Write to be clear
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An author's first priority is to write to be clear. Someone is an author because they want to tell a story to others. If they didn't want to share their story, they'd keep it in their computer or in a box in their house. If what they've written fails to be understood by the reader, it has failed in its primary purpose. So, a writer should always strive to be clear. I've written more about this in my article about writing and storytelling, the author's two skills, but I wanted to write an article dedicated to this. It's really important, and it can mean the difference between your amazing idea surviving or dying in KDP's graveyard forever.
Of course, as I've written before, an author shouldn't try to write a book for everyone. There will be readers who will fail to understand you no matter how hard you try to accommodate them. You aren't writing for everyone—but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to write for someone, or that you shouldn't strive to be comprehended by that someone.
One could say that this is obviously their intent. However, I've seen writers allow their ideas of what their personal style or voice looks like affect this objective. I do not suggest one should strive to eliminate their style or voice. The writer's uniqueness is actually important, otherwise everyone would write like an AI and the world would be worse for it. However, if one allows their style or voice to make the text less clear, the text itself has failed in its fundamental purpose. The book has failed before it was even published.
One of the best and most basic resources I've found that help with this is Elements of Style by William Strunk. It was first published in 1920, so it's part of the public domain. Get it for free here. I believe that every writer should have this available at hand. Download it, print it out, and keep it next to your computer. Read it on your phone or ebook reader a few times. Refer to it when you're writing and you're unsure about something. It has a few very basic rules on how to write English, but its main purpose is to teach you how to write to be clear.
Style or voice is one of the biggest traps a new writer is facing when it comes to being understood. I can't remember where I've read this phrase, nor can I remember its exact wording, but it went something like this: to find your voice you should remove yourself from the writing. When you get out of your way and write as "pure" as you understand it, without pretentiousness, without trying to apply some unique style, without trying to sound a certain way, that's your voice.
Strunk suggests you be as concise as possible. That doesn't mean you should start writing flash fiction instead of novels, only that you don't waste your reader's time. Respect their time, respect the effort they're putting into reading your book, and don't write more than you need. As Vonnegut said, start as close to the end as possible.
There are books that aim to confuse, like certain horror or mystery stories. However, in order to effectively succeed, they must confuse while being clearly understood. It's not that the writing was convoluted, or the words strange and exotic, or formatting tricks were employed. Good stories that manage to confuse the reader succeed by hiding part of the truth while clearly establishing everything else, or better yet, by hiding the truth in plain sight—that is to say, by actually saying the truth, in a way that's certain to be ignored.
Once you make writing to be clear your objective, many choices are easy to make. You should write paragraphs clearly, you should avoid excessive use of formatting tricks, you should set the scene as clearly as possible (more on that in another post), you should use tags in dialogue when there are multiple speakers, you should stick to a certain tense throughout the book, and more. Additionally, I would suggest you follow the commonly established rules, which are subject to change as language evolves, but which are currently "in effect" as it were.
Regarding the last one, to present an example, the last few decades, people have stuck to the narrow or limited third-person narrator, where each scene follows a certain point-of-view character, and only their emotions and thoughts are communicated, along with what their senses tell them. To jump in the same paragraph or scene from one character's emotions to some other's is called "head-hopping" and is to be avoided. This is not a rule, but rather a common practice. To use the older omniscient narrator will alienate some readers.
Should your book follow this practice? I suggest you do. However, there are certain stories that would benefit by following the older omniscient narrator, or even a completely different style. In order to actually understand what system you should use, you should write more and you should read more. To break the rules, you must first understand them.
In truth, the same applies for all rules of language and writing. There are excellent books like the House of Leaves, which throws many conventions out the window—but it does so successfully. Learn the rules, use them, and when you've mastered them, you can break them successfully.
Always strive to be clearly understood. That way, when people reject your work, you'll know that you did your best, and that your work just wasn't for them, which is enough. As always, if you want to shout at me, you can do so through my email or social media, links can be found here. Thank you for reading!
Keep writing!