Making sure you're understood.

I have a constant fear of being misunderstood. Whether I am writing or speaking or simply being around people, I am constantly self-analysing to make sure that I am being perceived the way I mean to be perceived.

As readers, everything we read is filtered through everything else we have read and everything we have experienced. When we read a description of a building, we can take every word of description an author wrote and put it into our mental picture of what that building looks like, but what we perceive the building to look like and what the author imagined the building to look like will still be two very different things.

As writers, we work to be understood so that the readers see OUR stories, not a story that looks similar to ours. For certain events, actions and character points to have their full impact, previous elements of the story must first be perceived properly and secondly be remembered by the reader either specifically, or as an impression that changes their remembrance of a character or event so that they still retain the right ideas.

Writing is not merely placing a series of events and a cast of characters into words so that they may be viewed by the audience, there is also a degree of subtle manipulation on the author's part so that they can reinforce their ideas and have their definition of what the story is replace what the reader thinks the story is.

By all of this I mean to say: I feel that I struggle with keeping my point and intentions clear and was wondering if any of you have similar feelings and perhaps advice on the subject.

Sincerely,
Vespero.

I know exactly what you're feeling, because I feel the same way. I've decided the main reason I think I write at all is that fear of being misunderstood. When I'm just talking to someone in person, I always say the wrong thing or sound like I have no idea what I'm talking about. But writing? It lets me get out what I want to say and how I want to say it.

I don't know what to say for advice, since I'm in the same boat, other than keep searching for the right words!

The only way to determine that you are being understood is to ask.

That's half the reason for editors and beta readers: to see if people outside our own heads "see" the same story we do, and if it makes any sense. Let them read it, and ask them questions. If they're confused by your story, you need to rewrite. If they miss the main point you wanted to make, you need to rewrite. If they gush over the setting but can't tell you the first thing about Hero Bill, if they love that heartfelt monologue in the hotel bathroom but don't remember if Evil Ed lives or dies, you need to rewrite.

You're never going to get 100% translation. Even if you drew it out as a graphic novel - ensuring that everyone sees Hero Bill with the same face you intended - or made a movie - showing exactly how you meant that action sequence to go - people will always read in their own nuances, ignoring or inventing bits. But the story itself - the heart of it, the living thread of it - should survive the jump from your brain to your audience. Fifty different artists might draw 50 different renditions of your Hero Bill after reading it, but the same character should be visible in all of them.

And I can totally relate to insecurities about being understood. I suck at speaking. Literally. Minor speech impediment plus self-esteem issues make for a lifelong fear of public speaking. But writing... now, give me a keyboard to cower behind, give me time to scan and edit and select my prose, and I'm (reasonably) certain that I'll be able to get my point across.

What really sucks as a writer is when you write something that, when you reread it, YOU don't understand what you were saying. I've done that.

. . . which is why I overwrite. I try too hard to give the reader MY picture of what's happening as opposed to giving them enough so they can paint their own image. They need the same story, yes and manipulating them into that is important. But at times, they need their own brush strokes to finish the painting.

Verbally, I hate speaking to nore than a few select people. Not only am I not understood, vut they talk, yell, walk away, etc. before I can explain myself.
I don't worry about it so much in writing. 1. I guess I do it so much that it feels better than talking. 2. People's backgrounds will always cause them to read something differently. This is sometimes a good thing. 3. Writing is hard in a lot of ways, so it's expected that you and others read and re-read your work to see if it matches what you tried to show.

I've actually decided not to worry so much about this. It still irritates me like crazy when people misunderstand what I've said or written because I try to always say or write exactly what I mean. But I can't control the fact that other people are going to filter my words by what they would have meant by it if they'd said it/written it. Ah Bacon, your idols are a problem!

Well, I know that I have always brought my own interpretation to things. You should have been in some of my English Literature classes. There were a few times when I stood there and argued with the whole class about books we had been assigned. So, I suppose I just kind of expect that other people will bring their own interpretations to the story and not worry about it. In fact, I have always thought that a story being, for lack of a better way of putting it, "interpretable" was part of what makes it a good story.

Of course, I always have trouble making myself understood. There are quite a few threads on this site where I had to go back and write some variation on the "That's not what I meant" theme.

Don't worry too much about whether people understand all the layers in your novel -- once you get famous enough, they'll find messages in lines that were never meant to be so deep! Write what you feel, and if people want to read more or something different in your words than what you intended, that's only because their minds are cleaner or filthier than yours. I think a good dose of the 'whatevers' would be in place then.

Example: A former colleague of mine (also a language teacher) was very fond of the books of a modern literary writer and somehow fibbed her way into getting an interview with this author (she was still in college at the time). Anyway, she asked him lots of things about his books, and he told her that he was quite amused/annoyed by the messages people saw in his books, even when he never intended them to be there! When she was back in college, and her professor asked her how she could be so sure that this author meant this and that, she simply told him: "I asked him."

Ka-boom!