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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47923
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47923
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

As others wrote, you cannot make sure the reader interprets your novel the way you want it to be interpreted. However, you still can influence it.

You might read your draft and explicitly look for ways how it might be misinterpreted. You won't find all possible alternative interpretations, but you might find a few.

Then, after finding possible alternative interpretations, you have to decide whether you are OK with that possible interpretation.

Obviously if you are OK with it, you don't need to change anything. But you might find a possible interpretation that you explicitly do _not_ want the readers to arrive at.

In that case, you can go through the text and look for things that specifically support that interpretation, and change them so they no longer support it. You also might add things that explicitly contradict that interpretation.

For example, if you have two characters that are good friends, and you fear that readers read a love interest into it that you want to avoid, you might look for scenes that could be seen as hints of love interest, and look whether you can rewrite them so that they look less like love interest. Or add plot elements that contradict a love interest (like, the character being in love with someone else).

Original score: 1