Kevin wrote:
Hmmm.... speaking of which, David "The Wire" Simon has been
spouting off a rather memorable one-liner about that very
subject in various places, regarding writing fiction.
"Fuck the average reader."
.....I should also point out Simon's not defending some sort
of elitist, three people on the planet can understand it
point-of-view. Quite the opposite, actually -- rather he
seems to be saying not to write down to people, and that
maybe "average readers" are smarter than they're given credit
for.
In a lot of my presentations at conferences, I talk about the
television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. When it debuted
in the late '80s, it was new, strange, and sometimes a
little?dense. Joel Hodgson, who produced and starred in it,
was asked by one reporter whether people would 'get' the
esoteric and sometimes arcane references made by the stranded
astronaut and his robot buddies who were forced to watch
cheesy movies.?
Hodgson replied, "The *right* people will get it...".
What he meant was that they had decided going in who their
audience was, and that they would naturally gravitate to the
show. What was really interesting was that, by the second
season, it was one of the highest rated shows on cable.
Barnum stated (in paraphrase here) that nobody ever went
broke underestimating the intelligence of the American
public.
It may also be true that you can succeed by overestimating
it. Sometimes people are just starving for something more
than the same ol' same ol'...
Gotta go. Things to write- R
Richard Helms http://richardhelms.net
THE BACK ALLEY WEBZINE New issue coming on Monday, November
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