There is a great post over at Buzz, Balls & Hype about different kinds of writers and how they handle friends & family not reading their books. Writers are divided into Thinkers and Feelers, and Dr. Sue goes on to say this;

“One group does not write “better” than the other; in fact, judging from the output of my friends and clients, one would be hard-pressed to identify which group a given author belongs to based on the evidence of the finished book. And, of course, no one falls neatly into either camp. But, loosely speaking, to a Thinker, the book is a well-made product. To a Feeler, it is a beloved child.”

I’m definitely in the Thinker camp. At times, even a cold-hearted rationalist. For me writing isn’t about feeling. I don’t care what I feel or not at any given moment while writing.

I love ideas. Ideas are my passion. Conveying those ideas is passion to me. I cross the divide into feeling when it comes to dialogue though. When the dialogue between two characters reaches a climax, you nail the cues, and the lines come out just right. I get a confident joy from that.

When I publish my novel, I won’t be too depressed if my friends and family don’t read it. Why? Because in all honesty they aren’t my target audience. I’m aiming at sci-fi and action fans. Sure, my friends and family like a good sci-fi or action flick on occasion. But not all of them are driven to it. And you know what? I’m OK with that.

Thinker or Feeler–Which one are you?

Think your audience is smart enough to handle all those big words you throw at them? Guess again.

I was watching Oprah (with the wife, I swear!) and she did an audience poll on how many knew what a stock was, as in stock market.

59% didn’t know. Yes. That’s fifty-nine percent.

Now maybe more than half said no just so they could hear the answer. I’d be willing to give them that benefit of the doubt because I’m a nice guy.

But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

If 59% don’t know what stock means, how about all those other words in your novel?

A couple years ago I was reading through books about the brain, evolutionary psychology, converging fields of science, networks, etc. The authors of such books tend to use meaty prose to convey all their complex ideas. Thick language.

Well it started to seep into my vocabulary and my writing at the time. I remember my friends saying “Dude, you use big words.” or “I have no idea what you just said.”

It was like that scene out of the Hollywood blockbuster or disaster movie where the guy with the pocket protector says something unintelligible to the layperson and the heroes say, “In English, PLEASE!”

Welp, that was me. It seems all that science reading was going to my head. The worst part? I didn’t even realize it. Since I had been reading the words, and using the words, I was comfortable with them. But my friends weren’t.

I was spewing out paragraph upon paragraph of stuff that nobody could understand, much less want to read.

It took some serious effort to eject all that jargon and science-speak from my vocabulary just so that my friends could have a conversation without getting a headache.

It’s all very funny now and I just laugh about it, but watching that poll on Oprah reminded me that most people don’t read everything under the sun. They don’t investigate everything. They just live ‘ordinary lives’ (whatever that means) and dip into a book here and there for a little entertainment or to pass the time.

Dumb down your novel. Do it for them. Everybody wants to get their book on Oprah so they can go on to sell a gazillion copies. That might be a possibility if that fifty-nine percent can understand it.