…of all impossibilities the greatest is to write one that will satisfy and please all readers

Cervantes, Don Quixote

You cannot make all your readers happy all the time. Obviously, certain readers like certain genres and styles, ways of using the language, plotlines and endings; often some readers of a genre adore a theme that other readers of the same genre hate (that’s why we have categories within genres). But putting aside the greater issues of the composition of your audience, this post is dealing with those little pet peeves within your audience.

Some of this nitpicking from readers is self-taught through being over-exposed to their pet peeves, and some has been picked up, and often taken on-board without thought, from what-not-to-do advice (think I’m being dismissive of this latter group? Then tell me why ‘hopefully’ is so despised as a sentence-starter when ‘sadly’, ‘thankfully’, and so on are not, if not because some grammar guru decided to pick on ‘hopefully’ and the meme was blindly spread? If a sentence can’t be hopeful, as runs the logic, it can’t be sad either).

At a certain point, you, the writer, have to know how to differentiate personal, minor, pet peeves from actual criticism. Many readers do not tend to make the distinction between what they personally don’t like, and what actually doesn’t work. Feedback about these issues from readers may mean you end up chasing your tail trying to fix the problems and please everyone. Don’t.

For example, I had a reader of one of my short stories criticise the phrase ‘his eyes shifted’, and you may also be wincing now. I know there is a big thing in the writing community about being careful how you use eye metaphors, the most popular example of the crime being ‘his eyes slid down the front of her dress’ (identified many years ago by Stephen King in a current thriller of the time). The reader in my case wants to know ‘Why are his eyes shifting and to what do they shift? Did he do that with his hands… or did his eyes leave their original position (in his head) and move to another part of his body?’

But you know what? You can roll your eyes, avert your eyes, lift your eyes, catch someone’s eye, hold someone’s eye, keep an eye on someone, rest your eyes, and feast your eyes…do I really have to waste words writing ‘his eyes moved rapidly back and forth in their sockets to give the impression that he was a shifty-eyed character’ to convey ‘his eyes shifted’? If I can hold an eye, can’t I also shift an eye without the metaphor being taken to disturbing lengths? Maybe, maybe not – but I think your opinion on that will depend on whether eye metaphors are one of your pet peeves or not.

Of course, I could have used ‘gaze’, but not if I think it sounds dumb in context (which I did), or if I just used it a paragraph ago; there’s also rules about repetition, and another reader would be irritated by that.

This is, by the way, why I feel the need to post the occasional Writing Rules, Misapplied entry: writing rules are useful for beginners, but not if they’re blindly applied without thought. Avoid eye metaphors…but not every eye metaphor. Avoid repetition…except when you’re setting up a rhythm or making prose connections.

The point – I always get to a point eventually – is that you cannot please everyone. You can’t. Don’t try, don’t think about trying. Strive to produce the best and most clearly written piece of fiction or non-fiction that you possibly can, of course. But don’t get locked down into a battle over nitpicks that you can never win.

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