Go With the Flow

So, we all know that exposition is a really important (and challenging) part of writing SF, right? I mean, you're serious about writing Spec, you've spent some time considering the various ways to get information across--worldbuilding, tech, whatever.

Now. Considering the widespread assumption that suspense=concealed information, you've doubtless also considered the importance of how the information is ordered for the reader. On a very broad scale, at least.

Now, I don't happen to believe that suspense=concealed information--but there is a (wrongly-employed) fair assumption hiding inside there: the idea that the order in which the reader receives information makes a difference in how they understand and process the story. Consider, for example.

So yesterday, there was Joe, running down the hall screaming. I was just coming in with a large iced tea from lunch so I poured that on him but it didn't do any good! He just kept screaming until someone yelled, "Joe! Stop, drop, and roll!" That did the trick. Oh, I forgot to mention, Joe's pants were on fire.

So, once you get to the third-last sentence, it's fairly clear what's going on, and of course the last sentence makes it explicit. But this is obviously told backwards. Obviously, that (tiny and somewhat pointless) story needs to begin with "So yesterday Joe's pants caught fire." It doesn't flow right with that sentence on the end. Mostly because the reader starts on the first sentence ("Yesterday, there was Joe, running down the hall screaming.") without enough information. She's going to use some memory/processing space waiting for that to be clear to her. Then in the next sentence the narrator inexplicably pours iced tea on the inexplicably distressed Joe--an act of charity that seems instead childish or malicious. Finally someone gives Joe appropriate advice, and the reader can say to herself, "Stop, drop, and roll--that's for when you're on fire!" and she backs up and says, "Oh, I see, Joe was on fire, and the iced tea was to put him out, I get it."

So here's the thing. You need to be in control--or as much in control as possible--of how much work your reader is doing. Partly because different levels and sorts of work will give different effects, and some readers actively enjoy particular kinds of work (SF readers, for instance, often enjoy the "what's this world and what shiny things do they have?" work, or the "How is this different from the real world?" work, etc).

So, you might want to give your reader a fair amount of amusing work--but you'll trip yourself up if you give her unintended extra work. The worldbuilding that's meant to enchant will tire, or be obscured by the reader's having to untangle the basic sequence of events, without the extra resources for your beautiful magic system.

"Right, Ann," I hear you say. "Do you think I haven't thought about this?"

Of course you have. If you write SF, you've certainly thought about this.

But have you stopped to think about the way this works at the sentence level? Because it does.

A sentence hits the reader one word at a time. As each word comes, the reader forms a provisional idea of what the sentence is going to be, of what word is coming next and what the sentence will be saying, until the whole thing comes completely clear in the last word of the sentence.

If you want a detailed demonstration of this--or even if you don't--do yourself a favor and read Samuel Delany's "About Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Words." At one time it was available online, but it seems to have gone away. So go to the library and check out a copy of Jewel Hinged Jaw. No, seriously, just do.

So. I'm not going to say anything boneheaded like "You want your reader to do as little work as possible for each sentence she reads." No, because sometimes you do want the work. Sometimes the work is fun. But you want to control where that extra work happens, and you don't want to make what should be simple, easy sentences hard to read when that's not actually your intention.

A lot of folks in slush, writers who aren't ready for prime time (yet! Always yet! The day will come!) have this problem. Sentences that are, strictly speaking, grammatically correct but don't quite read right. And honestly, the closer to "right" they get, the more grating it can be to read. "The Eye of Argon" is so obviously horrible that people read it for sheer enjoyment of the crashing and clunking going on, but something that's just subtly off is harder to enjoy. Consider the difference between a huge, crashing dissonance and a piano that's just enough out of tune to put your teeth on edge. And consider the difference between a twentieth-century microtonal piece that's meant to sound "out of tune" and, say, Mozart or Brahms played on that out of tune piano. Huge, huge difference.

Consider Delany's example sentence:

The red sun was high, the blue low.

Try it this way:

The red star was high, the blue low, both suns lighting the purple sky.

The second sentence is longer, but that's really not an issue. The issue is, I've placed the word that lets the reader know the two stars are suns in the daytime sky at the end of the sentence, and probably made the reader backtrack and say to herself, "Oh, they're suns" Yes, I know, stars are suns and suns are stars, and the words may as well be the same thing, but they're not. Every word is connected to other words and images, and to say or read that word will bring up associations with those other words and images. So "star" is nighttime or in space, most likely tiny points of light. "Sun" is daytime, large and bright. You can deliberately use one in place of the other, for particular effect, of course, but if you do it accidentally you're adding work for the reader to no purpose.

Now, this is a trivial amount of work, really, but if you're not aware you're doing it, chances are your prose is loaded with these, and your reader is using up a lot of working energy untangling the sentences and isn't experiencing your story the way you actually want her to.

This is, IMO, one of the secrets to the (also IMO) boneheadedly-named "Transparent Prose." It's not transparent, it's not that it keeps the words out of the way of the story. No words, no story, after all. No, it's prose that affords the reader a minimum of work parsing each sentence. That gives each word in the order that will build up the images, the scenes and the actions, as easily comprehensibly as possible so that the reader never has to say, "No, wait, what?" and go back and re-read the sentence, or the paragraph.

I've got nothing for or against "Transparent Prose." (Honestly, would anyone talk about the virtue of pictures made with Transparent Paint?) It's one of a zillion stylistic choices available to any writer. It's by no means easy to pull off well. It might or might not be exactly what you want or need for the story you're working on. The point is not that such prose is better or worse than something more stylized or poetic or what have you--it's that whatever you choose for your story, you need to be in control of it so that it does what you want it to do. And if you're not in control of the order and speed of the information flowing to the reader, word by word, you're not going to be able to do what you want, except maybe by accident.

____

Incidentally, the idea of how much work your reader is doing, it also works on the level of the single word, particularly with neologisms. Consider:

I stepped aboard the Fligglewoggle. The Fliggle Chief clicked her heels together smartly and saluted. "Welcome aboard, O Pozzlewozzle!" The pilot, busy with the controls, didn't look up. My counterpart the Sizzlewizzle, in the seat behind her, turned and cocked an eyebrow at me, amused.

Now, you could fix this with some exposition, some description, some maid and butler dialogue, whatever. But you know how else you could fix it? Like this, is how:

I stepped aboard the aethopter. The Captain clicked her heels together smartly and saluted. "Welcome aboard, O Dexarch!" The pilot, busy with the controls, didn't look up. My counterpart the Sinisarch, in the seat behind her, turned and cocked an eyebrow at me, amused.

Look at those words. I can explain extra stuff if I want--I probably want, just being me--but the words themselves are carrying a lot of weight. Don't get me wrong, breaking out the Greek and Latin roots every single time you're making up SFnal terms isn't always the best way to go, but dang if it doesn't make some things easier, for you, and for your reader, to think about the ways even bits of words communicate meaning.

Go With the Flow

So, we all know that exposition is a really important (and challenging) part of writing SF, right? I mean, you're serious about writing Spec, you've spent some time considering the various ways to get information across--worldbuilding, tech, whatever.

Now. Considering the widespread assumption that suspense=concealed information, you've doubtless also considered the importance of how the information is ordered for the reader. On a very broad scale, at least.

Now, I don't happen to believe that suspense=concealed information--but there is a (wrongly-employed) fair assumption hiding inside there: the idea that the order in which the reader receives information makes a difference in how they understand and process the story. Consider, for example.

So yesterday, there was Joe, running down the hall screaming. I was just coming in with a large iced tea from lunch so I poured that on him but it didn't do any good! He just kept screaming until someone yelled, "Joe! Stop, drop, and roll!" That did the trick. Oh, I forgot to mention, Joe's pants were on fire.

So, once you get to the third-last sentence, it's fairly clear what's going on, and of course the last sentence makes it explicit. But this is obviously told backwards. Obviously, that (tiny and somewhat pointless) story needs to begin with "So yesterday Joe's pants caught fire." It doesn't flow right with that sentence on the end. Mostly because the reader starts on the first sentence ("Yesterday, there was Joe, running down the hall screaming.") without enough information. She's going to use some memory/processing space waiting for that to be clear to her. Then in the next sentence the narrator inexplicably pours iced tea on the inexplicably distressed Joe--an act of charity that seems instead childish or malicious. Finally someone gives Joe appropriate advice, and the reader can say to herself, "Stop, drop, and roll--that's for when you're on fire!" and she backs up and says, "Oh, I see, Joe was on fire, and the iced tea was to put him out, I get it."

So here's the thing. You need to be in control--or as much in control as possible--of how much work your reader is doing. Partly because different levels and sorts of work will give different effects, and some readers actively enjoy particular kinds of work (SF readers, for instance, often enjoy the "what's this world and what shiny things do they have?" work, or the "How is this different from the real world?" work, etc).

So, you might want to give your reader a fair amount of amusing work--but you'll trip yourself up if you give her unintended extra work. The worldbuilding that's meant to enchant will tire, or be obscured by the reader's having to untangle the basic sequence of events, without the extra resources for your beautiful magic system.

"Right, Ann," I hear you say. "Do you think I haven't thought about this?"

Of course you have. If you write SF, you've certainly thought about this.

But have you stopped to think about the way this works at the sentence level? Because it does.

A sentence hits the reader one word at a time. As each word comes, the reader forms a provisional idea of what the sentence is going to be, of what word is coming next and what the sentence will be saying, until the whole thing comes completely clear in the last word of the sentence.

If you want a detailed demonstration of this--or even if you don't--do yourself a favor and read Samuel Delany's "About Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Words." At one time it was available online, but it seems to have gone away. So go to the library and check out a copy of Jewel Hinged Jaw. No, seriously, just do.

So. I'm not going to say anything boneheaded like "You want your reader to do as little work as possible for each sentence she reads." No, because sometimes you do want the work. Sometimes the work is fun. But you want to control where that extra work happens, and you don't want to make what should be simple, easy sentences hard to read when that's not actually your intention.

A lot of folks in slush, writers who aren't ready for prime time (yet! Always yet! The day will come!) have this problem. Sentences that are, strictly speaking, grammatically correct but don't quite read right. And honestly, the closer to "right" they get, the more grating it can be to read. "The Eye of Argon" is so obviously horrible that people read it for sheer enjoyment of the crashing and clunking going on, but something that's just subtly off is harder to enjoy. Consider the difference between a huge, crashing dissonance and a piano that's just enough out of tune to put your teeth on edge. And consider the difference between a twentieth-century microtonal piece that's meant to sound "out of tune" and, say, Mozart or Brahms played on that out of tune piano. Huge, huge difference.

Consider Delany's example sentence:

The red sun was high, the blue low.

Try it this way:

The red star was high, the blue low, both suns lighting the purple sky.

The second sentence is longer, but that's really not an issue. The issue is, I've placed the word that lets the reader know the two stars are suns in the daytime sky at the end of the sentence, and probably made the reader backtrack and say to herself, "Oh, they're suns" Yes, I know, stars are suns and suns are stars, and the words may as well be the same thing, but they're not. Every word is connected to other words and images, and to say or read that word will bring up associations with those other words and images. So "star" is nighttime or in space, most likely tiny points of light. "Sun" is daytime, large and bright. You can deliberately use one in place of the other, for particular effect, of course, but if you do it accidentally you're adding work for the reader to no purpose.

Now, this is a trivial amount of work, really, but if you're not aware you're doing it, chances are your prose is loaded with these, and your reader is using up a lot of working energy untangling the sentences and isn't experiencing your story the way you actually want her to.

This is, IMO, one of the secrets to the (also IMO) boneheadedly-named "Transparent Prose." It's not transparent, it's not that it keeps the words out of the way of the story. No words, no story, after all. No, it's prose that affords the reader a minimum of work parsing each sentence. That gives each word in the order that will build up the images, the scenes and the actions, as easily comprehensibly as possible so that the reader never has to say, "No, wait, what?" and go back and re-read the sentence, or the paragraph.

I've got nothing for or against "Transparent Prose." (Honestly, would anyone talk about the virtue of pictures made with Transparent Paint?) It's one of a zillion stylistic choices available to any writer. It's by no means easy to pull off well. It might or might not be exactly what you want or need for the story you're working on. The point is not that such prose is better or worse than something more stylized or poetic or what have you--it's that whatever you choose for your story, you need to be in control of it so that it does what you want it to do. And if you're not in control of the order and speed of the information flowing to the reader, word by word, you're not going to be able to do what you want, except maybe by accident.

____

Incidentally, the idea of how much work your reader is doing, it also works on the level of the single word, particularly with neologisms. Consider:

I stepped aboard the Fligglewoggle. The Fliggle Chief clicked her heels together smartly and saluted. "Welcome aboard, O Pozzlewozzle!" The pilot, busy with the controls, didn't look up. My counterpart the Sizzlewizzle, in the seat behind her, turned and cocked an eyebrow at me, amused.

Now, you could fix this with some exposition, some description, some maid and butler dialogue, whatever. But you know how else you could fix it? Like this, is how:

I stepped aboard the aethopter. The Captain clicked her heels together smartly and saluted. "Welcome aboard, O Dexarch!" The pilot, busy with the controls, didn't look up. My counterpart the Sinisarch, in the seat behind her, turned and cocked an eyebrow at me, amused.

Look at those words. I can explain extra stuff if I want--I probably want, just being me--but the words themselves are carrying a lot of weight. Don't get me wrong, breaking out the Greek and Latin roots every single time you're making up SFnal terms isn't always the best way to go, but dang if it doesn't make some things easier, for you, and for your reader, to think about the ways even bits of words communicate meaning.