: Re: How do you earn the reader's trust? Recently, I have stumbled upon a problem. After releasing an issue, I think that I failed to earn the trust of my readers. My analysis is that they did

@Smith147

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Agree with the readers

Very recently, I came upon a bit of storytelling that almost made me lose interest in the story because I honestly thought it was a logical mistake that would have really taken me out of it.

Basically, an action the main character made changed the action of a different character, even though they were completely sealed off from one another and they could not possibly influence each other. It did not make any sense.

And I would have stopped reading soon after, except when the main character found out about this a moment later, he had exactly the same reaction I had. He was actually completely shocked and couldn't make sense of it. And while he didn't have more answers than I did, it made me understand that the story would address this later on.

The problem is that if something doesn't make sense, there are always two possibilities: The first one (the one in your case) is that the author is planning something and it actually will make sense later on. The second one is the bad one: The author made a mistake. Sadly, the second one happens a lot more often than we'd like to admit. And if the mistakes are big we lose interest in the story. Even if the author was to salvage it somehow, if he makes a mistake like that once, it's probably gonna happen again.

So you need to let the reader know it's not a mistake. You don't have to explain why and take out the mystery. You just need to make sure that after that chapter, the readers are not the only ones that feel that this was completely out of character for the main character.

In your situation, obviously the main character questioning how he could behave that way would be a good start, but you can also have side characters that observe his behaviour be openly confused about it as it does not fit his personality at all. Make sure other characters react the same way your readers react. It is out of character. Something has to be wrong. Right?

Do this as soon as possible! The readers shouldn't have to wait too long to understand that the author sees the problem and is going to address it at some point. You don't have to reveal the poison, or the traitor or anything, just make sure the readers feel like they are not alone in thinking this was out of place.

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