Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

What do readers really want?

We’ve been discussing this topic over on some FB threads. The complaint (from writers) is about what readers do not seem to want, i.e., originality. Or at least, they don’t want too much originality.

This isn’t meant as a diss or a put-down. It’s something that’s endemic to many entertainment industries (and do not doubt that publishing is an entertainment industry). Publishers want a sure thing to put their money behind, and readers want a sure thing for their hard-earned cash. Totally understandable.

Readers want something similar to what they already know they like, but they don’t want a complete re-hash of an old story. They want their tropes, their memes, but they also want a new spin, or perhaps a new element. Some genres are extremely hide-bound (detective novels and rom-com movies, for example), while others are more open to “variations on a theme” (e.g., steampunk). 

Genre fiction is more prone to this sort of quasi-stagnation, simply due to the fact that it has more tropes and memes with which to restrict itself. Would a high-fantasy series without mages, elves, dragons, and fellowships be high-fantasy? Would a police procedural without cops, MEs, and gallows humor be a police procedural? More importantly, would readers like them?

My guess is that a book marketed as high-fantasy that didn’t have a large proportion of the traditional high-fantasy elements would be, at best, neglected and, more likely, pilloried in the marketplace. However, a high-fantasy offering that had many of the traditional elements but left some out or put a new spin on the old would receive high marks (all other things being worthy, of course). Take George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones series; it feels like high-fantasy, but it also feels like something new and different. And it is different, fundamentally so, but not so blatantly that you can really put your finger on it.

Finding that balance is the tricky part. Achieving that alchemical mix of old and new–just old enough to be comfortable, just new enough to be enthralling–is the lightning in a bottle that all writers want to catch. But once you’ve hit that mix, don’t you dare change a thing!

And there’s the rub. After writing The Belgariad (a stunningly successful five-book high-fantasy series), David Eddings wrote and told me that he was exhausted with the genre and wanted to write a Western, just to clear his palate. Of course, he didn’t; he went on to write The Malloreon, another five-book high-fantasy series, followed by…followed by… His publisher, his agent, probably everyone he knew was counseling him to keep it going, to ride the wave and cash in while he could. And he did.

It’s the trap of the successful artist. That “brand name” is no longer a good thing; you’re stuck writing the same thing. This might be fine for some, but other writers will want to break out of their own success and try something new. In this way, Stephen King becomes Richard Bachman, and John Grisham puts out a book that gets panned because it’s unlike anything he’s ever written.

Perhaps, someday, I’ll hit that mix myself. If I do, it’ll most likely be by accident–if publishers can’t predict the tastes of the reading public, how can I? “Writing to the market”–writing to catch the latest trend–is a losing proposition. Tastes in writing change slowly, but they usually change faster than even publishing can predict, and putting my year-long writing timeline on the front of it just makes catching that wave an even more distant probability.

So, for as long as I do not have the blessing/curse of being a “brand name,” I’ll write what I want, and worry about the other problems if they ever arise.

k