Storytellersunplugged

Recently, someone used the user review function over at amazon.com to pan my novel Firefly Rain. The book’s crime? Incorrect use of the word “y’all”. Apparently the way I’d trawled my y’alls did not jibe with the reader’s understanding of how y’all is supposed to be used, and as such, he had no use for the rest of the book as well. He gave the book two stars and made impolite noises on the way out, and that was that.

Now, there are a couple of ways to respond to something like this. The easy way would have been to puff up my chest, print out copies of all of the nice user reviews, and fan myself with them vigorously while declaiming to all and sundry that the uncomplimentary reviewer has no bleepin’ idea what he’s talking about.

But this, as they say, would be wrong. The guy read the book and he didn’t like it. He’s entitled. He’s also entitled to share his opinion, whether I agree with it or not, and at least he cared enough to post something. So, there’s nothing to see here.

There are other options. I could dig up proof that the reviewer was in fact incorrect. I could post evidence demonstrating that I had in fact used “y’all” correctly, as defined by some arbitrary authority or other, buttress my argument with anecdotal evidence, and attempted to wage war over Amazon stars on the rarefied plains of pure logic and citation.

This would also be the wrong thing to do. Once that debate starts, it never ends, and it sucks down time like a fourteen year old chugs down Mountain Dew. Reference, counter-reference, my cousin’s from Mississippi, well I know a guy from Tennessee, and away it goes and goes. There’s no closure there, no benefit and no reason to pursue it. Those who disagree most likely won’t be convinced by anything I can show, and I’m certainly not in a position go back and retroactively adjust apostrophes. There’s no win there.

Or, I could ignore it. I could look at the other, positive reviews, tell myself it’s an aberration, and go on with my literary life as before.

All together now: this would be another mistake.

Why? Not because I particularly agree with the comment. If I did, I wouldn’t have written the book the way I did. In all honesty, I’ve been living in the South (or at least in areas surrounded by the South) for nigh unto thirteen years now, and from what I’ve seen the debate over the appropriate use of “y’all” – Is it singular? One of a group? Singular and plural? Singular, with “all y’all” used for the plural? – is about as heated and unlikely to get resolved as the argument over what would have happened if Stonewall Jackson hadn’t gotten himself shot at Chancellorsville. Right way, wrong way - it depends on whom you talk to. But even that is a diversion; the argument itself is a null issue. The correct usage isn’t what’s important here.

What matters is that a reader felt I got something wrong, and by their lights, I did. From where that reader is sitting, I made a sloppy, inexcusable mistake, one that was bad enough to imply that I had done none of my research and thus nothing I wrote would be valid. By his lights, I used “y’all” wrong, and that was enough to discredit the rest of his reading experience.

That’s it. End of story. Like I said, for purposes of this discussion, it doesn’t matter whether I was right, wrong, or just another goddamned carpetbagging Yankee looking to take advantage of the South to pocket a shiny nickel or two. We’re talking about something else here, something a lot bigger than me or thee or, dare I say it, y’all.

The important thing is that I butted up against a reader’s understanding, their perception of the way things actually are. And once you go up against what a reader knows to be true, you can’t win. Either you agree, or you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong there goes any willingness that reader might have to buy into what you’re putting on the page.

Digression – This is not unique to fiction writing. In fact, it’s something I run into in my video game work all the time. Everyone knows, for example, that tanks move very slowly. This is because they are large and made of metal, and in the World War II movies that formed a lot of popular opinion about matters military, tanks did the armored division equivalent of running like a catcher. So, the conventional wisdom is that Tanks Are Slow, and God save anyone who puts a fast tank in their game from the savaging they’ll get from critics and fans. Never mind that your average US main battle tank can cruise at around 45 MPH; everyone knows tanks are slow, and not delivering on that expectation is just asking for trouble. The expectation trumps the reality, and having that expectation violated - even by honest-to-Murgatroyd truth - detracts from the player’s experience. They’re getting cognitive dissonance instead of immersion because of that one detail that they know is wrong, and that hits the player’s enjoyment like a sock full of pennies to the back of the neck.

It works on the other side, too, incidentally. I once had a collaborator on a fantasy-themed project tell me that “dwarves aren’t really like that!” when I tried to make them something other than axe-wielding ZZ Top impersonators with comedy Scottish accents. The image of the “truth” of this pop-culture mythical race was so strong to him that he couldn’t see them any other way, even when given carte blanche to do so. Think about it.

All joking aside, though, I don’t mean to denigrate either the importance of reader perception or the depth of the issue. It matters what the audience thinks, and every time a creator gives them something other than what they were expecting, that creator is walking a tightrope between reader surprise and reader rejection. It bears repeating; if the reader has to adjudicate between what they read and what they know, then they are shunted outside of the narrative and become aware that they are in the act of reading a book. And if they’re aware that they’re reading, they’re not immersed in the story, and suddenly, the magic goes poof in a cloud of fractured pixie wings.

What to do, then, what to do? It is impossible to know what every single potential reader thinks, and catering to all of those no doubt contradictory reader assumptions is purely impossible. On the other hand, it does make a certain amount of sense to stick a finger in the figurative wind and figure out what the audience’s preconceptions on your subject matter are likely to be. It makes more sense not to deliberately contravene those assumptions without good reason, and to acknowledge that you are in fact making a different choice. This can be as simple as having a character say “I thought all tanks were slow” and allowing an expert character to refute the point, but however you do it, you’re letting the reader know you’re aware of their potential issue and challenging them to change their views, instead of leaving them to disagree in solitude and grumbly silence.

Which takes me back, I suppose, to where all of this started. What comes out of all of this is a reminder to remember that the audience’s understanding of the world and mine are not precisely congruent, that the things I take for granted in my writing may be strange and jarring and incorrect to a reader. I’m not happy to get a bad review, of course, but I do appreciate the reminder. It’s a good one, and important, and appreciated.

Y’all know what I mean? I thought so.