You Think I read The Crap I Write?

  My friend Kate S. recently went on a rant (an unusual occurrence as Kate S is spectacularly good-natured). She had been watching a TV series on DVD, and apparently the end was disappointing.
  "When you write a TV series," she said. "And you come up with a wonderful, crazy, diabolical puzzle, it should be required by law that you have a solution BEFORE you are allowed to make the show. Because other wise you get to the end and you say 'Crap I can't explain that'. So you don't. AND IT SUCKS!"
   It brought to mind an interview with a script writer I had read. When questioned exhaustively about the "inconsistencies" in the series he wrote he replied"What? You think I watch this shit? I have a life!"
    As shocking as this attitude was in a television writer, I found it more annoying in an Author. In one of my favorite series there is a wonderful moment between the heroine and the detective who becomes her love interest. They look at each other across the ransacked  room and she reveals what really happened the night her husband died.
  It's a carefully crafted scene, filled with emotion, that lays the foundation for their growing relationship. One problem, the author forgot about it. or her characters suffered from collective amnesia. During the series she will go on to reveal her deep dark secret a grand total of FOUR times. And each time he reacts as if he never heard it before.
   Each repetition was less well written and lacked the emotional impact of that first scene. Finally in the last book the reveal holds all the import of, "Honey, the cable is out". He says "You never told me that" and the reader says, "Yes, she did! In books one, three and five." The heroine responds with "I never even told my son", and the the reader says, "Yes, you did! In book three when you were freaked that the actress your husband had an affair with turned up and he was all "Mom WTF"! At this point the reader wonders if the author reads her own books,.
    The obvious answer would be no. But almost everyone I talked to had been disappointed in one way or another by a writer. My sister still remembers a series three decades ago that cut off in the middle leaving the protagonist stranded in the desert. My entire family (myself included) remembers when a series facing cancellation scrambled for a solution to the mystery that drove the plot. The problem was there was no way the character tagged as the unknown villain could have committed the crime that the entire story rested on.
   No one is perfect. And I do not think that readers or viewers expect perfection from writers. But I do think they expect answers to the questions the author poses. So keep track of your plot. And if you raise questions do your best to answer them. Because if left unanswered those questions never go away. And if all else fails, read your own books damn it!