Remember that time your friend agreed to watch a movie you really love? You got settled in, turned off the lamps, made sure there were snacks, and checked they were ready. They gave you the thumbs-up, and you started the movie. And they were paying attention for about... 10 minutes. Then they got a text, and they pulled out their phone. And they scrolled for a bit. Then they had to get up to get a different drink. Then they went to the bathroom again. Then they readjust on the couch, and you heard them snoring. Then like 15 minutes before the end they blink their eyes open, grunt, and say something like, "This movie makes no sense... why do you like this?"
This is what's going on in books right now, because apparently some people are just reading the book's dialogue and nothing else. And while there are a lot of authors out there wondering how to combat this, unfortunately, this falls into the area of, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."
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| Holy shit... this book is way more dense than I thought it would be... |
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You Can't Control What Readers Do (Or Don't) Do
I haven't talked much about BookTok, or whatever the reader-sphere is called these days, but there has been a trend that I wanted to weigh in on today. Because one of the issues that's come up is there are a lot of people who set themselves ridiculous reading goals for the year. Some of them are as high as 500 novels! And a lot of authors have been scratching our heads wondering just how someone could do that, short of being in prison and just spending every day trying to read as many books as possible.
So how do they do it? Well, there's a lot of tricks. One of them, though, seems to be just reading the dialogue in the book, and nothing else. Which you might be thinking is a terrible way to experience a book, because unless it's something like The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy, you likely need more than just the conversations had between characters in order to follow the story the author laid out.
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| That train is around here somewhere... |
Now if you're reading something like The Lord of The Rings, where a lot of what makes the story interesting is the richness of the setting and the events being described, you're going to miss a lot of what's on the page. Hell, if you want to read The Road by McCarthy you're going to stumble through it wondering what the hell is going on, and what you're supposed to be getting out of this book if you only focus on what's in the quotation marks.
Are there books that are dialogue-heavy where you can get the gist of what's happening based on the banter? Sure there are. However, the purpose of this article is not to judge the effectiveness of the ways people are trying to get around the act of reading. Because whether it's only reading the dialogue, or listening to an audio book at double the speed like literary nightcore, or whatever else someone tries to do, the point is that if a reader is focused on just plowing through the text as fast as humanly possible, they probably aren't going to get the intended experience of your book. And in a lot of cases it's unlikely they even managed to comprehend what was happening.
Because when you write a book, you're essentially preparing a meal for your readers. And whether that meal is a succulent steak with garlic potatoes, a juicy burger and cheese curds, teriyaki stir fry, or a buffalo chicken salad, there's a flavor and intention behind those things. But readers who want a literary mukbang are trying to cram as much text into themselves as possible for no reason other than to say that they read an arbitrary number of books for... some reason.
And at the end of the day, we can't tell readers how to enjoy our books... or not enjoy them as the case might be.
Because yes, it is frustrating when someone reads your book, and clearly misinterprets what's on the page, or tries to insert their own symbolism in places where you didn't intend there to be any. It's frustrating when someone says they'll read your book, but then doesn't. Even if they bought a copy. It's frustrating when someone tells you they identify as a reader, but then just read the cliff notes of books and act like they're a literature lover. But at the end of the day authors need to take a deep breath, and realize that past a certain point, they cannot affect the behavior of the reading public out there. All you can do is write the best book you can, and put it out there for folks to read.
If they choose to essentially put the audio book on fast forward, or only read conversations between characters, or even to just read reviews instead of cracking the cover themselves and treating the experiences as basically the same thing, there's nothing you can do about that. The only people who are losing out on the experience at this point are the so-called readers.
I predict this fad will end. That soon people will re-embrace fandoms and stories instead of just trying to hold up a plaque with Read Biggest Number of Books on it. Because reading isn't about the memes. It's not about clout. It's about stories... and if someone isn't interested in actually reading a book, then there's nothing we can do to make them.
Instead, focus on people who are reading. Because that is who wants what you're making.
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