Ooh another juicy topic.
This is the fifth reply I've tried to type; I keep skating along the edge of spoiling my story/making myself sound like a flippant cow.
What do you think matters more; the writer's intent for the story or the readers' interpretation? And is that different for simlit specifically?
Short answer: Writer's intent. Maybe.
Long answer: My intent for the story matters more to me as that is the part I control; I don't mind how people interpret my story because I have no control over it. Part of what I enjoy most about people and their brains is that a hundred of us will look at the same thing and all see something completely different. Obviously, as we as writers all do to some extent, I'm skewing some things to try and make people interpret a certain way; there are times when I definitely want you guys to be adding one and one and making five, but I don't feel like a failure/frustrated when it doesn't work out this way, because I can't possibly guess how everyone's brain is going to interpret everything. If you add one and one and get twenty instead then, great! In fact, better because then you are a new kind of brain for me to analyse and I try and figure out how you got there. Yes, I'm constantly analysing everything. Yes, my head really hurts. :D
Sometimes it's really interesting how people interpret what I was saying and I try to guess what each of my readers are going make of future events, but rarely change anything based on this, unless I feel that I can clarify something down the line with different wording or a better screenshot etc.
For SimLit specifically. It's a 'live' process, rather than a finished book which means it can be tempting to cave to reader's ideas/interpretations. Especially when they're better than what I had planned e.g. the predicted vampire apocalypse everyone was gunning for at the start versus whatever-the-heck it is that I'm actually writing, lol. If I didn't have book one pretty much written by the time I started posting, I might have been swayed by some of the reader suggestions and changed everything (no, @ThePlumbob, I'm not talking about Zombie Sandy...). It'll be interesting to revisit this topic when I get to book two and see if I've become a slave to everyone's interpretations/expectations. :D
Just to add: please don't read any of this is to say that I feel that your feedback and comments on my story are not appreciated. They very much are. They just aren't changing anything... yet. ;)