From: mdhangton@gmail.com

J.Pascal wrote on 12/07/2014 :
> On Sunday, December 7, 2014 4:03:07 AM UTC-7, William Vetter wrote:
>> J.Pascal explained on 12/06/2014 :
>>> On Saturday, December 6, 2014 7:14:32 AM UTC-7, Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>>>> Will in New Haven  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> But I had betareaders complain that it was too confusing.  :(
>>>>>>
>>>>> It could be. The test for me would be whether it was interesting enough
>>>>> to put up with the confusion.
>>>>
>>>> Alas, it really didn't seem to add enough to be worth it.
>>>>
>>>> But in my head, the language still works that way.  What you see in the
>>>> book is a simplification created during the translation process. :)
>>>>
>>>
>>> I was reading a book from the library.  I don't remember who the author was
>>> -  it could have been Eric Flint - could have been someone else.  For the
>>> first  20 or so pages, every other sentence had a word underlined and a
>>> simpler  synonym written in the margin. I figure that the point where the
>>> marginalia  ended was the point where the reader gave up.
>>
>> You shouldn't assume that this person was a typical reader.  He could
>> have been an adult learner or EFL student.  They will have such a
>> problem with most books, except those designed for their situations.
>
> I would think that assuming the "typical reader" has an extensive working
> vocabulary similar to, let us just say, those of us *here* is absurd.

I tend to set the baseline to be the sort of vocabulary I had when I
was 23, which was probably more than everyman.
>
> What made this reader atypical is that they were (apparently) looking up the
> meanings of the words as they went along. Who does that?

Me.
>
> I'm not suggesting that anyone ought to dumb down their vocabulary in science
> fiction and science fiction does tend to have readers who appreciate a
> wordsmith who expects them to keep up, at least it seems so to me. But I
> believe in being honest.  The reason that "how to write a best seller" books
> advise using a vocabulary appropriate to elementary school students is that
> you shut out fewer readers that way and thus increase your sales.

Not all of them do that.  Some of them tell you to write about JFK,
serial killers, and the Holocaust.  Some of them tell you how George
Lucas is a genius, and you need to reiterate very basic and time-tested
plots and character motives or conflicts.  What it usually boils down
to is to repeat what has been a box office success in the past.

> The truth
> is that a "typical reader" doesn't want to be made to feel stupid or be asked
> to *work* when they sit down to read a book.

When I think about diction levels in my writing, I don't resent the
reader as being lazy or stupid; I ask myself whether I am blitzing him.
>
> The question if science fiction is naturally a genre that attracts only the
> smartest among us

That is a conceit that we like to believe.

> or if literary science fiction has simply weeded out the
> unworthy readers and made them unwelcome might be an interesting question for
> an author to consider.

I don't think literary sf was ever such a powerful concept as you think
it was.  There were a couple magazine editors during the 80's who
pushed for it, and SFWA wanted to encourage it, but book editors tended
to want elaborate worldbuilding focussed on marketable ideas, novels
with titles like Mallworld or Dragonworld or Samuraiworld.
>
> And it is up to the author now. It used to be that you had to write for slush
> readers and editors. Period. Authors have more freedom now to decide who they
> are writing for.
>
We have self/internet-publishing now, but we're grasping at straws as
much as we ever were.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)