Writing Blog - Anticipating the Readers (Patreon)

It’s impossible. Give it up.

Wait, that sounds a little harsh, doesn’t it? Let me explain what I mean.

Speaking in broad terms, it is not hard to know how the readers are going to react. If your protagonist accomplishes something he has wanted for a long time, the readers will feel happy for him. If something pretty bad happens in the story, the readers will feel sad or angry. That’s what makes sense, right?

If you ever reach the point where people boo when good things happen to your protag, then you’re either doing something really bad or really good. In any case, it’s not hard to have some idea of how the readers are going to react to your story.

The problem is in the details. 

There are times when I write a chapter, and I think to myself, all happy and proud, “They are going to go crazy over this.” Then when I post the chapter, it turns out that the stuff I was expecting people to go crazy over is barely talked about. Instead, something I didn’t consider that important gets all the attention. 

It’s a pretty surprising phenomenon, one I’ve been learning (and still am learning) to take into account when I write. 

Even now, I still get caught by surprise.

For example, I was 100% unprepared for how badly some wanted to know the identity of Liu Jin’s fiancée. In my mind, there was no problem if I took some time with Liu Jianguo’s interlude. After all, it wasn’t like I had left Liu Jin in the middle of a life-or-death battle or something like that. I had completely underestimated how invested some readers had gotten in the mystery of Liu Jin’s fiancée. To me, it wasn’t a mystery or a cliffhanger at all since I had known about it from the first chapter. However, for the readers, it was a different matter entirely. 

Don’t get me wrong. While this was a surprise, it wasn’t a negative one. To be honest, I was touched by people wanting to go back to Liu Jin so quickly. Since people talk about Xiao Nan so much in the comments, I was worried Liu Jin hadn’t made a strong enough impression on the readers! 

So in a way, this whole thing brought me a measure of comfort!