Your Reader isn't Omniscient

Of course, since you know about this, I'll just move on...

This is one of the most frustrating things to experience from a book. Wait! No I don't. Tell me what you expect me to understand so I can follow where you go next.

If you've ever read an author that expected more knowledge from you than you actually possess, you will remember how frustrating and embarrassing the experience was.

This is hardly the impression we want to leave on our readers, but the irony is, that in order to be in a position to write a book that expands a reader's mind, we have to have learned things our reader has not yet mastered.

While it's easy to see how such a scenario works with nonfiction, it is also possible for a story to assume a level of understanding about an event, location, time period, or even the nature of humanity your reader may not share with you.

How do we keep from assuming such things so we can guide our reader without shaming him?

Put yourself in your ideal reader's shoes

Remember how I suggest you find a single person to write for? This is one of the reasons such an avatar is so helpful. When you have a specific reader in mind it is easier to gauge what level of knowledge she would have gained.

I once read a collection of academic papers designed to collate the thoughts from a number of scholarly fields on a topic that ranged from geology to ancient Hebrew. While it was densely written in the typical dry style this genre seems to demand, I noticed that while the words were large, they didn't reach the level of jargon I'm used to encountering. The authors had done a good job keeping their colleagues' various fields in mind, and, while demanding a college-level vocabulary, they explained any necessarily specialized terms for one another.

Whether we are writing for a two-year-old or a CEO, it helps to keep in mind what a typical reader could be expected to know.

Things do get messier if you are writing for an area where many readers are moving on to a journeyman's level of understanding, but even then, if you add in a few phrases or sentences to bring a newbie up to speed, your main audience won't mind.

We are all used to this mini synopsis being folded into a fiction series. A careful author will casually have the main plot of the previous book(s) mentioned in passing near the beginning, with perhaps a few other connections set in context as the story moves on. I've seen this done so carefully the only real spoiler for a reader who experiences the books out of order is that they will know the main character survived since they are still there in the book they started out with!

Get help

You've heard of beta readers by now, and one of the reasons to ask these people to read through your book before releasing it into the wild is to watch for such slips. [Did you spot how although I expect my ideal reader to know what a "beta reader" is, I folded in a definition to bring a new writer up to speed on this concept?]

There is no way I can ever read my own book for the first time. That messy process happened long ago, and things have changed a lot since then. So, to get a fresh set of eyes that doesn't already know everything necessary to understand the book perfectly I have to get help.

An editor will be watching for such knowledge gaps for you as well. Sometimes as editors we won't know what you are expecting the reader to understand, and even if we do, we'll be focused on what is reasonable to expect from your ideal audience. Even if your editor doesn't ask you what kind of person you are picturing, you can volunteer the information to help them get in this mindset as they handle your words.

Like so much of life, being a good author requires a lot of attention to the needs of our audience. It takes honor, love, and concern for others to develop the kind of book that is a joy for a reader to experience. And it is worth all the effort because this is why so many of us have books that feel like friends.

Long after your book is published, your heart for your reader will still be shining through. And we sense when a book was written to bless us.