How to Write a Good Fanfic

1.1.0 - Poor Wording IS the Writer's Issue, NOT the Reader's

An author should say what he is proposing to say, and not merely come near it.
- Mark Twain

I've used this quote before in 1.1 Say What You Mean to Say. I'm reminded I wrote the article before I started utilizing Grammarly so there are some grammar issues in there. In that article I discussed why it is important to mean what you say. This time I'm going to discuss not blaming the reader for your problem. No, seriously, if you do not say what you are proposing to say as Mark Twain says don't blame your readers when they get a totally different meaning than what you intended.

The problem lies with you and not the reader.

I'm a dyslexic writer and reader. I'd like to say I've had writers blame me for not reading the words the way they think they should be read because of my dyslexia, but in truth I've only had this happen once in my life. Most of the time this occurs I've not even brought up the fact I'm dyslexia and the writer acts like I'm making a big deal out of nothing and thus they claim their poor word choice is my problem.

Except for a dyslexic or ESL reader it is a big deal. It's one thing when our disability or knowledge of the non-natal language makes us misinterpret what we read, and we find ourselves rereading until we read the sentence as it is written. It's completely another when we find ourselves rereading and never seeing what the writer says they mean in the sentence because its just not there. Poor use of grammar and wording are more likely to pull us out of the reading than not.

No, seriously...

Having dyslexia doesn't mean I can't read or write let alone do it well. Instead, when we are able to read well the issues stand out more to us particularly in regard to word choice. We shouldn't be going, "the word doesn't mean what you think it means" with writers or readers. By this I mean the word doesn't meant what the writer thinks it does within the context and the word means something different than the one definition the reader is used to seeing. We find the defining of words simply by utilizing the parts of the word such as the suffix and prefix rather than actually looking up the definition annoying.

More importantly telling someone it is their problem when you made the mistake is a slap in the face, because it is not our problem. We're not the ones making the mistake, but you the writer are asking us to overlook the mistake because...

According to you, it isn't your problem. In reality the act of pushing it off as another person's problem is to be in denial of their being a problem.