Reader Response

[itsallovernow]

Argh!! Forgot to tape Buffy last night, and my phone was dying so when I remembered, it was to late to call M. and cajole him through hormonal manipulation into taping it. He really will watch anything with Eliza Dushku. We've watched Bring it On on USA several times. But the adoration means he'll actually remember to start the VCR mostly on time.

I got home at 12:30, so I watched the end of Family Ties before I went to bed. I really have no will power. There are so many great moments - Aeryn talking about seeing her mother, Chiana's sendoff, both to John and the rest of them, the John/D'Argo bonding, John and Aeryn not saying goodbye, Aeryn naming the Talyn, Crais stealing Talyn, "John Crichton was here."

I love Crais, maybe even more than Scorpy because he's all about shades of grey. You absolutely never know what he's going to do. His development is as fleshed out and complete as any of the protaganists. He starts out completely irrational, and while he is psychotic, he is also a little justified in being upset. And then he starts to get more complex.

I also love the scene when John is talking to him, sitting up against the wall, exhaustion written all over him, trying to relate to Crais because he looks so human. The viewer really gets a sense of the enourmous toll that constantly being hounded has taken on these people. And it's possible to start looking at Crais as a three dimensional character, because suddenly we have Scorpius, who is smart, unemotional, and unbelievably menacing.

I've been thinking about reader response because I've become a feedback whore. Who knew that you could crave comments, any comments about your work? Well, I suppose most people would figure this out without a lot of encouragement. However, for the past four years, I've been writing in a vaccum. I don't have a byline because our publications are general. The company name is on my work, not mine. That's not a big deal because the people and programs and things I write about see my work first, they know I wrote it, and are usually very responsive to my writing, so most of my fb needs have been met professionally.

Maybe it's because I haven't written fiction in so long, and am reaquainting myself with the artform by throwing myself in head first, but I've gotten a little obsessive. I posted something at Kansas because it keeps a running total of how many times something has been read and how much fb it's getting. Then I slapped myself and reminded my clearly vacationing brain that I wasn't writing because of that. FB is like an extra treat after you've completed something you think is worthwhile.

So after I wiggled myself out of that mindset, I started to think about what reader response meant. I majored in English Literature (and Anthropology with a Core concentration in Classical Civilizations. Yeah Liberal Arts Colleges), so spent an excessive amount of time going through works of literature, sussing out meaning, analyzing lines, interpreting intention, all without much imput from the author aside from the original source. Contemporary writers sometimes write about their work, the meaning they wanted to infuse in it, but even then, it's sort of a given that once the words are on paper, it's up to the reader to take what they want from the text.

So how does that apply here. These aren't my characters, but they are my words. Do I feel like it belongs to the reader once I post, and if not, why post something publicly? I was able to laugh at myself over becoming a fb junky because I also know I'm not really writing for a reader. I promised myself I would become recommitted to writing, and I have. I've been eating, sleeping, breathing words in a way that I haven't done since college. It means that I'm pretty useless in the real world, but I've stopped caring about that. Getting swept away by the drive to write is far more important to me than my real life. That maybe shouldn't be the case, but it's reality. I've always been like this, living more in my head than in the outside world.

But again, then, how does the reader factor in? I've gotten some nice comments from readers, and I know that my betas understood what I was trying to accomplish with Latitude and Longitude, so that should be enough. However, in a couple of cases, people took words or sentences to mean things I didn't intend, so I have to go back, look at the words, figure out if they could mean that. At the end of L and L, I leave Aeryn filling herself up, knowing that she's not the same as the person who left John Crichton. She's not necessarily sad about that. But readers have interpreted it that way, as an expression of her missing him, and I didn't want to convey that, exactly. Or at least not that she was missing the man she left. I think she was, she did, but she needed to leave more than she needed him right then. I don't think she regretted that, I don't think she regrets that action, although she may regret the consequences.

In the last farscapefridaydrabble, I wrote Chiana, acting on her instincts. It's a really short piece, mostly just impressions, but one reader thought that I'd had her kill Rygel. Which I didn't. The piece is pretty specifically geared to one time period, but I didn't really say that. It's based on having seen Season 4, knowing Rygel and Chiana were together after they left Moya. But clearly, something in the text gave a false impression..

So, if something is interpreted in a way the author didn't intend, where does that leave an author, especially because for most of us, we can instantly see how people are reacting, what they like, don't like, what they undertand, what was too obscure or too blatant. How much of the text belongs to the reader.

For books, I feel like it's mine. I interpret it as I wish, as I see because it's all filtered through my lens. Of course, that's postmodernism at work, but I am a postmodernist, so that's ok to, but how does all of this apply to the world of fan fic?

Comments

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, I know exactly what you mean re: feedback. I'm a total feedback whore and I have to stop myself from hounding friends for feedback. I have a mailing list I share with powrhug, which is how I ended up on lj, to which I try to restrain my pimping for feedback.

But it's not easy. ITA that feedback shouldn't be why you write but I find it's like crack and once you get some, you gotta have more. It's easy to see how people can become addicted to fame.

Rawk on with the B&S, btw, you're the only one on lj that I've met so far that even knows who B&S are, let alone actually listens to them. "Fold Your Hands Child, You Look Like a Peasant" (I think that's the right title) is absolutely one of my fav CDs of all time. (one of the few good things to come out of my late, unlamented Roswell obsession.)

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I love B & S. I listened to Boy with an Arab Strab obsessively when I first got it. And Fold Your Hands... is a great album. I have almost everything that's been released in the U.S. and I just never get tired of them. They sound like these happy Scottish pixies, and then the lyrics are just something else entirely. So yummy.

And yeah, the FB jones was a total surprise, but it kicked me into gear. I started responding to other people's work, which was good, but then it made me think of why I didn't always respond - whether out of intimidation, or lack of coherent thought because something was so good, or sometimes because I like the piece but just didn't have anything meaningful to say besides that. I am really interested in what other writers think about reader participation, how the internet and instant feedback have changed their writing or effected it, and what they do when something has been interpreted in a way that they didn't intend. It has to happen, right? I mean, for more reasons than a lack of skill on the part of the writer, or a lack of paying attention on the part of the reader. Watch as all of my Post modern training surfaces:)

[mindrobber.livejournal.com]

Crais rules.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

Hell, yeah.