hi, cassie! this is just a general question but do opinions of your fans influence your work? for example if it was clear that the majority of the fandom doesn’t want a certain thing to happen, would you change that aspect for them even if you’ve had that certain thing planned since the beginning?
I have to say, no. That doesn’t indicate a lack of love for my fans or respect for their opinions. Of course I want them to be happy and love the books. But . . .
1) There’s rarely ever a majority opinion of fans. There are very general things like “Most people like Magnus.” But the idea that there’s a clear majority opinion on most ongoing story questions — I’ve never been able to discern one. Even on tumblr, if I can find a majority opinion, it may well not be echoed by the opinions of people on other sites, or people I meet in person. It usually isn’t, in fact. So identifying a majority opinion in the first place is basically impossible. Even if it seems to you like everyone you know agrees on something, that still might not mean anything — fandom is often a mild, low-stakes version of an internet echo chamber.
2) A lot of times, I have information that fans don’t, which is normal because I’m telling the story. I’ll see people get a spoiler for Chain of Iron and say things like “Such and such feels wrong” and I’ll think, yes, I’m sure it does, because without the six hundred pages leading up to the spoiler, you lack all the necessary information to contextualize it. So I have to take that into account — I can’t be like “People don’t like Development B” because I know that part of the purpose of books is to lead you through changes so that plot developments feel organic, and the reader hasn’t had that experience yet.
3) I respect my fans enough to tell the story that seems right to me to tell, the story that I feel enthusiastic about telling. I’ll never do as good a job telling a story that was chosen by committee as I will telling the story I dreamed up in the first place. If someone doesn’t like it, they don’t like it! But I can guarantee they would not have liked my reluctant, unenthusiastic rendition of the thing they wanted better.
4) Sometimes people don’t want what they think they want. The Last Hours is now my fifth book series, so I’ve been through a lot of the patterns of fandom before. If I’d said at the end of Clockwork Prince “They both end up with Tessa” there would have been a riot of rage. But Clockwork Princess wound up working for most people — whenever I do a signing where you can only bring one book from home, it’s inevitably Clockwork Princess. It’s certainly many people’s favorite book of mine. I like it too and I’m happy with the end and glad I stuck to my plan.
5) I’ve seen people want thing A only to be surprised they actually like thing B better. Or think they hate a character only to find out they don’t. (Alastair...) We all have things we want from books! It’s totally normal! But it’s also the job of books to surprise us. To give us the thing we didn’t know we wanted. That is the most extraordinary thing a book can do. And the only way to give people the thing they didn’t know they wanted is to stick by your own original dream for the story.
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