Post History

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.