Trust Your Reader
Writers, trust your reader. Among popular bits of advice—create empathetic characters, avoid rhetorical questions, try starting with an outline—trust your reader is often overlooked. Why? Because generally the message is implied. When we say show, don’t tell, we also mean “trust your reader.” Just as naming emotions can evoke no emotion from the reader, it also signals that you don’t trust them enough to understand what you’re trying to show.
Trust your reader to understand your meaning. Subtlety sparks the imagination.
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Readers want to see feelings implied, because it gives them the rush of the mini Aha! moment. As they read, their brains cue in on what’s really happening beyond what’s spelled out. When they process what’s happening, they get an unconscious rush that they’re part of the story, they’re in on the game, because they understand what’s going on without being told. The more sensations they feel like this from the beginning, the more likely they are to buy in to your story and commit the time it takes to follow it through to the end.
For example, consider the following dialogue:
“He broke my trophy!” Eddy screamed angrily.
“It’s OK,” Mom soothed, “we can fix it with the glue gun. Calm down,” she said quietly.
“NO!” Eddy screeched, stomping his feet in fury.
Here, you’re told exactly what the author thinks each character feels.
Now consider this version:
“He broke my trophy!”
“It’s OK, Eddy,” Mom said. “We can fix it with the glue gun. Calm down.”
“No!” Eddy stomped his feet.
Mom’s words are soothing, but maybe the reader would think calming, or reassuring. All three are accurate. When the reader gets to interpret for themselves, though, they feel like they’re part of the story. They empathize with both Eddy and Mom, because they think how they would feel in that situation, and apply that to the story. There’s no need for dialogue tags other than said. And how they feel about the story is what they’ll remember about it.
Trust Your Reader with Simple aha! moments
Aha! moments can be small, too, like the inclusion of non-English words that the reader can figure out based on their context. Here’s an example:
Buenos noches, Igor! How are you this evening?
The context here indicates Buenos noches means good evening, or good night. There’s no reason to repeat the phrase in English.
Similarly, if you introduce an acronym early in your story, you only need to explain what it means once. A good example of this is in James Ponti’s Framed!, in which the main character, Florian Bates, solves mysteries based on his TOAST method, or Theory of All Small Things. He explains what this means early on in the story, and then goes on to employ it to figure out who stole paintings from a museum.
… and with The big aha! Moments
Another way writers need to trust readers is with what I consider to be part two to the rule of Chekhov’s gun. Part one says, “Every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Elements should not appear to make ‘false promises’ by never coming into play.” This means if you mention a gun in act one, it had better go off by act three. My part two to this rule is: If you mention a gun in act one, you don’t need to mention it again until it goes off in act three. Let the reader notice it’s there and then forget about it, or file it away as something that might be important. Then, when it fires, the reader gets a big AHA! moment, one that can lead to the Homer Simpson “I am so smart” dance. (A favorite in my house. Google it.) They knew that gun was important! They thought so at the time! And then, when they see it, and the pieces of the story fall into place, it creates a very satisfying feeling, one that makes them happy to have spent their time with your story.
Obviously, this isn’t always about a gun. It could be something someone says early on that sticks with the protagonist. It could be erratic behavior from a secondary character. Or it could simply be when the theme of the story is stated, and how it comes into play in the end. In any case, it’s something that doesn’t need to have extra attention drawn to it, and it doesn’t need to be mentioned multiple times throughout the story.
Let the reader’s imagination run wild
When readers are allowed to interpret what’s happening in a story, they become more engaged. Their imaginations take off. They become part of what they’re reading. And ultimately, reading the story becomes much more satisfying. Trust your readers, and they’ll thank you for it.
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