As a freelance editor who reads a lot of manuscripts, I see many potentially fine, well-written novels with believable characters, rollicking plots, and crisp dialogue fail because they fall short of what I call The Budrys Rule.
The late Algis Budrys was a famous science fiction author, editor, teacher, and critic. He taught for many years at the Clarion Writers Workshop, and worked as a book editor for Playboy magazine. In his fine little 1994 craft manual, Writing to the Point, Budrys gives one of the clearest and best pieces of advice to authors I’ve ever read, and does it so succinctly it works as a simple mnemonic.
The “rule” simply states that there are three reactions the writer should strive never to elicit in a reader, since any one of them is likely to result in the reader putting the book down, possibly for good. They are:
- Huh?
- Oh yeah?
- So what?
The meaning of the huh? reaction is obvious: the reader is confused or doesn’t get what’s going on. The error here is almost always one of information management, and the fix is usually obvious; a good critique group or beta reader will help identify these and point the way to solutions. Oh, there’ll always be the occasional inattentive or forgetful reader, but mostly this is an easy problem to avoid.
Oh yeah? means the reader doesn’t buy it. They don’t believe you. This could apply to the premise of the story, any of a constellation of plot devices, an improbable, James-Bondish ending, character motivations, you name it. This may involve significant work to fix, but generally shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s our business as writers to make readers buy the fictional dream.
The So what? response is, in my opinion, by far the worst. Simply put, it means the reader doesn’t care. And I confess it’s my own most common reaction to many novels, films, and TV series… and I’m talking about published, often traditionally published, novels, not client mss.
Contrary to much of the nonsense talked about writing, making the reader care about your protagonist, their plight, and the outcome, isn’t rocket science: it’s very, very easy.
I’ll let you in on a secret: by virtue of opening the book (and probably paying for the privilege), the reader is already predisposed to care. They want to care, to like your character, your story, and your world. And if your character appears to be even a half-decent human being, with a relatable conflict and goal, the reader will just settle in for the ride and want the best for them.
If it’s so easy, then, why doesn’t every novel, every movie, every TV show succeed in this?
I believe the answer lies in one or both of two things. Either the author or screenwriter(s) is overly concerned with diving headlong into plot action, usually under the misapprehension that if a life is threatened or there’s raw conflict, the audience will care enough and be involved. Wrong: nobody (except perhaps some adolescent males) gives a fig about what happens to a faceless, fictional character who’s done nothing to encourage reader alignment, no matter how much action or melodrama blossoms.
The second, and to me more troubling, reason the reader doesn’t care about a character or what happens to them (or indeed in the entire story) is because the author is writing from an emotionally neutral or cold, unempathetic place and not imbuing their protagonist or the work with enough common humanity to strike a chord in the reader. This is depressingly common, especially in the dozens of otherwise fine new drama series on the subscription streaming services.
The best way to avoid the So what? reaction, then, is to present the reader with a character or protagonist who is from the outset a relatable (and hopefully interesting) human being. Write with empathy, present the reader with a character who feels like a living, breathing person rather than a made-up puppet, and simply give us a reason to care about the outcome. Speaking for myself, and probably for anyone writing character-driven fiction, this is harder not to do than to actually do. If you give a damn, and your characters are alive on the page, the reader will. The writer who allows heart to work with mind in the writing will do just fine.
(This post, with minor differences, first appeared in Janice Hardy’s Fiction University blog on 3 September, 2019.)
Dario Ciriello 