The relationship between writers and readers is an odd one. The writer sits in a garret (or on the top of Mount Parnassus, depending on your point of view) and labors to create a work of lasting value.  If it’s good enough and all the stars align, the readers let the work of an author’s imagination into their own and reward the author with praise, treasure and enough allegiance to read writer’s next story, as long as the author keeps the the writer-reader contract.

What, you thought what I just described was the writer-reader contract?  Au contrair, mes amis! That is merely the description.  The writer-reader contract is an old and long one that is modified only as literature evolves.  One of the basic tenets of this implied agreement is that, however complex the plot or intricate the fictional universe in the story is, the author knows everything that is going on in the story and can explain how this imaginary world makes sense.  For example:

Like most of the reading planet, I adored J. K. Rowling’s fantastic Harry Potter series.  It’s a mammoth accomplishment and a brilliantly planned series. Elements of the entire saga start appearing immediately although their importance is played down. (Spoilers abound here so if you spent the last quarter century living under a rock to avoiding the Potter phenomenon, read a different one of my posts). In the first chapter, we get the primary premise that magic-is-real set out and we learn a baby Harry somehow defeated an evil, magically powerful being named Voldemort. The soul souvenir of Voldemort’s attack, a scar on Harry’s forehead, is mentioned in passing on the first chapter but Potter fans don’t learn the full significance of scar until the end of the series, seven years and a million words later. Still, virtually every bit of information JKR drops in the early part of the series forms part of the bigger picture later on, from Hagrid’s motorbike to Dumbledore’s evasive answers to personal questions. (“What do you see in the mirror, Professor?”)  JKR doesn’t tell the audience everything immediately, she can’t, but she tells us what we need to know when we need to know it.  She honors the contract.

Another splendid example of an author knowing everything is Louis Sachar’s Holes.  This is a case of non-linear storytelling at its best since most of the narrative is about perpetually unlucky Stanley Yelnats IV, a good kid in a bad situation.  Stanley can’t know that his fate was tied to Camp Green Lake and a kid named Hector Zeroni generations before he was born but that’s because there are “holes” in his family history.  The reader’s fun comes from finding the information filling those holes at different parts of the story.  It’s a masterful fulfillment of the Writer-Reader Contract.

Now compare these to Lemony Snicket’s books, A Series of Unfortunate Events.  As usual we have an unfortunate child (well, 3 of them: Violet, Klaus and Sunny); a wicked, overarching villain who pursues them through the series (Count Olaf) and a bunch of mysterious clues and circumstances the kids encounter along the way. But, contrary to the implied contract, many of the mysteries in the story are never solved!  Readers never find out what was in that blasted sugar bowl or details about the schism that split the V. F. D. into fire-starters and fire-fighters! (Speaking of which, there are so many entities in the series with the initials V. F. D. it’s hard to keep them straight.) Instead of resolving key mysteries that have been building through the series, the author states in the last book that not every question can or will be answered.  That is true of real life, but it’s a weak excuse to readers who waded through 170 chapters of alliterative names and silly puns to find out what really happened to all of the Baudelaire family. It is a break in the writer-reader contract.

So, if you know someone struggling to write a novel this month, be kind to them.  Bring them encouragement and hot drinks as needed and assure them that they can always get through one more revision.  But remind them of the writer-reader contract and how they need to know everything in their fictional universe.  It’s a part of the contract.