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Dec. 31st, 2007 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieRight, I’m in that uncomfortable stage where a story is beginning to take real shape—I’m seeing characters, situations, bits of dialogue, but no plot yet, damn it. This usually means I need to do more research. (Actually, nearly any problem I come across means I need more research. But that’s another topic.) But I’ve been reading stuff for days and today my brain keeps drifting off into bits of scenes…which is a good sign, really, but kind of frustrating just now.
So instead I’m going to natter about exposition.
So, fairly recently there’s been some discussion on a mailing list I read (I very, very seldom post) about info-dumps.
Info-dumps, I find, are one of those things, like passive voice, that people given to rules tell you to avoid like the plague. When you start out writing, you’re bound to run into this “rule,” and a certain percentage of critiquers are sure to tell you to remove anything remotely like an infodump. Of course, a certain percentage of critiquers are bound to tell you that a sentence like “Her hair was brown” is passive voice and you should fix it immediately because passive voice is Evil. A smaller percentage, yes, but still.
Here’s the thing—and I know there’s going to be some wincing when I say it, and I know that, especially for a writer just starting out, it can be a dangerous statement—some infodumps are freaking awesome. Part of the reason I read SF is for the freaking awesome stuff—the weird societies, the strange planets—and a good infodump is like a straight shot of undiluted fantastic.
Frankly, if your reader enjoys your infodump, and doesn’t feel that it detracts from the experience of reading the story, then hell yeah, keep it.
Just as frankly, pulling that off is really, really hard. So my saying that I love me a good infodump is most emphatically not me saying that you should just barf all your exposition out onto the page in one undigestible glob and it will all work out fine.
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velourmane said to me in IM one day, and I agree with her, that you can get away with an infodump if A) it’s funny, B) the contents are utterly freaking cool, or C) your writing is utterly beautiful. None of those is easy to achieve. If you decide to do an infodump, you absolutely must do it with style. And you have to be careful where you place it—pacing is always an issue. But I refuse to say that infodumps are, in themselves, bad, or forbidden to good writers. Or new writers--yes, it’s hard, and not likely to be done well by someone just starting out, but we all have to start somewhere.
This issue is, in my mind, related to the whole “show don’t tell” thing. Now, I consider this advice to be pernicious, and its ill effects appear in Podcastle slush all the time. Lots of subs get themselves all mired in trying to imply or demonstrate things that would take maybe twenty words to just say and then you can get on with the story. Does the main character have only one leg? Don’t waste a whole scene making him limp down the street so the reader can (if she’s lucky) figure it out. Don’t make some other character say something really stupid and unnatural, like “Good morning, Arkazibad the squirrel merchant! Every time I see you I can’t help remembering how you lost your right leg in the War of the Hamster nigh on fifteen years ago!” Just tell us that Arkazibad the squirrel merchant has only one leg and get on with the damn story.
The thing is, show don’t tell only applies in certain situations, but what those situations are aren’t contained in the aphorism. Essentially, it applies in matters of character. Don’t just tell us that Arkazibad the squirrel merchant is a bitter old war veteran who feels betrayed by the archons of the city over what he considers to be their cowardly settlement in the aforementioned war. Or, you can if you do it well enough, but it won’t convince a reader if we only see Arkazibad hopping down the street to his stall, cheerily greeting his neighbors and distributing sweets to children. This is especially true if Arkazibad’s actions during the story are going to be motivated by this bitterness. Everywhere else, it’s best (more or less—there are no rules) to show important things, and tell things that aren’t important. What those things are depends on your story, the structure you’ve chosen for it, and lots of other factors that can’t be boiled down to a handy little saying.
I would advise a writer just starting out not to show rather than tell, but to keep in mind that action is character. But I don’t think show don’t tell is ever going to be stamped out. At least, not in my lifetime.
Right, on to my third expositional beef. The story that conceals something crucial for the sake of suspense. You know the sort of thing I mean. Surprise! The main character you thought was human all along is a dog! Or an alien! Or a mushroom! Or Surprise! The two people who have been interacting as though they’re strangers are actually intimately related in some way!
Related to this is what I call the “what the hell?” plot. Random things happen. You (the reader) don’t know why, you’re just given a string of events. Finally at the end of the story, the writer jumps out and says “Boo! This was all actually connected!” The end.
I know why this happens, I really do. Suspense is important. At the very least you want to have something that will keep the reader reading, and one of the ways to do it is to make the reader wonder what will happen next, wonder enough that she won’t put the magazine (or book, or whatever) down. Mystery is the most obvious kind of suspense there is. Hell, there’s an entire genre that depends on it. So, conceal something important, right? And get a good punch out of the reveal!
Now, sometimes this can work, but it won’t work if you’re concealing something that, say, ought to be uppermost in the mind of one or more POV characters, or something that actually makes the story coherent. (Something that makes a previously coherent story suddenly take on a different meaning is fine, but the kind of story I’m talking about doesn’t do that.)
First of all, if your story won’t have any compelling reason to keep reading without that sort of false suspense, you’ve got a problem on your hands that all the twist endings in the world won’t cure. And second, if you think whatever you’re hiding is interesting enough to do a surprise reveal with, it’s likely the most interesting thing about your story. So why save it for the end? Why not give it to us up front and get as much good out of it as you can? (I’ll note that successful twist ending stories manage to do this, by the way—they don’t rely on the twist ending to make them cool and interesting stories.)
It’s much harder to deal with the emotional life of a mushroom, as a mushroom, than it is to wring some momentary surprise out of the fact that your character is not, in fact, a young human as previously supposed. It’s much harder to write a scene between enemies on a battlefield who are, in fact, best friends, than it is to write a standard battle and then—surprise! They’re best friends on different sides! Much, much harder. Scary, even. But, you know. No matter how hard it is, you won’t break your neck, or loose a leg like poor Arkazibad. And the results are a million times better.
So instead I’m going to natter about exposition.
So, fairly recently there’s been some discussion on a mailing list I read (I very, very seldom post) about info-dumps.
Info-dumps, I find, are one of those things, like passive voice, that people given to rules tell you to avoid like the plague. When you start out writing, you’re bound to run into this “rule,” and a certain percentage of critiquers are sure to tell you to remove anything remotely like an infodump. Of course, a certain percentage of critiquers are bound to tell you that a sentence like “Her hair was brown” is passive voice and you should fix it immediately because passive voice is Evil. A smaller percentage, yes, but still.
Here’s the thing—and I know there’s going to be some wincing when I say it, and I know that, especially for a writer just starting out, it can be a dangerous statement—some infodumps are freaking awesome. Part of the reason I read SF is for the freaking awesome stuff—the weird societies, the strange planets—and a good infodump is like a straight shot of undiluted fantastic.
Frankly, if your reader enjoys your infodump, and doesn’t feel that it detracts from the experience of reading the story, then hell yeah, keep it.
Just as frankly, pulling that off is really, really hard. So my saying that I love me a good infodump is most emphatically not me saying that you should just barf all your exposition out onto the page in one undigestible glob and it will all work out fine.
velourmane said to me in IM one day, and I agree with her, that you can get away with an infodump if A) it’s funny, B) the contents are utterly freaking cool, or C) your writing is utterly beautiful. None of those is easy to achieve. If you decide to do an infodump, you absolutely must do it with style. And you have to be careful where you place it—pacing is always an issue. But I refuse to say that infodumps are, in themselves, bad, or forbidden to good writers. Or new writers--yes, it’s hard, and not likely to be done well by someone just starting out, but we all have to start somewhere.This issue is, in my mind, related to the whole “show don’t tell” thing. Now, I consider this advice to be pernicious, and its ill effects appear in Podcastle slush all the time. Lots of subs get themselves all mired in trying to imply or demonstrate things that would take maybe twenty words to just say and then you can get on with the story. Does the main character have only one leg? Don’t waste a whole scene making him limp down the street so the reader can (if she’s lucky) figure it out. Don’t make some other character say something really stupid and unnatural, like “Good morning, Arkazibad the squirrel merchant! Every time I see you I can’t help remembering how you lost your right leg in the War of the Hamster nigh on fifteen years ago!” Just tell us that Arkazibad the squirrel merchant has only one leg and get on with the damn story.
The thing is, show don’t tell only applies in certain situations, but what those situations are aren’t contained in the aphorism. Essentially, it applies in matters of character. Don’t just tell us that Arkazibad the squirrel merchant is a bitter old war veteran who feels betrayed by the archons of the city over what he considers to be their cowardly settlement in the aforementioned war. Or, you can if you do it well enough, but it won’t convince a reader if we only see Arkazibad hopping down the street to his stall, cheerily greeting his neighbors and distributing sweets to children. This is especially true if Arkazibad’s actions during the story are going to be motivated by this bitterness. Everywhere else, it’s best (more or less—there are no rules) to show important things, and tell things that aren’t important. What those things are depends on your story, the structure you’ve chosen for it, and lots of other factors that can’t be boiled down to a handy little saying.
I would advise a writer just starting out not to show rather than tell, but to keep in mind that action is character. But I don’t think show don’t tell is ever going to be stamped out. At least, not in my lifetime.
Right, on to my third expositional beef. The story that conceals something crucial for the sake of suspense. You know the sort of thing I mean. Surprise! The main character you thought was human all along is a dog! Or an alien! Or a mushroom! Or Surprise! The two people who have been interacting as though they’re strangers are actually intimately related in some way!
Related to this is what I call the “what the hell?” plot. Random things happen. You (the reader) don’t know why, you’re just given a string of events. Finally at the end of the story, the writer jumps out and says “Boo! This was all actually connected!” The end.
I know why this happens, I really do. Suspense is important. At the very least you want to have something that will keep the reader reading, and one of the ways to do it is to make the reader wonder what will happen next, wonder enough that she won’t put the magazine (or book, or whatever) down. Mystery is the most obvious kind of suspense there is. Hell, there’s an entire genre that depends on it. So, conceal something important, right? And get a good punch out of the reveal!
Now, sometimes this can work, but it won’t work if you’re concealing something that, say, ought to be uppermost in the mind of one or more POV characters, or something that actually makes the story coherent. (Something that makes a previously coherent story suddenly take on a different meaning is fine, but the kind of story I’m talking about doesn’t do that.)
First of all, if your story won’t have any compelling reason to keep reading without that sort of false suspense, you’ve got a problem on your hands that all the twist endings in the world won’t cure. And second, if you think whatever you’re hiding is interesting enough to do a surprise reveal with, it’s likely the most interesting thing about your story. So why save it for the end? Why not give it to us up front and get as much good out of it as you can? (I’ll note that successful twist ending stories manage to do this, by the way—they don’t rely on the twist ending to make them cool and interesting stories.)
It’s much harder to deal with the emotional life of a mushroom, as a mushroom, than it is to wring some momentary surprise out of the fact that your character is not, in fact, a young human as previously supposed. It’s much harder to write a scene between enemies on a battlefield who are, in fact, best friends, than it is to write a standard battle and then—surprise! They’re best friends on different sides! Much, much harder. Scary, even. But, you know. No matter how hard it is, you won’t break your neck, or loose a leg like poor Arkazibad. And the results are a million times better.