Wednesday Chatter #8: Trusting The Author

Wednesday Chatter is a weekly feature at Ruby's Books where we'll be talking about anything and everything related to books and reading. Click here if you want to see what we talked about in the previous weeks.


WARNING: Some bad words might be used in the following post. Don't say I didn't warn you!

 

Hey there, fellow book lovers! This week we had a brutal heatwave in my neck of the woods. Because of that I wasn't able to post, because my laptop is so old, it overheats in less than 20 minutes and shuts down. And since I'm still working on that blasted thesis, I don't have that much free time during the evening *pouts* So I decided to write this discussion post, which I've been sitting on for a few weeks now.

Let's talk about trusting the author, shall we?

For me, I need to trust the author. If it's an author that I'm familiar with and whose other books I've read (or at least a few of his/her books) then I know that the story that I'm going to read will give me something. It doesn't matter if it's heartbreak, or love, or a lesson that I can apply in real life, or a good laugh, or just a few hours of fun. I just know that the book will be if not great, then at least a pleasant read. Trust comes in when I'm deciding to pick up a book. I trust that no matter what happens in the book, it will be explained in the story and that it will make sense eventually. If you love reading series, then you know that sometimes cliffhangers appear, or sometimes you get more questions than answers from a book. But the big things that happen with the main characters will make sense in that book. If it's an author that I don't know, then I have to trust that the book will give me all those feelings that I was talking about, as well as the meaning, the reasoning behind something happening.

But I also need to trust the author when he/she says I'm going to read about x, y and z. It's not as if I want to pick up a romance book and end up with a horror story. Or I want to read an autobiography and instead I end up actually reading about the latest advancements in technology. I want the book to be about whatever it is that the blurb says it will be about. And I must trust the author to deliver.

Breaking that trust isn't something that happens often, or at least not with me. It takes a lot for me to say that I've lost trust in an author. And when it does happen, my heart breaks. Because it usually happens with authors that I've been reading for years. I'm not having high standards, by any means. I can understand an average book from an author I love. I can even accept a less than average book. It's not about quantity in this case. It's about content. I don't care if I'm reading a non-fiction essay of 5 pages or a mammoth of a fiction book of 700+ pages. I care, in this case, about what is in those pages. Losing trust in an author sucks, because it feels like breaking up with someone. Kill the main character if you must, but make sure it's for the right reasons. Because that's how the story goes. But not because you feel bored.

I always hate it when in TV shows (*coughs* Grey's Anatomy *coughs*) every single time an actor wants to quit they kill his/her character. Why can't they just write that character off? (Like they did for Cristina Yang!!) It makes me lose the trust in that TV show. I can't trust it anymore, not because I'm stupid and think that death doesn't happen, but because sometimes it serves no purpose aside from advancing a story in a bad way. It kinda shows that "hey, we have no more ideas, how 'bout we kill someone, make some tension around here?!". And even then, I kinda get it. Most TV shows get around 40 minutes of TV time, one show per week, maybe even two weeks, with tons of breaks from holidays and stuff and, in general, roughly 23 episodes per season. If they're lucky to have a full season. They don't have space. But they do have space in books. That right there, is probably why I fell in love with reading, because books have as much space as an author wants, whereas TV shows don't. So I get that TV shows make up stories as they go, because really, they need viewers. I expect more than that in books. I even want more than that in books. That's why I need to trust the author.

What about you? How much do you have to trust the author when deciding to read a book? Not only that, but with authors that you already know and have read their books before, how much does trust count when you pick up their next book? More importantly, what does it take for you to lose that trust?