Identifying Reader Disconnects

[idontknowyet]

We've all read books that we can rate any where from great to terrible.

Two days ago I started reading a book that I thought would be one that I would consider a great. An author I would reread over and over again. Only intermittently I would feel the book disconnected with me.
I went back and read than reread the scenes where I felt that odd disconnect.. I looked for plot holes, uncharacteristic interactions, repetitive words, but I just couldn't figure out what was causing it.


How do we identify reader disconnects in our books and in others?

It seems like that would be a good way to make our own writing stronger.

[Eric Thomson]

One of the things my editor pays close attention to is anything that kicks her out of the story, be it ever so minor. Even if she can't identify what that was, she leaves a mention. Most of the time I can see what I got wrong. When I can't and that passage isn't essential to the story, I simply cut it.

[Lynn]

I've accepted for me that sometimes I just don't like the way another writer strings words and sentences together. With these particular books/writers, I often can't find anything else to account for why the story just does not work for me.

[LilyBLily]

All I know is when I start thinking about household chores I need to do, the book is a loser.

A recent case in point that I may have ranted about in another thread: a mystery, a cast of characters to be introduced, and a foreign city to describe. Mostly, though, the characters made tea, drank tea, and cleaned up after making tea. After a few chapters of this, I gave up.

This is the reason TV ads show people moving, doing something.

[elleoco]

I'm sure there are things that would turn off a majority of readers, but in general if a book is well written and tells a good story, I think it comes down to personal taste. The book that finally killed my attitude of "if I start it, I'll finish it" was a bestseller, made into a popular movie. For me it was so tedious finishing it took weeks when I'd normally finish a book of its kind in days (was working back then). So what caught and held the interest of great numbers of people who started that book didn't work for me. Yet with a lot of bestsellers I'm there with the crowd.

[cecilia_writer]

All I know is when I start thinking about household chores I need to do, the book is a loser.

A recent case in point that I may have ranted about in another thread: a mystery, a cast of characters to be introduced, and a foreign city to describe. Mostly, though, the characters made tea, drank tea, and cleaned up after making tea. After a few chapters of this, I gave up.

This is the reason TV ads show people moving, doing something.

I had to give up on a friend's pandemic book because of all the tea-making! It started to make me laugh (I may also have mentioned this on another thread, sorry).

[idontknowyet]

Tea making in a PA not a cozy mystery that seems odd

[Hopscotch]

...the characters made tea, drank tea, and cleaned up after making tea. After a few chapters of this, I gave up.

I laughed to see your remark b/c I'd just put down a wild and woolly Western where the hero spends half his time searching for or drinking coffee, and I no longer cared what happened to his story.

[LilyBLily]

...the characters made tea, drank tea, and cleaned up after making tea. After a few chapters of this, I gave up.

I laughed to see your remark b/c I'd just put down a wild and woolly Western where the hero spends half his time searching for or drinking coffee, and I no longer cared what happened to his story.

Ditto the coffee thing. I'm not an addict so I notice. When a favorite mystery author had her characters drinking a lot of c*cktails, I knew she was spiraling into polite alcoholism. They don't call these things "lubricants" for nothing, but reading about them is not much fun when the author seems unconscious of them and is not using them as a plot point.

Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels wrote a novel of suspense that I found revealing of my own habits: Her heroine was visiting somewhere and made sure she had a chocolate bar (or something like that). I realized that when I travel I do the very same thing. Always have a small stash of chocolate. Sometimes a large stash. 

[idontknowyet]

I have one character with a sever addiction to coffee. Everyone teases her about it. Another that uses food as a coping mechanism. One that works out to cope.
It seems authentic to me to have idiosyncrasies that make a person individual. How do you know when you've gone too far?

[Lu Kudzoza]

How do we identify reader disconnects in our books and in others?

It seems like that would be a good way to make our own writing stronger.

The only way I've found is to have beta readers that are honest. Other than that, I've gleaned a bit of information from three and four star reviews. They usually have some constructive criticism.

[TimothyEllis]

The only way I've found is to have beta readers that are honest. Other than that, I've gleaned a bit of information from three and four star reviews. They usually have some constructive criticism.

What really annoys me is when you find what the criticism was about, and fix it, Amazon will refuse to either push the new version to the readers, or place an Update Available link on Manage Your Kindle.

So the reader never gets a resolution, and never knows you made the effort to fix it.

[PJ Post]

We're always going to have to deal with individual reader quirks and preferences, but I think the most frequent offender here is inconsistent tone. Noblebright fantasy can't suddenly have a Grimdark passage without creating cognitive dissonance in the reader. While this is an extreme example, I think certain terms, phrases and imagery can cause the same reaction (such as excessive tea-making or whatever).

Tone is one of those things you have to show the reader right out of the gate, give them a heads up about what to expect for the upcoming journey - and then stay in that lane. You've made a promise to the reader. Even tiny betrayals can kill any engagement they might have had.

I see this more and more in current movies and streaming shows.

How do we identify reader disconnects in our books and in others?

It seems like that would be a good way to make our own writing stronger.

I think we're far too close to our own works to catch all of our goofs. One of my learning strategies has been to spend a lot of time in the 1 star section of popular books on Goodreads. Many of the reviews are really good critiques that detail specific problematic issues. I use them as a "What not to do" guide. Just having this awareness helps me to avoid a lot of this stuff.

[Lynn]

We're always going to have to deal with individual reader quirks and preferences, but I think the most frequent offender here is inconsistent tone. Noblebright fantasy can't suddenly have a Grimdark passage without creating cognitive dissonance in the reader. While this is an extreme example, I think certain terms, phrases and imagery can cause the same reaction (such as excessive tea-making or whatever).

Tone is one of those things you have to show the reader right out of the gate, give them a heads up about what to expect for the upcoming journey - and then stay in that lane. You've made a promise to the reader. Even tiny betrayals can kill any engagement they might have had.

I see this more and more in current movies and streaming shows.

A small sidetrack here but this is why I dislike so much comedy TV from Netflix and Prime and Hulu and HBO, etc, these days. Some of it just does not feel like comedy for huge swaths of the show and the tone goes from one end of the spectrum to the other in wild swings that are hard to enjoy. (For me.)

[TimothyEllis]

A small sidetrack here but this is why I dislike so much comedy TV from Netflix and Prime and Hulu and HBO, etc, these days. Some of it just does not feel like comedy for huge swaths of the show and the tone goes from one end of the spectrum to the other in wild swings that are hard to enjoy. (For me.)

I've had that trouble with home grown comedy tv, and what comes from the US, for decades.

It just isn't funny for me.

In fact, a high proportion of it is just various forms of abuse.

[LilyBLily]

One-star reviews are immensely helpful. "It didn't have this" and "I hate this" really tell me what the reader expected. Doesn't mean the reader was right to expect it, just that there was a disconnect and the reader has kindly spelled it out. Well, maybe not so kindly.   

[Jeff Tanyard]

A small sidetrack here but this is why I dislike so much comedy TV from Netflix and Prime and Hulu and HBO, etc, these days. Some of it just does not feel like comedy for huge swaths of the show and the tone goes from one end of the spectrum to the other in wild swings that are hard to enjoy. (For me.)

I've had that trouble with home grown comedy tv, and what comes from the US, for decades.

It just isn't funny for me.

In fact, a high proportion of it is just various forms of abuse.

It's even more apparent without the laugh track.