A thought inspired by the Feedback Exchange

[unfeathered]

Something that dynapink said in her feedback on Lessons Learned for the Feedback Exchange got me thinking. She said ’ I was somewhat less convinced by some of Nine's characterisation [ ] I have a hard time buying Nine gruffly ordering Jack into his bedroom (in front of Rose, especially) to "punish" him for irresponsible behaviour. The first half of the story almost seems more kink than characterisation, although oddly enough the second half, where most of the actual sex is, seems much closer to the actual characters.’

This made me realise that, because I move in a fairly limited circle on LJ, I actually write for a fairly specific audience. I expected most people who read Lessons Learned to be familiar with the work of other people who write kinky, D/s Jack/Nine. (Especially as most of my friends are also friends of a certain becky_writing who somewhat specialises in that genre! *g*)

And yet, I’d like my stories to be accessible to readers coming to the idea for the first time. So now I’m wondering if I need to put a bit more setting-up stuff into stories like that.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

hmm... here's my uncaffeinated lackadonutitis affected take on this-

Everyone views characters differently. Yes, the group of us that tend to live on each others journals probably have more of a similar look/intrepretation than others might but that's immaterial. Even if you spend 3 paragraphs setting up the scene and characters to behave in the way you wanted there are some people who still would have problems with it.

I tend to have radically different ideas on the characters than most, yet I can happily read any good fic no matter how differently the author intreprets the character than I do.

[unfeathered]

Obviously everyone else already knew what I just discovered today. As usual. :-)

Ah well, I shall go on sharing my discoveries with you all, even though you're all obviously so far ahead of me!

And I know I shouldn't expect everyone to like my writing - and I don't - it's just when it's my characterisation that's criticised, that feels less like a personal thing and more like something I could do something about. Since I do try to support my characterisation in the text.

Ack. I think I've had enough of Lessons Learned. It was certainly aptly titled, though! :-)