How Patient Will a Reader Be?

[Peg Herring]

I'm reading one of those books where you get bits and pieces about a dozen characters, all interesting but sort of vague, with a lot of background what-they're-thinking stuff and no clue where it's all going. Because it's a writer I trust, I'm willing to go along, knowing it will all come together in the end.

My gold standard of this type of thing is A TALE OF TWO CITIES. As a kid I remember being extremely frustrated with Dickens' description of the servants bringing chocolate to their master, the coach thumping its way along the road, the arguments in the Cruncher household, and the discussions at Sydney Carton's law office, which all seemed off-topic and irrelevant. Then every single iota of information came together to reveal an ending as satisfying as it is inevitable, and I knew why the chocolate and the coach and the "flopping" arguments mattered. To paraphrase, it was a far, far better thing Dickens did than most have done before or since, and readers have been responding to it for more than a century.

But the question in my title concerns today's readers and writers. Are we patient enough to stick with a story that seems to meander, tasting a character here and a character there, throwing in a phrase that might mean something every once in a while? Some of the big guys (and gals) get away with it, but again, is it because we trust them, believing that their fame means they're worth our time? Or is it their talent, their way of providing just enough of a tease to keep us reading: an observation, a throw-away line of dialogue, a discordant item in description?

For those of us who are less known, I guess the question is "How patient will an agent/editor be?" If you have a story that takes time to develop, and the reader is somewhat in the dark, will that agent or editor cut you some slack? It doesn't seem likely, but we can hope that the writing will win, once in a while, over the bloody body on the first page.

[Dana King]

For me, it depends on the quality of the writing and the amount of interest I have in the characters. I never (really, never) don't finish a book, but I do sometimes skim through them, and I am sometimes disappointed when I stuck with a book, hoping everything will come together as you described, and it doesn't. And it does, but the payoff wasn't worth the wait. I just finished one like that last night. There was nothing "wrong" with it, and the author has a successful series going, but the end did not justify the means.