If you need to explain your story after people read it, something’s not right.
There’s work still to be done.
That’s a harsh truth, but it’s one worth facing.
If readers consistently misinterpret your meaning, or fail to see what you thought was obvious? It’s not because they’re “reading it wrong.” It’s because you haven’t given them enough to work with.
Your job as a writer isn’t to hover behind your readers, clarifying every line. Your job is to make the work clear enough to carry its own weight. To stand, unassisted, in the hands of a stranger who has never met you and knows nothing about what you “meant.”
One reader misunderstanding? Fine. Taste, perspective, and personal bias are wild variables. But if most of your readers are walking away with a different impression than you intended? That’s feedback. That’s the story telling you it needs work.
If you need more words to make it clear, use them.
This is why more attentive readers might notice repetition or reinforcement of certain key points. Not in the same words, or even the same tone; just a reiteration of something that they should have already noticed… but maybe didn’t
This belongs in the story. Not in a preface. Not in a note at the end. Not in an apologetic DM to the friend who “didn’t quite get it.”
Use them in the work itself.
Give your characters stronger motivations. Show the cause and effect more clearly. Build the world just enough for the stakes to land. Whatever it takes, put it where it matters—on the page.
Because you won’t be there when a stranger picks up your book. You won’t be able to explain it to them.
The story has to speak for itself.
And if it doesn’t yet? That’s not a failure. That’s an opportunity. It means you know exactly what to do next: listen to the questions readers are asking, figure out why they’re asking them, and answer those questions inside the work.
Your job isn’t to defend the story.
Your job is to make the story so strong it never needs defending.