This post underlined the importance of always knowing why we do what we do, what the ‘budget’ and ‘income’ are, what the ideal calorie/protein/carb intake is for our purpose or who the target audience is.

Publishers are individuals with their own taste, but they also have their eye on what will have mass appeal. Mass appeal is what makes best sellers and blockbusters, and many of those either hit the target bullseye or have such a richness of levels and layers that everyone will find something to resonate with. Pixar manages it with movies. That’s why I feel structure is so important, like the skeleton that carries around the nervous system, the muscles and tendons, the vital organs, and somewhere intangible, the spirit.

At least completely. And that’s the point here. These “check in” criteria can be applied to your story at any given point to assess if it’s working as well as it should. And as you say, your own feelings at that moment DO count.

In cynical way, one could make an analogy between your feedback here and our health: even though we try, we’re never completely immune to disease, and we can’t always control the factors that influence our health… but gee, should be thus stop trying? Live for ourselves, just to please our own tastes, even when it risks the bigger picture.

Didn’t think so. We always need to TRY to optimize… with our health, and with our stories. These criteria are powerful tools to assess and improve on that front. Thanks for commenting, hope this helps. L

I hate to say, but to a certain extent, this is out of our control. I’ve been in enough lit. classes and book discussions to know that people react very differently to any given scene. They don’t all catch the same details, they don’t all respond the same way to the same stimuli; what one finds thrilling or moving the next can find draggy or dull. Some people want non-stop action – a break-neck pace – while others love to have some restful moments in which to catch their breath. Some people love descriptive passages and others skip them altogether. There is only so much we can do to plan for all of these when we write.

I have found that often the scene I love the most in a book or movie is the scene my friend hated the most and vice versa. In comments people have written about my fanfiction stories, readers often see something in the story that I never saw – and I wrote the story. They will compliment me on my insight or knack of working something in and I didn’t even know it was there. They bring their own baggage, their own point of view, to their reading of my tale and take things in a way I never envision.

I don’t see how we can anticipate all of this for “the reader”. I think we have too look at it for how our story affects us and the one or two people we have who beta read our stories and that’s about as far as we can take it. I I read my story aloud and find sections that feel off, I need to fix it. If my beta readers report back that a chapter or scene feels off, I need to fix it. But if I’m worrying about “every reader” I’ll tie myself in so many knots I won’t write a thing. There is no way to account for everyone’s tastes, there is no way to please everyone, so there is no way to please every agent or publisher.

Sandra