Readers' Expectations -- Pushing Buttons and Crossing Lines

For those of you who didn't read the comments yesterday...it prompted this blog.

Oh Robin, I just picked up Heart Duel. Again. I started this book a while ago, felt ambivalent about Holm and put it down somewhere.

EEK!

Well, while cleaning my house, I FOUND the book and picked it up again. I went back a few chapters and now things are rolling along.

Uh, I guess I'm glad you found it?

Now that I have given you a heart attack about the whole "she put down the book" scenario, let me explain something.

Putting it down had nothing to do with the writing. I have read all your other heart books and loved them. It had to do with these two characters. As a reader now a little more than halfway through, I realize that these two cut reeeeaaaallly close to the bone of my psyche. Holm is a pushy alpha. Pushy in a different way than T'ash. Holm treds the thin line of dominant v. domineering and in the beginning I was not liking him at all because I thought he was crossing the line.

I know exactly what put you off and why, and probably the exact scene. I liked writing the scene and liked the scene, but had several very negative comments by my first readers. I finally left it in because I was too far along in the book and the scene was one of those blocks I couldn't take out. Just couldn't wrap my mind around how to achieve the same effect and write it in a different manner.

I also had a VERY rough scene in Heart Duel that I rewrote. It was (for me) way over the line, and I think my readers would have found it disturbing and never have trusted me again. So it's something I've kept to myself and will never see the light of day, but I can't really bear to delete it from the computer...yet.

I, myself, have a very hard time with any scene where the heroine asks the hero to leave her home and he doesn't. A hero staying after the heroine insists he leaves will not happen (unless she's too sick to take care of herself, and even then I think I'd have him transport her to somewhere she'd get care and not be solely with him).

Lark is very similiar to me. She is a closet romantic and extremely practical. I'm that way which is odd for a romance writer cause you would think a RW would be proclaiming this stuff from the rooftops. So not so.

Anyway, this book had a very VERY rocky start (for me) but as the story progresses and the characters change I am seeing this book, which hits a visceral note, possibly becoming my favorite of all the heart books.

So, what a reader brings to a story can be just as important as the writer's words.

Thank you for the lovely words, and you're right, if something pushes my buttons, it's harder to read. If my expectations aren't met, it's worse.

Some readers can fall into the story because the characters are different from their personality and some readers struggle with those same characters because they identify so strongly that it hits uncomfortably close to home.

I have a reader who closely identified with the Romeo/Juliet situation as her own many years ago and she loves this book best.

OTOH, Holm is not as smooth in this book as I'd set him up to be, so that irritated other readers...

Either way, it's darn good storytelling, Robin.

terri

Thanks Moonhart/Terri, I appreciate you sticking with the book. It is all too easy to leave a book lay, especially with all the other entertainment possibilities surrounding us.

And usually an author knows when something is going to push certain buttons and/or alienate readers and only hope that they'll hang on for the ride, or won't throw the book across the room and vow to never buy you again.

Re: Writing and Publishing. Watch the lines you decide to cross. Weigh them. Do you want to continue to write or are you willing to give up your career? Is the character name, title, scene, book worth fighting for against all odds? Take chances, but know when and what you are doing and accept the consequences.

May the muse be with you today,
Robin