Writer as Docent: Taking the Reader by the Hand

With the possible exception of diary writing, writing in the real world is seldom undertaken as an end in itself to sit on a shelf. One might argue that even a diary assumes an audience of one. Composition theorists have divided writing into two developmental levels, writer-based and reader-based, having to do with a developed sense of audience. Bahktin might object, since for him every utterance comes from and returns to an audience in a necessary chain the breaking of which incurs the wrath of eternal silence—dead language. This is a case where pragmatics trumps theory. I’ve used this scheme as an assessment heuristic since I first learned about it.

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Writer-based text is challenging to read unless you are the writer. Often, readers feel as if they are being jerked around, floating along on sentences that make little sense and rarely fit together. When typical syntactic and grammatical infelicities pepper the text, when sentences are loaded with empty wonderful words that are entirely placed before the readers’ eyes to showboat the writer’s glorious periodicity, the writer isn’t looking out for the reader.

There are writers who dial up the difficulty level intentionally; the point is to exhaust every ounce of meaning from my text, dear reader, if you dare to try. I admit to this obsession in my poetry, though I’m usually too clever for myself by a factor of three. More often, writer-based text just means the writer wasn’t a good host, inviting readers without preparing a meal for them. Guilty as charged.

Reader-based text is a nuanced problem unless you’re writing a textbook, a legal document, a research article, a response to an RFP, an accreditation report, and the like—texts in genres so heavily restricted and prescribed that you really have few choices. The writer is a discursive prisoner. Writers in more natural settings including the workplace build trust by drawing in the reader as an alert participant, staging information in well-marked and clear ways, occasionally staging minor holdups to keep things interesting, tricks, and then quickly setting things to right—innocuous jokes, risky but worth it if well done. Ha ha.

You’re not going to see much of this playful writing in academic writing, though you really can if you know where to look for it, and the tide is turning, but I believe this detour through Trumpland we are beginning to end has forever tilted the balance. Writers from WEIRD countries, journalists in particular but not exclusively, are always looking for a touch of humor, a tiny twist in the narrative, a sprinkle of drama, surprise easter eggs. We need collectively to feel better about things.

Effective reader-based text demands a highly metacognitive, experienced composer. Seeing the elements of the task of the reader-based writer in common with that of a docent guiding a tour through a museum sheds light on what I’m trying to communicate in this essay. I’m sure this analogy is not original with me. I saw it in a chat with GPT-4 several months ago. “As an AI, I can become your teacher, your research assistant, your docent…what would you like me to be today?”

The word itself has a long root in Latin, doccur, which means to teach. In Europe the term still refers to an academic rank in a university, an associate professor on the way to full most commonly. But in America, competing with the academic use, a docent is a volunteer, a local usually, a responsible guide with expert knowledge of an art gallery or a park or a museum or even a prison or castle. According to ContextTravel.com, where you can find the schedules of 1500 registered docents scattered across Europe and the United States and plan your trip accordingly:

“A docent is a master teacher. She is someone who has the ability—the gift, in fact—for communicating a concept in such a way that brings the layperson on an intellectual journey. Context docents are these kinds of people.”

This gift is hard earned, requiring solid motivation and preparation. My friend, a retired Social Studies methods professor, volunteers as a docent in Monterrey Bay, guiding visitors through the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, a role that requires regular reading for information, alert attendance at meetings for clarification and presentations (he is quizzed on content), and showing up on time and chipper.

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Being a context docent entails establishing intimate joint attention on unfamiliar terrain with an anonymous crowd of spectators, who happen also to be participants. Writer-based writing, catering to the writer, occurs under the assumption of a spectator reader, perhaps an automaton. The writer expects the reader to attend to everything in the text just as the writer intended it, to follow along or get lost, it’s all the same to me, I wrote it, it’s your job to read it.

Unfortunately, this strategy ignores docent secret #1: Readers are always participants. They can be active, passive, daring you to interest them, agitated, stimulated, working with the writer or against the path constructed for them. They can feel alienated when a writer inadvertently treats them like spectators, like they are reading a form letter. Moreover, readers are knowledgeable and use what they know to connect to the aquarium or the Grand Canyon or the railroad museum. They want to know what you are trying to say.

Now if a writer really doesn't want to be read widely in a world made up of laypeople, ignore this secret. Pull a Faulkner. William Faulkner was once asked why he made his books so hard to understand. This critic complained that he had read the work several times and still didn't understand it. I empathize. Have you ever tried reading Sound and Fury? Faulkner’s response:

“Read it again.”

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Writer-based writing sidesteps the fundamental importance of scientific concepts in all writing—docent secret #2. When I think I’m writing a simple expository essay in a literary fashion about complexities in making a deliberate transition from writer-based to reader-based prose, I must consider and accommodate underlying conceptual frameworks my reader needs as a resource to make sense of my text and make these accommodations to the degree I can in the space available. Sailing is replete with arcane knowledge and vocabulary. Do I want readers to understand everything or just enough? Am I explaining how the FBI works or how my character works?

I conceive of myself by training and experience to be a qualified writing instructor for general venues. I’ve published enough to understand a bit. I’ve practiced teaching it at every grade level from elementary to advanced graduate school. I once designed and taught a course in technical writing for fire fighters in the Normal-Bloomington area as a graduate assistant. A bedrock support in my conceptual framework of composition I call the intent-revision axis. A writer without a clear intention has no basis for revision. This writer must formulate a tentative intention (a rough draft title, say) as a stake in the ground to begin building a text.

At this point in the progression from writer-based to reader-based text, the match between writer and reader in terms of topical knowledge must be forefront. If I’m an expert on the manufacturing of chemicals, say, I must consider the readership for the text I’m going to upload to the website regarding a new procedure for storing potassium permanganate, a highly dangerous, combustible chemical. I’m aware that website visitors include longtime clients placing orders for large quantities. But other visitors may require more shall we say conceptual generosity on my part.

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Docent secret #3 is much less obvious. To become an accomplished docent, one must consider three different kinds of participants during preparation, reflective analysis, and also in the act of docenting. The same is true of the reader-based writer. Here I am drawing on the work of Wolfgang Iser: Reader-based writers deal with a real reader, a hypothetical reader, and an implied reader.

The real reader is the reader you know, the mom and dad with their three kids standing under a tree as you talk about the Olympic swimming pool at Hearst Castle on California Coast Hwy 1. These are the readers who can help you most. Imagine throwing a football; there must be a catcher to let you know what happened. Real readers are often difficult to find, but if you are serious about writing, you can find them. Here on Substack Brock Eldon has announced his new project for serious writers willing to dig into real reader feedback.

The hypothetical reader is the reader you don’t know, you get zero feedback from, the two guys who left early and went to sit under a shade tree to wait until the shuttle carried them back down the mountain to the highway. This hypothetical reader could be a composite you made up to help you decide what to say during the heat of writing. This reader could be the reader you want to construct by way of the text. It could be the reader you don’t want to offend or drive away. It’s been said that every poet teaches her readers how to read her work. This worked pretty well in Faulkner’s hands. People have been reading him, rereading, rereading, rereading, for a century.

The way you construct readers comes through the transitivity of implication. Word choices, microtextual constructions within, between, and across sentences and paragraphs, frontal assaults, respectful politeness… tone, voice, documentation, shading, fairness, patterns of imagery, emotional and sensory entanglements, reliability, clarity, all these and much more are tools or qualities. Or think of it as the invited reader.

You as a writer play a part in constructing your reader whether you know it or not just as the reader constructs (and deconstructs) you.

mmmmm