Getting to Know Your Readers Week Day Two: Don't Seek Feedback from Aliterate People

My mentor wryly called readers “enemies”. He knew the last thing his up-and-coming writers wanted to do was listen to the very people their work was intended for. If you’re new to the craft, you might think that when a reader misconstrues you, it’s because they failed. They didn’t think well enough. They didn’t exercise their logic. They didn’t read with the right state of mind.

Some people will tell you the reader is always right.

I won’t go that far. I believe the reader is almost always right.

If they haven’t grasped your work, it’s usually because you failed as a writer. We learn this when reader after reader calls a boring text slow, an obscure text impenetrable, and a preachy text didactic.

On the one hand, it’s the writer’s job to achieve clarity, to grab interest, and to evoke emotions in their readers. On the other hand, not all readers are attentive. Some are lazy. Some lack sophistication. Some wouldn’t know a “literature” if it walked up and scribbled all over them.

We know this because Mills and Boon's novels are best sellers and because people read The Daily Mail. There are sharp readers and people who read at 7th-grade level. If everyone wrote to 7th-grade level, Moby Dick and Ulysses never would have been written. We’d have no masterpieces, and this is all the more important today when aliteracy rates are at an all-time high.

Aliteracy is defined as being able to read but disinterested in doing so. Aliterate people never develop the muscles to read high-level work. These days, books have been pushed aside to make room for blog posts, TikTok videos, and Facebook.

If you’re seeking feedback from someone who last read a book two decades ago, you’re going to downgrade your work, so you need to be careful with whom you place your trust.

Reading is best achieved by people who actually read. There is a place for ambition in writing, and to achieve that ambition, you must seek the feedback of ambitious readers.

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