12 ms·

> It is remarkable because Banks, as much as I love his writing, is rarely subtle about his beliefs and who the "good guys" are. My wife writes some fictio

> It is remarkable because Banks, as much as I love his writing, is __rarely subtle__ about his beliefs and who the "good guys" are. My wife writes some fiction, and one thing I've learned from observing her interaction with test readers is that no matter how heavy-handed the writing, a fair proportion of readers will still misunderstand it. It's practically impossible to make anything so explicit that nobody will get it wrong, even with a bunch of repetition. Though, most egregious misreading activity does seem to be confined to the same set of readers, across discussion of her test-reads, other writers she knows' test reads by the same readers, and just general conversation about other published fiction—that is, certain readers struggle to follow seemingly every damn thing they read, while others almost never make these kinds of errors. I find it hard to relate to wanting to continue reading books while being so constantly confused by their content, but they do it anyway. Completely alien to me, their experience of reading must be rather impressionistic and seems unpleasant, but to each their own.

mncharity 1y ago
> observing her interaction with test readers [...] a fair proportion of readers will still misunderstand it I did some exploratory education videos, and associated user testing. A hobby project. And I got bitten by what I'm told was a noob mistake - a cartoon character reads a simple sign aloud. Shortly afterward, I'd stop the video for feedback, and get confusion as if the scene wasn't even there. I'd sometimes then replay it, and get "oh yes, this version is much better". Even firm disbelief that they'd already seen it seconds earlier. Apparently the cognitive load spike of having simultaneous reading and listening to do, is known to hammer comprehension of both. I wonder if there's a body of similar insights for fiction writing. Or transferable insights from say, how to disrupt misunderstandings in science education content. And then, of course, whether these might be made available as automated editor or ghostwriter tooling.

> It is remarkable because Banks, as much as I love his writing, is __rarely subtle__ about his beliefs and who the "good guys" are. My wife writes some fictio

mncharity 1y ago

> observing her interaction with test readers [...] a fair proportion of readers will still misunderstand it I did some exploratory education videos, and associated user testing. A hobby project. And I got bitten by what I'm told was a noob mistake - a cartoon character reads a simple sign aloud. Shortly afterward, I'd stop the video for feedback, and get confusion as if the scene wasn't even there. I'd sometimes then replay it, and get "oh yes, this version is much better". Even firm disbelief that they'd already seen it seconds earlier. Apparently the cognitive load spike of having simultaneous reading and listening to do, is known to hammer comprehension of both. I wonder if there's a body of similar insights for fiction writing. Or transferable insights from say, how to disrupt misunderstandings in science education content. And then, of course, whether these might be made available as automated editor or ghostwriter tooling.