I got into an e-mail discussion about how readability affects the marketability of speculative fiction stories. Unfortunately, the discussion got a little too personal (my fault!). I think it needs time to cool down, so I'll do my thinking here instead.

I wrote:

"Long words and sentences will turn off some people, just as explicit sex and gore turn off others. Editors, whatever their personal tastes, probably realize this. No one can please everybody--certainly not by writing sf. I'm sure one can sell challenging writing and win awards for hard-to-read stories. But by writing sf at 9th Grade difficulty, you're further limiting the markets that will publish your work, just as you would if you included graphic sex and gore. Why do it unless it's intrinsic to your story?"

R seems troubled my emphasis on marketability. She's committed to saying what needs to be said, regardless of whether the story will sell. I'm sympathetic to that position. I've tried to present challenging ideas in my own stories, even though I knew they would make some readers uncomfortable.

Was I being hypocritical? I don't think so. I wasn't saying that we shouldn't write difficult stories and try to get them published. I meant that we should be conscious of what we're doing. If I'm writing to make a point about racism, then race is intrinsic to my story; it's unavoidable. But if I'm writing pure escapism, then highlighting the protagonist's skin color will only confuse my readers. Leave the people who imagine the protagonist must be a certain color to imagine him/her in that color. Challenge their unquestioned assumptions in some other story.

When it comes to sentence complexity, there's seldom a strong case for challenging the reader. When Mark Twain stuck a 300-word sentence in the middle of _A Connecticut Yankee_, I imagine he did so to affirm the intelligence of the character (Sandy) who was baffled by the protagonist's 19th century slang. Whatever the reason for it, Mark Twain was undoubtedly aware of what he was doing. On the other hand, people who write fiction to impress others with their language complexity shouldn't pretend to be writing for a broad audience. And I fear that in most cases the extra complexity is accidental. The writer isn't trying to impress; s/he is merely unclear what s/he is trying to say, and as a result the ideas come out in a confusing, roundabout way.

The whole issue of marketability is a minefield. Suppose you have something important to say about the political situation in your country, but you can't find a publisher who will touch a political story. From the publisher's point of view, it makes perfect sense to avoid such risks. Should you write the story anyway? If you don't write it, you are self-censoring. But if you do write it, and nobody ever reads it, what have you got, other than the personal satisfaction?

For me, the ultimate goal of writing is to be published in a forum that will bring my ideas to the notice of others. Of course, that leads me to wonder what I'm doing pouring my thoughts into a blog that I don't intend to publicize, so I'd better stop right here.