I’d like to start this post by thanking my current readers and those who took the time to review my debut novel, Vanguardian. I value your feedback. This post is about the few who only want stories catered to their beliefs and to meet the trends of the day. This is not a rant. It’s an observation with my own feedback.
Reading Through the Lens of Assumptions
When I was younger, I used to criticize things I only knew at a surface level, and I quickly learned how much of a fool I made of myself by doing so. That folly went beyond books. As a reader, I have a no DNF (Did Not Finish) policy, which I have admittedly broken here and there, but that is typically when I can’t get behind a main character after trying for a few chapters. Never have I ever DNF’d a book within the first chapter or believed I was qualified to leave a review of an entire book post-DNF. After all, I technically don’t know how the story ended, unless I cheated and searched spoilers. But even then, I did not experience exactly how the full story was executed. Therefore, my DNF is a conscious acceptance of the limitations I put on the story based on my expectations of where the story is going. That in itself is something I don’t admire, so I try to avoid it through my “no DNF policy” and by being selective about what I read to make following that policy easy.
[M]y DNF is a conscious acceptance of the limitations I put on the story based on my expectations of where the story is going.
We can learn something from every story if we read it from front to back. I’ve sat through some agonizing and sometimes questionable books, but I always learned something, even if all it left me saying was, “I’m glad that’s over.” At least I know what’s on the literary playing field.
Now that I’ve published, I’m on the receiving end of periodic DNFs. That’s part of creating a product, be it a book, a movie, an attraction at an amusement park, etc. But that does not negate the fact that DNFing a book is based in the expectations of the reader. Expectations are based on experience and knowledge, which extends only as far as the reader’s experience and knowledge—not the creator’s experience and knowledge.
Having a Story in You Versus Following Trends
I don’t write to jump on a trend in hopes of gaining a name through how well I exploit that trend. Since I was a child, I have taken pencil to paper and eventually to the keyboard to work out social issues I’ve dealt with or that I’m curious about. My Vanguardian series straddles many themes and is split into two parts to cover these themes over a 15-year period. Like my favorite songs, the story starts one way and ends another. DNFing based on an intro is like turning off Tool’s “10,000 days (Wings, Part 2)” because the opening feels too measured and restrained, and assuming that will be the compositional depth of the entire song. I know that’s a lofty comparison to my book, but that song was highly inspirational to my series and is a perfect illustration of the kind of build-up and twists I enjoy in media.
Modern Sensibility Blindness
In my experience, from the beta reading phase of Vanguardian to post-publication, some readers simply want characters to meet modern standards on page one of a book. They want the author to live in the reader’s head and build within the reader’s worldview. But in the Vanguardian series, which spans lifetimes, starting in the (fictional) 18th century, that doesn’t make sense. People read to be transported to a different world. Yet some readers complain about just that: being transported to a different world. A world that happens to contrast with modern sensibilities and does not meet the trends they prefer to witness time and again.
People read to be transported to a different world. Yet some readers complain about just that: being transported to a different world.
The Mandatory Trope Trap
If a 400-page book is DNF’d on page 20 because the female lead isn’t, for example, girl-bossing enough, the reader is not accepting the story as it is being told. The reader is boxed into personal wants and expectations and misses the actual story that was built from the author’s mind—a mind that is not the reader’s own, influenced by experiences that are not the reader’s. Continuing on the girl boss expectation, if one is paying attention, it is clear that the “Girl Boss” trope, as it is often written today, is a woman who is powerful on the surface but ultimately exists only for a romance plot. She is the modern version of the 1950s “Mrs. Degree,” a young woman who received an education to be good wife material. In modern books, this girl boss is also often literally a girl, just of legal age, which feeds into older ideas of feminine value. The tough girl boss has powers to dazzle the male love interest, only for the majority of the story to be spent with her in bed on the receiving end. So, what’s changed, really?
Readers should recognize smoke and mirrors at some point, and in my series, there is no smoke and no mirrors. There is realism, not performance. The women and men in my stories rise or “boss up” as they evolve through lived experiences. They earn it. They don’t conveniently have powers so those powers can just as conveniently be set aside for a spice-filled plot to move forward.
If a book is DNF’d because it does not immediately match one’s politics or preferred “spice” levels, what is missed is what the story actually has to say about various areas of life—or what life could be outside of a bedroom or a single preferred political line of thought. Since the Vanguardian series spans lifetimes, not every life aligns with modern sensibilities. If every lifetime in my series met modern progressive ideals, there would be no contrast and no evolution from lifetime to lifetime for the characters.
From a Mind That Is Not Your Own
A world created from someone else’s mind should not be limited to what currently exists in your own. I strive for my books to stand up to a second read. My ideal reader is one who picks up on the breadcrumbs I drop from the first pages.
Every book is an opportunity for expansion of one’s worldview and expectations.
The Clerk 
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