Tag Archives: Craft & Skills

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.

Faith

Character Craft & Skills The Writing Life The Writing Process 6 Comments

I am a Christian of a conservative evangelical stripe.  (If it matters to you, I lean to the Calvinist end of the Christian theological spectrum.)  I am not ashamed of this.

I also love to read and write science fiction and fantasy.  I am not ashamed of this.

This is not a contradiction in terms, or an oxymoron, or a paradox, or an antinomy, or any other such condition.  Sorry, it’s not.  This is, however, leading me to scratch a particular itch that has been bugging me for a loooooong time.

No, I’m not going to indulge in a theological rant.  Not my purpose here.  Nor do I intend to delve into issues of morality, ethics, doctrine, or comparative theology.  (Contact me off line if you want to have that kind of discussion.)  I’m not even going to discuss whether or not religion should be a part of whatever cultural world building you do.  (Although that would be an interesting discussion in its own right.)  What I do want to do is raise a few points about how religion is portrayed in fiction-or more specifically, how people of faith are portrayed in fiction.

As I have admitted, I read mostly science fiction and fantasy.  In the last (mumble) years, I have noticed a trend.  It’s more prevalent, I believe, in science fiction and modern urban and paranormal fantasy than it is in more general or high/epic/quest fantasies.

There has always been a tendency for science fiction as a genre to treat religion as if it is irrelevant.  But increasingly of late, I see stories where characters who are people of strong religious faith are consistently described as if they are either congenital idiots who are so stupid that they willfully believe in things that are patent falsehoods, or they are amoral connivers and hucksters, or they are amoral religious fanatics whose most fervent desire is to destroy anyone and everything that does not fit their very narrow viewpoint of what is right and proper.  I as a reader am left with the implication that the only reasonable people around are those who are not religious.

Granted, religion has from time immemorial been a haven for con-men to take advantage of their credulous neighbors.

Granted, a lot of people today go through the religious motions just so they can find social or business or political advantages.

Granted, institutionalized religion has been involved in a good many wrongs over the centuries.

This does not mean, however, that all people who are truly believers in whatever they profess must necessarily fall into those categories.  The majority of people of faith are good people, moral people, who care about what’s right and wrong and care about other people.  That’s been true throughout history, and is still true today.  To consistently portray them as a whole as mentally deficient, as power-hungry despots, or as wolves preying on sheep is unrealistic.  An individual character can be credulous, or venal, or fanatical as the story demands, but an entire class of characters shouldn’t be.  It’s sloppy world building.  It makes for cardboard cutout two-dimensional characters, which in turn makes for sloppy writing and two-dimensional stories.

It’s not dishonest to write stories about characters whose beliefs are different from your own.  Eric Flint makes no secret that he’s an atheist, yet many of his characters in the 1632 series are accurately and warmly portrayed in their religious beliefs.  I’ve read that David Weber is a lay Methodist speaker, and I know from personal correspondence that he is a man of Christian faith of some depth, yet he has skillfully portrayed characters in several of his Honor Harrington novels of a level of religious or political fanaticism that would rival the worst we’ve seen in real life in the last twenty years.  And personally, I wrote a story in which the bad guy was totally amoral and a rapist.  (And yes, I was very glad to get that story done so I could get him out of my head!)  Yet I promise you that his nature and beliefs were not consonant with mine.

It is dishonest, however, to write stories about characters and not portray them fully.  It is dishonest to craft characters and tar them with the brush of all the excesses and sins committed by others under a particular banner (be it Baptist, Catholic, Muslim, Republican, Democrat, atheist) but not give them credit for their virtues.  Even out and out villains have some virtues-how much more should regular people have?

And in the end, it makes for boring reading.  Really.

Is the same thing happening in other genres?

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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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