reading any series that isn’t already completely written–precisely for this fear of being left with… unmet expectations, I guess (though a completed series could do that as well).

All writers have a lot of unpublished material, I think.

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The owe the reader a good story. Nothing else.

For a series, they owe their readers the best work they’re capable of doing. That’s why the complaints about George R.R. Martin are wrongheaded. If he produced third-rate work in order to keep up with demand, the very same people who complain about how slow he’s working will start complaining about how the later books aren’t as good as the earlier ones.

(For my own reading, I rarely read novels that aren’t complete in a single book.)

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My answer is “a little transparency”.

What I mean by that is, the author doesn’t OWE any of us readers anything from the standpoint of the book itself, it’s their idea and vision and let them have it. But the authors owe their readers a bit of transparency as to why a book hasn’t come out or why a character did what they did.

You don’t owe me the fact that Queen Esmerelda has to kill her sister, but I think that you owe me an explanation as to WHY she didn’t kill her sister if I ask.

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In general terms a successful and rich writer, rich through book sales, owes his or her wealth to their readers and thus owes a debt of gratitude.

But a writer, an artist, should be true to their vision and write what they believe in. They don’t owe the readers any specific story, any further sequels or any specific fate to any specific character.

In the end it is all self correcting since if a writer continues to write the ‘wrong’ stuff it won’t sell and the readership will move on. In this context ‘wrong’ can have many different definitions.

TCMF-2L

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First love the OP idea. Its one of those unanswerable questions that none the less makes you think. Second I apologize for the long post but it really did make me think.

My take is that for the “one off” novel there is no need to think about the audience beyond the authors desired outcome for the writing. So forget about the $6 grocery line novels.

What I see this as is once the author has grabbed a loyal audience creating a world with an enticing, captivating story line and endearing characters that has extended through multiple books, is there a writers obligation to cater to the audiences whims and desires?

As soon as I began thinking about it one thing sprang immediately to mind; the death and eventual resurrection of the great Sherlock Holmes. I think this is a great and maybe even first or at lease early, example of the audience demanding that the author change his story line to satisfy the reader’s desires.

If money is the only goal of the author then yes they must wright only for the audience.
Taking form the movies (yes I know Star Wars was also a book series) imagine for an moment Luke Skywalker hanging above his metallic chasm saying “You know what pops, lets do this dark side thing.” I’m thinking things may have gone differently for George and the franchise had that happened.

One thought still lingers.
The malicious scenario alluded in a previous post.

A writer wrights an epic story that is wildly popular. Throughout the story alluding to future events and setting up the reader for some desired climax at the end. In the first few books the writer becomes wildly successful and wealthy thus no longer requiring the funds of the reader to support. The readers speculating on and anticipating the foreshadowed outcomes predict correctly what the writer intended for the ending of the story. So the writer simply substitutes the promised ending with another. This ending would likely be incongruent with the plotline of the preceding books and if maliciously or spitefully written, may be completely implausible or even offensive to the loyal readers.

In this case has the writer violated some unspoken social contract with the readers? Yes I think they have but the recourse for the readers is little to none other than to trash them in reviews and refusing to buy any future writing.

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As others have stated, the writer and the reader owe nothing to each other. But each has some power. The author, as the creative force, can send the story wherever they want. I, as the reader, can refuse to buy the authors books if I don’t like the story.

Freedom!! :smiley:
I will neither buy nor watch anything to do with GoT. I like Martin’s previous books and have told him so, personally, on several occasions. But SoFaI is boring and apparently endless, so I decline to participate. Read the first three books and wanted the time back.

What really honks me off is when authors start a series and then never finish it. Dying isn’t an excuse, either! I’m looking at you, Stasheff! Pournelle, too. Martin is at least trying to get the beast done.

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Then I’d say you now owe me a quarter.

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Writers owe fans nothing.

However, in the desire to create buzz, fans do owe publishers backlash when promises like deadlines aren’t fulfilled.

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Well, this is the approach I’m taking. I no longer care about GRRM’s world full of iron-age feudal sociopaths. If he was tackling the job of producing a series in a responsible fashion like Jim Butcher or Patrick O’Brian, then fine. But if he’s going to take multiple years to produce the next book only to present me with another fat and poorly edited set of digressions from the main plots, then I’m not sure why my money should flow in a GRRM direction.

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I’m a writer, mostly for children. I think it’s my responsibility to do my best work, not to imply things that I consider wrong are right, and when possible, to teach something, even if just in passing.

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Internal consistency?