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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1669
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

One for the creative writers, although I suppose a lateral shift might put it within reach of journalists/technical writers.

As authors we all want to write, I would imagine:

1. Something that many people will love to read.
2. Something that has some intellectual worth.

However accessibility and depth are, at best, uneasy bedfellows. People love Lord of the Rings because of its rich backstory but many are put off by its dense prose.

I am frequently dissuaded from reading novels (particularly SF) because they present themselves as challenging the intellect while actually seeming to just want to be wilfully bizarre.

Given the choice between something I can relate to and something that purports to help alter my perception of reality I will go for the former every time, and so will most other people I know.

Even so, it is possible to confer depth upon the accessible. Weirdly The Da Vinci Code, for all its bad points, made some very dry theorising in the politics and history of religion into a bestseller. Not that I'm recommending the "Dan Brown school of literary success".

All I'm pointing out is that sometimes complex ideas can be made accessible. The best way I have ever managed to come up with of making this the case in my stories is to "be careful" and I have to say that I'm not always successful.

Also I know that if something is just accessible without anything complex it becomes dull, an also-ran, unremarkable. So it would seem that some complexity is essential to getting the balance right.

So, does anyone have any techniques they apply in trying to make the complex accessible? How successful do you think they are?

Original score: 10