When readers hate your work…

I finished one of my two climactic chapters today, and will knock the other one off tomorrow. The sequence will run about 11,000 words between them, which goes against the 2,500 words per chapter dictum that I recommend to many writers. The caveat here is that these chapters are broken down into 1,000 word sections (roughly speaking) for quick cuts between viewpoint characters as a battle unfolds. Doing it in this way makes the action more intense.

Because the sections act like very short chapters, including cliffhanger endings, I could have split them out as very short chapters. I prefer, however, to keep them all in one. It’s better to be criticized for having one big chapter that reads quickly, than ten small chapters that read too quickly, leading some readers to complain that the ending felt rushed.

And, no, I really don’t worry too much about what sorts of things readers will say about a book because there simply is no way to control for certain things. For example, I once had a woman tell me she couldn’t read Once A Hero (one of my best books) because she had an ex named Neal, and therefore couldn’t abide that name. Clearly there was no way for me to anticipate that sort of reaction. Some reader somewhere will find something to object to in a book and, oddly enough, if they came back to the book later, or in a different frame of mind, that objection might not even be a consideration.

One of the odd things about being a writer is having readers come up to you and say, “I loved your last book, but you know, the best book you ever wrote was [a book you wrote twenty years ago].”

I know, without a doubt, I am a better writer today than I was twenty years ago (though Once A Hero is a very special book and if I can only be remembered for one book, I’d be happy to have that be the one). What the reader is actually saying is that the twenty-year-old book was your best because it was the most perfect book for him at the time he read it. When you’ve been in the game for a while, the book they think is your best varies by person, and there seldom seems to be rhyme or reason to the choice. Books that a majority of readers loathe are the best book ever to others.

Writers also have to get used to the fact that some folks will hate your books no matter what. Again, there is no telling why, but there is a simple fact about hatred. If no one hates your books, your work is not getting sufficient distribution. When it’s getting out there to the limits of your available audience, someone will run into it and buy it by mistake. And they’ll be the one to hate it. If you ever have a reader who says, “I don’t like this kind of literature, and this book is a perfect example of why,” you’ve got it made. You’ve reached the whole of your potential audience and spilled over a bit.

Which means, of course, you need to find a new project that locates even more new readers while keeping the old ones. You might never get back that hater, but there are tons of folks who are looking for a good and entertaining read. Capture them and you can actually make a good living as a writer.