Monday, August 29, 2016

Be Aware of Reader Expectations

I've been wanting to find time for this post from #Pitchwars and have been so swamped with work. But edits are off to my co-mentees and a chapter is finished. Time to blog!

Today, I want to make sure you consider expectations. Whether you know it or not your query letter and your first chapter are setting up expectations in the reader. I noticed it so much more when I went from reading a first chapter to a full manuscript. Writer beware of setting up false expectations.

In Pitchwars I requested to see about ten fulls. I'd hoped to have time for more, but my schedule just got overloaded the last week. Of those, I read all the way through three of them. Not all, but some of the others I stopped reading because the pages after the first chapter didn't match. Some aspect was changed.

I don't think I've ever analyzed this before. But I noticed it pretty heavily in Pitchwars this year. I think that's because in most of the contests I'm involved with, I only read 250 words. It seemed like often what I believed would happen next and what did happen were different somehow, even though I try and keep an open mind when reading.

A first chapter has to fulfill so many goals. It has to start the character arc and work on building a complete character. There has to be some world building while avoiding information dumps. The plot should at least be hinted at in some way. The tone and mood of the story are set in the first chapter. A reader gets a sense of the voice in the first chapter. So a first chapter has to be a tightly woven and complex design. But as you're building characters and worlds, you're also building the readers expectations for what will occur in the rest of the book. And if you're not careful the gap between those expectations and reality will be too wide.

A reader's expectation can be disappointed over the plot, the reader may expect the goal and stakes to head one way and it suddenly veers off to a different goal for the characters. If there's nothing in the query or book blurb to warn of this, such a change can make a reader lay down the book and be done. But plot isn't the only way that expectations can fall short.

The tone and voice of the rest of the book need to match the first chapter. If the reader thinks they are reading a mystery and it suddenly becomes a romance, there's going to be trouble. If you start the book with a certain character and in chapter two that character completely disappears or changes dramatically, why that can cause head scratching as well.

If the first chapter is full of explosions and spying and action and the next thirty percent has none of that and loses a sense of conflict, that can also cause a let down.

For the first time, I really saw why agents don't care for prologues. Because I saw a lot of first chapters that were actually prologues in disguise. It isn't so much what's in the prologue that's the problem. It's that the expectations then might not match. If we jump time periods or character ages in chapter one to chapter two, that can totally throw a reader off, especially if something else about the story no longer matches up. 

So when you're building characters and weaving words, think a little bit about consistence and what the reader might want to see. Does your first chapter match with what comes next or might you be creating an unreliable situation? Be off by too much and you may lose your readers.      

6 comments:

  1. Thanks Michelle for another great post.

    I do have a question about the MC in my first chapter. When I get feedback from my first chapter, most people say they don't like my MC because she is so self-centered. They say that negatively yet I see it as a positive since that feeling is exactly what I wanted to create. (Following the arc of the MC, there is huge growth during the story for the MC but her character needs to be set up right away as a baseline to see that growth).

    My question is, am I setting up the wrong expectations by having readers not like my MC at first? Is there a way around that? Thanks!

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    1. That can be a problem if readers don't like your mc. I actually did a post about finding ways to get some likable elements in the early chapters for a difficult mc like this. http://www.michelle4laughs.com/2016/04/rewind-week-make-your-characters-likable.html Maybe something in there will help.

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    2. I have a similar problem in that people tell me my MC has no agency, no plot, needs to have a goal to be a good protagonist. But she's not the protagonist, she's the main character. The protagonist is her love interest. Her character arc is to go from believing that fate rules all to getting a severe reality check that she does have free will near the end of the book, which changes her. I can't have her chock full of agency at the beginning if that's her character arc... ???

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    3. I have a similar problem in that people tell me my MC has no agency, no plot, needs to have a goal to be a good protagonist. But she's not the protagonist, she's the main character. The protagonist is her love interest. Her character arc is to go from believing that fate rules all to getting a severe reality check that she does have free will near the end of the book, which changes her. I can't have her chock full of agency at the beginning if that's her character arc... ???

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    4. From all I've heard and believe, the main character is the character that drives the story. They may not be the one at the center of the plot, but it's their decisions that led the story forward. They face choices that cause events to happen. I can see why people would have trouble with a passive mc who doesn't make decisions. They probably believe you are featuring the wrong character as your centerpiece. Perhaps your mc should be the love interest.

      I had a story where people told me another character should be the lead. That's when I realized I needed to make my mc more active and calling the shots at several key places.

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    5. Oh, and I think it would be possible to skew the writing so her lack of decision is her choice. But you'd have to play that up and have her lack of action led to events.

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