How can a writer point out the merits of his or her own work?
It is generally taken that if I tell you a joke, then have it explain why it's funny - it's not probably not funny.
I continually return to one of my own short pieces. If I submit it I believe it will be viewed as a 'nice' , 'pretty' piece of literary fiction. But I also believe it is extremely clever. But if I have to explain it . . . maybe not so much?
I've had to edit this because I sent you guys way off base. I'm only talking about flash fiction. It's rooted into the culture of story-telling (verbal vs written). A deal of comedy is rooted in misunderstandings, particularly the audio aspect of dialogue. Ergo, it doesn't matter how it's spelt the recipient hears the same word.
e.g. A woman goes for a job interview.
"Wait," says the receptionist, busy filling a form. "You can't ask me that!" objects the woman. "Okay . . . so I put on a few pounds over Christmas but . . ."
Expanding this theme, I wrote a short piece in which the true meaning only becomes apparent when it is read aloud.
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2 answers
One of the things that every writer has to accept is that they pay far greater attention to every aspect of their work than any reader ever will. Sure, the writer can set up a joke on page 7 and give the punch line on page 349 and think the result is hilarious. No reader remembers the setup, and so they never get the joke.
So much of what writers think is clever about their work is simply too subtle of too remote for the reader to notice. A big part of the craft of writing is understanding the nature and extent of the reader's attention and memory and knowing how and when to make things plain to the reader and to recall things to the reader's mind. The management of the reader's attention is one of the writer's most important tasks.
Then again, there are things that the writer thinks are clever that just aren't. That includes 99.375% of all puns.
Generally you are correct, your piece has to be judged by readers to be clever, in order to be considered clever by the public.
Entities with a larger budget can buy advertising that (without attribution) calls a piece "clever", "a wild ride", or say it has a "killer twist", but that will fall somewhat flat if critics don't see it. Modern consumers have a pretty jaded (or realistic) view of hype, and even "clever" is hype. Many would suspect this is self-interested promotion (and be right).
If you want to avoid unattributed claims, it is possible to pay people to spout whatever critique you want to hear. They consider this "paid endorsement", just like the movie star or sports star telling you about a great insurance company. That might work on some people, but not most people.
Even in private letters, like query letters, you should not hype yourself or your story, it is seen as amateurish, and potentially flagging you as a difficult author with superiority issues. The agents/publishers are also jaded. It is amateurish because if it made a difference everybody would claim they were clever, whether they were objectively clever or not, thus obviously it is an unreliable claim and a waste of time and space, and only amateurs would include it.
If your work is actually clever, it will be realized by most people reading it. That includes editors, agents, publishers, script readers and other gatekeepers in the path of getting it published. You shouldn't have to tell them to look for the cleverness, if it isn't obvious to most readers, and especially professional readers like these mentioned, then it isn't worth their time, because average readers won't judge it clever and the cleverness won't sell. They aren't going to include a prompting label, "look carefully for clever writing". In this market, it is obviously clever (like the ending twist in The Sixth Sense) and everybody raves about it, or it just isn't clever.
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