So naturally we try to give our readers their fair share of credit. We don’t exult in our own perceived intelligence by explaining every little ol’ thing. We assume readers will be smart enough to draw from the context to understand unfamiliar words and to put the plot pieces together just as quickly as we would be able to do ourselves. By doing this, we create a story atmosphere in which we bring readers in as partners in our storytelling. We’re giving them the pieces they need and trusting them to put them together properly
But there’s a dark flipside to this. Sometimes we can assume readers actually understand more than they do. This is particularly true in stories with unfamiliar settings, such as fantasy, historical, or even jargon- and protocol-heavy sub-settings such as the legal world.
The average reader who is uninitiated to these times and places won’t necessarily know enough to keep pace with us when we start throwing strange terminology and social mores at them. The fact that we, as the authors, always know exactly what we’re talking about doesn’t help matters, since we can often be spectacularly nonobjective about the clarity of our writing.
We must consider carefully everything we write and weigh it to determine whether we’re succeeding in walking that narrow line between insulting readers’ intelligence and just flat-out bewildering them.
