It doesn't matter what you meant to say. If you leave someone a note to meet you at McDonald's, and they head over to Burger King, you failed. You chose the wrong words. You used the words you chose poorly. No matter what you meant those words to say, or wanted them to say, they said something else, and you'd better suck it up, look at them, and discover what it was you did wrong so next time, you can get the message through. It's not the audience's job to read your mind, or know any other context than what is in front of them, right there, on the page.
Yes, there are sloppy readers, and people who skip over things. And then there are writers who just plain fail to get their point across, and those writers should stop accusing their audience of not paying attention. If your reader walks away from your communication with a message other than what you were trying to convey, more often than not, the fault lies with the writer.
This is not a defence of Anne Rice, who's books I tried a long time ago and didn't like. But you know, I'm all about alternate readings are valid, but to say that if a reader walks away from a piece with an unanticipated interpretation to say that there is any fault at all strikes me as strange. Everybody walks away from a story with a different interpretation. I can't conceive of knowing each individual potential reader well enough to use language as a fool-proof medium for conveying exactly what you meant.
The example you give with the McDonalds/Burger King confusion boggles me. The way you write it seems to suggest to me that if you put the word's McDonalds on the note, but the addressee shows up at the Burger King, you are still somehow at fault for not communicating clearly. How could this possibly be the case? How far can you nail things down, in the end?
I think you can make a good attempt, but there will always be grey areas. In that respect there can be stories that you just don't get. I know there have been stories that I just didn't get at one point in my life, that I've come to love as my own point of view has changed. The reader brings something to the story too. And IMO that's not about fault, but about diversity.
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Yes, there are sloppy readers, and people who skip over things. And then there are writers who just plain fail to get their point across, and those writers should stop accusing their audience of not paying attention. If your reader walks away from your communication with a message other than what you were trying to convey, more often than not, the fault lies with the writer.
This is not a defence of Anne Rice, who's books I tried a long time ago and didn't like. But you know, I'm all about alternate readings are valid, but to say that if a reader walks away from a piece with an unanticipated interpretation to say that there is any fault at all strikes me as strange. Everybody walks away from a story with a different interpretation. I can't conceive of knowing each individual potential reader well enough to use language as a fool-proof medium for conveying exactly what you meant.
The example you give with the McDonalds/Burger King confusion boggles me. The way you write it seems to suggest to me that if you put the word's McDonalds on the note, but the addressee shows up at the Burger King, you are still somehow at fault for not communicating clearly. How could this possibly be the case? How far can you nail things down, in the end?
I think you can make a good attempt, but there will always be grey areas. In that respect there can be stories that you just don't get. I know there have been stories that I just didn't get at one point in my life, that I've come to love as my own point of view has changed. The reader brings something to the story too. And IMO that's not about fault, but about diversity.