Category Archives: Setting and Milieu

To Infodump, or Not to Infodump-that is the question

Craft & Skills First Drafts Narrative Voice Reader Investment & Empathy Setting and Milieu The Writing Process 3 Comments

Actually, every writer with any experience at all will tell you that the question is not whether or not to infodump.  The answer to that question is automatically yes.  Yes, yes yes.  The need to provide mass quantities of data to the reader is almost universal.  Especially in longer works.  Most especially in longer works laid in milieus that are outside the reader’s common experience.

No, the real question-questions, rather-is how/when/where/how much to infodump?

And as much as I would like to be able to give the One True Answer to those questions, there is no such critter.

If you were to put three authors in a room and asked them one of those questions, you’d get probably get somewhere between five and nine opinions.

Actually, I misspoke.  There is one answer, but it is not an answer.  (And no, I’m not going all zen on you.)  The answer is . . .

It Depends.

Seriously.

That’s the only answer there can be.

Okay, setting aside the foolishness, here’s the hard core.

Yes, as a writer you have to be able to fill the void of ignorance each reader faces when he/she picks up a new work by you.  My experience is that writers attempt to do this in one of three ways.

1.      The Bulk Transfer Method

Wherein the writer attempts to stuff everything the reader might possibly need to know down the reader’s throat at once.  Two common forms of this are:

The dreaded “As you know, Bob…” conversation, in which one character will recount the history of the universe from the Big Bang all the way through to the ultimate death of heat, coincidentally along the way sprinkling the conversation with little nuggets of data that the reader might find useful somewhere around page 397.

The ubiquitous conference, wherein various talking heads sit around a table and explain to each other things that they already know but are needful for the reader’s understanding.

The problem is that, especially when attempted by new writers, these usually result in large indigestible blocks of verbiage sitting right athwart the plot line, and contact with said block all too often bounces the reader right out of his/her reader’s trance.  This is Not A Good Thing.

2.      The Teasing Method

Wherein the writer attempts to provide subtle hints-a word here, a phrase there-expecting the reader to not only read the written page but also the authorial mind, and somehow pull out of the aether the missing context needed to understand what the author is desiring to communicate.

The bad news here is that telepathy doesn’t work any better between authors and readers than it does between husbands and wives (which, based on personal experience, I’d have to say is not at all), and readers quit in frustration.

3.      The Pay As You Go Method

This is the one that most authors eventually develop, where they learn to tell the reader as much as the reader needs to know at that point in the story.  The trick is developing first the awareness of just what out of the entire back story and world building framework the reader needs at just that moment in the narrative; and second, the skill to add that to the narrative in the right spots and the right proportions.

The frustrating thing is that, like a lot of guidelines, we have all seen successful writers produce successful books that ignore them.  Well, just because they can get away with doesn’t mean we can.

Case in point:  two or three years ago I turned in a draft of a longish story to my editor.  Not long thereafter I got a note back:  “You have committed a staff meeting.”  Translation:  I had a ubiquitous conference in my story, and she didn’t like it.  “You know better than that.  Fix it, and I’ll buy the story.”  I attempted to justify what I had done by pointing to a recent novel by a well-known popular author that had a conference scene that ran for page after page after page.  Her response:  “You’re not him.  Fix it.”  I fixed it.

To summarize:  Option 2 just doesn’t work.  Option 1 doesn’t work well . . . except when it does.  Option 3 is preferred, except for those rare occasions when Option 1 is the best way to go.

In other words, It Depends.

Final word:  whatever technique is used to provide information, it can’t be just a static dump of data.  Somehow, in some way, the presentation of the data must advance the story.  If it doesn’t, we’re just building walls instead of roads to the end of the story.

Historical Mythology: Don’t worldbuild without it

Character Craft & Skills Leigh Galbreath World-building 3 Comments

In preparation for the next volume of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, I’ve been rereading the series so far, and it struck me how much the historical mythology he has created helps his world live and breath. It made me want to write this post about how important historical mythology is in creating a fully realized world.

Now, when I say historical mythology, I’m not necessarily talking about religion or explanations of the natural world. What I’m talking about is the how people use history to explain the here and now. It’s the mythologizing of real historical events and people. It’s putting a spin on what happened to come up with a why and a how that serves the present.

We all know that it’s as important to know what happened before a story began as it is to know where the story is told. No story takes place in a vacuum. There has to be a “before” if there is a “now.” How deep you go into that history depends, of course, on what genre you’re writing. A Paranormal Romance will give history less weight than an Epic Fantasy.

But knowing knowing the history is only part of the process. The other is how that history becomes part of a person or places mythology. Historical mythology is one of the building blocks of backstory that I think people forget. Very often we treat what we write as truth, and the reader will read it as truth. In that epic fantasy you’re writing, you might have an extensive historical time-line of what really happened. But people don’t remember history as what really happened. We remember history by being told about it from others, and as the old adage says, “History is written by the victors.” Historical mythology is how that real history is remembered over time, and it applies to the world, such as with wars and social changes, but also to the personal, such as with what happened to a father and son that caused them to stop speaking.

One of the truly interesting thing that happens when you start looking at history from a mythology standpoint, is that you see how it can change depending on the point of view. Using Martin as an example, one of the more important moments in recent history is the war that made Robert Baratheon a king. This war was sparked by Prince Rhaegar Targaryan running off with Lyanna Stark. A Stark would say that they went to war because Rhaegar kidnapped and raped Lyanna, but a Targaryan would argue that the two were in love. Ask someone not of either family, and the whole issue might have been just an excuse to dethrone Rhaegar’s completely insane father. One makes the war about vengeance, another love, the third justice. In this way, the mythology aspect simplifies the incident and gives it meaning. Over time these varying points of view will perpetuate, merge, and come in conflict with each other. We can already sense the impending conflict when the last of the Starks finally meets up with the last of the Targaryans.

In a way, this sort of humanizes the world. It makes the history of the people and places as frail and faulty as the people who live with it. I don’t know about you, but I’m still reading Martin to find out if any of the points of view above are what really happened.

So, when you’re writing that personal story, whether it takes place in an epic world or down the street, think not only of the real history, but how that history can be simplified, misunderstood, or all out mangled. Then, look at how that altered version affects the characters you’re writing about. Not only can this make for great conflict when the various versions meet up, but it gives the world you’re creating a more realistic, human scope.

World-building – Oops!

Craft & Skills The Writing Process World-building No Comments

I’ve been a reader for over 50 years.  I’ve read a lot of good books, and some not so good.  And I’ve heard other writers talk about the craft and about books in general.  From all of that, following are some common missteps in the area of world-building.  (And yes, I’ve been guilty of most of them at one time or another.)  All identifying logos have been removed and serial numbers have been filed off or otherwise obfuscated.

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If I’m going to write in contemporary Earth settings, if I’m using a city for my setting du jour, I’d best know its geography well.  For example:

  • If I’m going to lay a story in Sacramento, California, or Denver, Colorado, or Anchorage, Alaska, I’d better know which sides of the cities have mountains near them, and which mountains they are.  Same story with rivers:  what are they named and where do they run in the city?
  • If I’m writing in New York City, I’d better know which streets are on Manhattan Island and which are in Brooklyn, I’d better know which direction they run, and I’d better know which streets the major landmarks are on.
  • If my character is standing in a certain location in downtown Chicago and looking west, I’d better know which major buildings he’s going to see, and just as importantly, which buildings he won’t see.
  • Ditto for London, and Paris, and Moscow, and Beijing, and Oslo, and Tokyo, etc.

* * *

Animals are not machines.  Yes, an ox or a donkey or a horse can work all day, much as a human can.  However, a hard-working animal needs rest and water and food on a regular basis, just like a hard-working human does.

Although I am not a horse person, I know some, and I am reliably informed that, despite what Hollywood shows us, a horse cannot gallop for hours and hours on end.  Oh, a willing horse might attempt it at the urging of his rider, but if pushed to the limit the horse will drop, exhausted, and will most likely die.  I mean, after all, can you sprint all out for six hours at a time?  Neither can a horse.

And it might surprise you that a horse, traveling at a reasonable pace, doesn’t really travel that much farther than a man over the course of a day.

* * *

As remarked back up the chain somewhere, major characters should not have similar names, especially if they are also very similar characters.  (The thought bears repeating.)  It might be considered a characterization issue, but I’m more of the opinion that it’s one of world-building.  Wherever you pigeonhole it, it is confusing to the reader.  I recently “awoke” in the middle of the novel I’m currently working on and realized I had two major characters named Thomas and five characters (three major) named George or Georg.  I was getting confused; never mind what this was going to do to my prospective readers!  So unless that confusion is something you need for the story, you might find another name for one of them.

* * *

Western European culture is considered by many to be an aberration in the history of culture in the world.  (I’m not too sure but what I don’t agree with them.)  Because of this, we need to be very careful about projecting our 21st century Western cultural mores (political, religious, sexual or otherwise) on earlier periods and places of history.

* * *

Cloth  (This last one may be less an “Oops” moment and more a chunk of “trivial” data that you may find useful.)  I must stipulate that I am not a Clothing Expert.  These are just a few things I’ve picked up along the way, mostly from writing in the 1632 universe.

Pre-industrial societies did not have an abundance of cloth, and what they did have was not for the most part very brightly colored, or at least, not for very long.

  • Without powered spinning machines and powered looms, cloth is very labor intensive to produce and turn into clothing.  (Check into how long it takes a hand weaver to weave a three-inch width of cloth.)  In 1996-7 I saw the exhibit of royal Chinese artifacts that toured the US.  They had a suit of clothing (tunic and trousers) that had been produced for a (short) member of the royal family.  I didn’t think it was all that much to look at, but according to the program notes it took over two man years to produce that suit.
  • Vegetable/biological dyes didn’t produce very rich colors for the most part.  Even when they did (imperial purple, for example), they faded fairly quickly, so most people ended up wearing dull or pastel hues of blue or brown or sometimes red.  Bright or deep/rich hue dyes were usually scarce, and correspondingly expensive.  I’m told by a fabric maven that producing a good black dye that would hold fast was particularly difficult, so it was very expensive.  Only the wealthiest people would wear black.  (Explains all those Renaissance and Baroque era portraits, doesn’t it?)
  • And unless a family was very well off, each member of the family would be fortunate to have two or three suits of clothes.  (Remember the size of pre-industrial families.)
  • Variety was sometimes served by making the clothing modular:  detachable sleeves and collars, combined with different bodices or vests, sashes, belts, etc.
  • In most pre-industrial societies there was probably a good market for used clothing, possibly even removed from corpses before burial.  (Think of the old cleaning lady’s scene in Scrooge’s vision of the future in A Christmas Carol.)
  • This explains a lot about accounts in the Bible and other ancient literature where gifts of clothing were given to a guest or to someone who was favored.  (Joseph’s “coat of many colors” ring a bell?)

Cloth and clothing after the industrialization and mechanization of the cloth industry is a very different topic.  Someone (not me) should do a post on that some time.

World-building – Driblets from the fermentation tanks

Craft & Skills The Writing Process World-building No Comments

Last post in this chain we looked at one approach to the “how-2” of world-building.  Today, just some more or less random musings on this part of our craft.

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There are without a doubt other approaches to world-building, including the “make it up as you go along” approach.

Don’t let all the structure of the last post mislead you.  My experience is that the world-building process is nowhere nearly as organized as all that post would indicate.  Most authors that I’ve heard mention the subject tend to have some degree of organization (usually notebooks or spreadsheets), if for no other reason than so they can find that decision they made six months ago.  And I know of at least a couple of special cases where a group of people brainstormed and designed a detailed story universe that was shared among them.  But that level of detail and control is probably unusual, unless you’re doing work-for-hire for TV, movie, or game tie-ins, in which case someone else has already built the universe and all you have to do is figure out how to tell your story in it.

I’m certainly not that ordered.  In fact, I tend to be very intuitive; jumping to a decision or a conclusion, then looking backwards to figure out why that would be a good idea is not unusual for me.  On the other hand, I typically don’t totally make it up as I go along.  I usually make decisions about the big obvious stuff up front, then fill in additional details as I write the story.  (Sorry, I don’t outline well.  Or often.  Or at all, most of the time.)  And yes, I do tend to carry it around in my head, only making physical notes of really abstract or subtle points.

I suspect the majority of writers are more flexible than rigorous.

* * *

Keep in mind that every change to the starting default should have a price.  If we change one aspect of the world, what will be affected by it?

  • I mentioned in a previous post that in the biological “world”, there are desired constructs that might be possible, but only with trade-offs in other areas that might be prohibitive to you or your characters.  (See Robin McKinley’s new novel Pegasus for an example.)
  • If you’re going to use a magic system, where does the “power” come from, and how does it get renewed?  For the story to ring true, there has to be a cost to it.  Supermen of any type are boooooring.  But a character who pays a price–perhaps a heavy one–to do something super . . . what can you the writer do with that?
  • If a character gets a super-normal ability, what does he/she lose or impair to have it?  For example:  DNA modification produces human level intelligence in elephants:  what do they give up to have it, and how do they feel about it?
  • Etc.

* * *

A few thoughts on research.

  • Yes, research is necessary.
  • Yes, probably lots of research is necessary.
  • But “Sometimes plausibility is more important to a story than sheer accuracy.”  (Tim Powers, Soonercon discussion, June, 2011)
  • Do Not do your research in other fictional works, lest you trip over another author’s missteps or “plausible” decisions.
  • Wikipedia is not 100% reliable.  It can point you in certain directions, but do not accept anything it says as valid unless you know from your own personal knowledge it is correct or you have verified it through other research.
  • Actually, the Wikipedia point may be true about the Internet in general, considering how many times I find the same paragraphs (word for word match-ups) posted in multiple locations.  Frequency of occurrence does not necessarily equate to accuracy of content.

* * *

As I said somewhere back up the chain of posts, this series is not an all-encompassing list, partly because each world-building exercise is different from the last one.  You may find other items you want to add to it.  You may have your own list you want to compare to my list.  That’s all good.

If you haven’t seen it before, author Lee Killough wrote an excellent  short book on world-building entitled Checking on Culture. (http://www.yarddogpress.com/Checking%20On%20Culture.htm)  She goes into a great deal more depth than I have, and I freely confess to having learned a lot from it.  Even though it’s slanted toward science fiction and fantasy, the general teachings in it are universally applicable, and I highly recommend it to and for writers of all genres.

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