Real and Imagined Readers

There’s always someone else in the room.

Barbara: Let’s pick up on a subject that we only touched on in the last post, the whole topic of readers — real and imagined — and the writer’s relationship to those readers.

Elizabeth: As I see it, unless you are journaling, the odds are that you are writing to be read. Writing is a solitary activity, but in the background there is the sense of another person who will read and have a response to what you put out into the world. So, the reader is a factor in the writing experience, someone you take into account as you write.

Barbara: Just to be somewhat clearer about the way we are using the word ‘readers’...

First, there are the actual people out there who will read the work: regular readers plus “gatekeepers,” such as agents or editors.

And then, there is the way you — the writer — think of your readers. These internal, imagined readers may be a fairly accurate representation of the actual readers or may be imbued with your own past experiences, your expectations, fears, and personal psychology. The imagined readers may be helpful or may get in your way!

Elizabeth: What is your own inner experience of readers? Because I expect that it is quite different from mine.

made using Open.AI Chat GPT-image generator

Barbara: When I decide to write an article, it is for a particular audience, often for a particular journal that I hope will publish the piece. It’s essential that I understand who the readers will be in order to write at their level of expertise, using language they will understand, tapping into experiences they have had with patients or problems they have faced, for instance. Many academic papers report research findings and their significance. But my scholarly writing is more focused on discussing new ideas; often my aim is to share my excitement with readers and move them to think differently about neuropsychiatry.

Also, as I consider it now, I take the reader into account in two other ways. First, the writing itself has to engage the reader…from the very first sentence. Otherwise, especially now in the age of limited attention, the reader will just read something else. And secondly…and I know you have this in mind!...I have to give the reader a reason to read the piece. There has to be a point.

Elizabeth: What you’ve said about engaging readers and impacting their thinking resonates. These writing techniques cross genres. But I am interested in how our experiences differ. Our topics and audience could hardly be more dissimilar, and I assume that must affect our mental experience of the reader.

Do you think that one difference in our process might be how much we each project our hopes and fears onto the reader? You are writing to a specific scientific community and so have a clearer idea of who the actual reader will be. I am writing to an audience about which I hardly know a thing. Perhaps that gives me more mental space in which to create an imaginary reader with traits from my own psychology.

Barbara: You’re wondering whether writers who write from personal experience fantasize more about readers? But, all writers, no matter their genre — fiction or nonfiction — have thoughts… hopes and fears…about how their writing will be received, about what will become of it, who will read it, how it might influence others…how it will add to or move a conversation forward.

Elizabeth: What about situations in which the mere thought of a particular reader can be inhibiting? By the way, I see this as one form of the notorious, Toxic Internal Critic. In my kind of personal-experience writing, the obstructing reader is fairly common and is often tied to a particular story.

In the writing class I took for many years, it was not unusual for members to describe being stopped by the thought of a certain person reading what they’d divulged. Even when that person had already died! Even in fiction, where the writer’s fear was that a situation or character might seem too familiar to a certain someone.

I had my own experience with an intimidating imagined reader (in this case, readers). For decades, I was reluctant to submit material to my college magazine, which solicited essays from alums. I couldn’t bear the idea of my classmates reading my work and judging it to be deficient. I finally did send in a piece of writing, when we were asked to provide a brief biography for our 50th reunion. I felt that if I didn’t, it would be as though I’d ceased to exist after college. To my amazement, as soon as I started to write, I automatically fell into the comfortable voice of my present self, and it was the imagined hostile judges who ceased to exist. It seems the mere thought of my classmates had reawakened the 18-year-old me, who’d been fearful at finding herself among so many smart women!

Barbara: It is possible to keep the reader in mind so much that it becomes inhibiting — not only because the imagined reader may be critical — but also because you simply don’t want to be distracted. You have something to say, and you want to focus on the difficult task of getting that into words. You need to have “internal” privacy for that process to unfold.

I really like what Stephen King said: “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” As a writer, you’re always putting yourself “out there” and have some degree of vulnerability. This is true in science writing as in other forms of writing.

Elizabeth: You are saying that writing is writing, whatever the genre, with the same intellectual and emotional challenges, and I can’t argue with that.

We agreed in another post that the drive to write emerges for all of us from complex dynamic forces deep in us. So, it makes sense that the readers we imagine in our minds also draw on deep sources, no matter our genre. And yet, I still feel there’s some issue we haven’t yet hit on.

What about this potential difference? I know you’re attracted to new ideas — it’s what really excites you — so I imagine that you must anticipate some skepticism about what you propose in your writing. I imagine your work as an uphill struggle against old conceptualizations. The pressure to research and substantiate your argument must be considerable.

Barbara: That’s actually not quite right. If you are trying to shift someone’s way of thinking, you will inevitably have readers who don’t agree with your ideas. And in science, this is the norm, since there are always new discoveries, and it can take time for people to come around to a new way of thinking. My library and archival research isn’t driven by the need to convince skeptical readers. It’s driven by my desire to understand the topic at a deeper level. I need to feel that I will be learning something in an area that intrigues me. It’s selfish! It’s about me, not the reader.

Elizabeth: OK. It’s not that. But I know there is some significant difference in how we conceive and respond to our internal readers — something profound and defining. How would you describe your vision of that relationship?

Barbara: Well, I think I write with the goal of sharing my excitement about the things I am learning. I do have the hope that this will inspire traditionally-oriented psychiatrist-readers to want to know more about mind/brain relationships. There is much greater acceptance of integrating knowledge of the brain into psychiatric practice now than when I first started writing in this arena. But, I do want to bring others along with me as I follow the truly astounding, ongoing discoveries in the neurosciences.

I’m not trying to persuade these readers, exactly. I’m trying to present them with information that will expand their thinking about the brain and human behavior. I’m doing the same with you!

Elizabeth: There it is! An essential difference in how we think about our readers. You explore new ideas and want to bring your readers along with you as your perspective expands. I share something about myself and hope readers will recognize themselves in my experience and understand themselves better as a result.

This core difference in how we relate to our readers arises from what drives us to write in the first place. You seek the thrill of learning what is happening at the frontier and want others to share your excitement. I seek the deep satisfaction of self-understanding and want others, by connecting with me, to experience that satisfaction for themselves.

Different, for sure. (But maybe not completely different!)

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