When I was at Westercon over this last weekend I was part of a number of discussions, and one in particular about the importance of details in setting up a story world. This post immediately leapt to mind. It's about integrating character, world, and the beginning of the story in the form of the inciting event.
I've been thinking a bit about inciting events. An inciting event is generally the event that propels you into the main conflict of your story. My friend Janice Hardy mentions it in a great blog post, here (as many of you already know, her blog has tons of great information on the process of writing and on getting published). In her words, "The inciting event is the trigger that sets the rest of the story in motion." She treats it separately from the opening scene, but I'm not sure the two are necessarily separate. When trying to hook your reader, it's good to plunge into the inciting event as early as possible. I've spent a lot of time in my writing career working on the question of where to start my stories, and believe me, it can be tricky - but it's worth thinking seriously about.
Where I want to take this topic in a particularly TalkToYoUniverse direction is by linking the inciting event to the issue of worldbuilding. When you're thinking about how to open your story in a science fiction or fantasy context, you have to take into account both your need to hook the reader, and your need to introduce your world.
We all know the dreaded word, infodumping. We all know we want to avoid it. But how do we go about creating a scene where this information doesn't need to be explained? How do we make it so the information is simply evident in the action?
First, use your POV character. Make sure you know the character's background, culture and motivations to the fullest extent possible, so that you can use the character to help you convey information. This is what I call making your world personal. Think about what your characters care about, and what they don't care about - where they are especially attentive or where they have blind spots and weaknesses. All of these things can become your tools, as you can imbue your narration with a dismissive or contemptuous tone, or a bubbly enthusiasm, or what have you.
Next comes the tougher, more subtle step: working in the things that the character considers normal. Things that are totally normal, entirely obvious to the character, are not things you want him or her to talk about. Talking about obvious things leads to completely cringe-worthy "As you know, Bob" dialog, and we don't want that.
So here's the question: How can we possibly describe the basic parameters of our worlds, when we know that to our character, so much is entirely unremarkable?
The answer is, use conflict and contrast. I have an example of this done simply and elegantly for a real-world scenario, here.
In fact, there's a beautiful convergence here: the inciting event, the trigger for the core conflict of the novel, very often is all about the precise type of conflict that can let you give out world information.
Here's an example from the drafting stage of my story, "Cold Words" (Analog, October 2009). [I read from it at Westercon and it was so much fun!] Consider the list of events below and ask yourself which one is the best to use for an opening scene:
1. A Human ambassador inadvertently insults the Majesty of the Aurrel, placing a spaceport negotiation in danger.
2. The native liaison asks the Humans to send away the failed ambassador and get a new one.
3. The Human ambassador comes to the native liaison to tell him that he's worried about the motives of the replacement ambassador.
4. The native liaison goes to the Majesty to report the impending arrival of the replacement ambassador and try to rescue the spaceport negotiation.
I wouldn't choose 1 or 2. Any event that occurs before a significant lull, like waiting for a replacement ambassador to arrive, is less optimal because it will require a time break and reduce forward momentum. Furthermore, even though the incident of insult is interesting, it would be hard for readers to understand without significant previous context - which, since this is the first scene, they can't possibly have.
When I wrote my first draft, I chose 4. The story is told in the point of view of Rulii, the native liaison, and thus the main motivating force in the story is Rulii's desire to complete the spaceport negotiation successfully (for his own secret reasons). Why not start where you see him pressing his suit with the Majesty, a place where he can show his intense desire for success and share it with the reader?
The answer to that question is this: if he's alone with the Majesty, he's in a completely native context where everything is normal. And that means that every piece of normal world information will be really difficult to put in.
So in the end, I chose 3. There's conflict in that scene, because the human ambassador brings a warning that may put the negotiation at even deeper risk. More importantly for this discussion, though, scene #3 puts our native liaison in direct contact with a human. There's conflict, and there's contrast. There are opportunities for the human ambassador to demonstrate his own cultural biases, and for Rulii to remark on them, thus putting his own world forward for readers to explore. Better yet, the sense of contrast continues forward as he goes to see Majesty, because with the human interaction foremost in his mind, Rulii is more likely to remark on the quirky cultural things inherent in their interaction.
So, when you're looking at your own stories, consider the kinds of conflict or contrast opportunities that appear in the opening scene as you've written it, and then ask yourself how you could tune the circumstances of that scene to make your job easier.
Finally, in the spirit of making a world personal, I'm posting this list of eleven questions [which also appears in the "Know Your Character Inside and Out" post at left]. You've probably seen questions like these before, but worldbuilding questions are often phrased in a very impersonal way, and that's not what I'm trying to do here. All of these questions are deliberately phrased to relate directly to a protagonist's view of the world, and participants in my workshops have found it a helpful exercise to answer them using the voice of their POV characters.
Here are the questions:
1. What is my home like? How do I visualize its boundaries?
2. What weather and physical conditions do I consider normal? What do I fear?
3. What kind of topography did I grow up in, and how did it influence my physical condition and my concepts of comfort?
4. In what kind of place do I feel most at home? What shapes and textures give me comfort, or discomfort?
5. Who is in charge here? Do I respect them, fear them, both?
6. How do I show who I am in the way I dress? What is comfortable? Will I endure discomfort for the sake of looking good or looking powerful?
7. Where do the things I own come from? Do I worry about getting more?
8. What is delicious to me? What do I consider unworthy of consumption?
9. What are my most prized possessions? Do I hoard anything? Do I have so much of anything that I care little if I must give it away?
10. Who do I consider to be unlike me? Are their differences charming or alarming?
11. Am I in control of my own actions and the happenings around me? What or whom do I believe in?
I hope you may find this exercise helpful in your writing process.
Showing posts with label infodumping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infodumping. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Monday, April 26, 2010
Dialogue that Matters
What is your dialogue doing?
Dialogue has the power to make a scene feel more active, alive and real. It typically is perceived as fast-paced in comparison with description. It can create character, world, and drive for a story - or it can sound flat and authorial. Here are some of my thoughts on what features make for effective dialogue.
1. Keep dialogue unambiguous and dialogue tags unobtrusive.
By unambiguous I mean that I always try to make sure it's clear who is talking. I've read books, some by quite well known authors, where characters get into disputes and there will be a sequence of five or six lines in which it's just an exchange of dialogue with no tags at all. Now, you can rely quite a bit on the reader's turn-taking instinct. The default assumption in a two-person exchange will be that the two alternate in an orderly fashion. However, in a lengthy exchange it can be easy to lose track of who is saying what. Keeping voices distinct can go a long way toward disambiguating this (I'll come back to this), but judicious use of "said Eris" or "Eris said" is more effective and practically invisible. Another way to disambiguate is to include some internalization from the point of view character. Including internalization is also a great way to show when the pov character isn't telling the truth, without using an obvious tag like "he lied."
I've seen a lot on the internet on the topic of dialogue tags. The general consensus is that one should not use lots of adverbs like "he said angrily" nor should one use lots of fancy words for how to speak "she yelled/thundered/etc." and especially not in combination "he yelled angrily." I think this rule has to do with the fact that dialogue tags stand on their own in the midst of a stream of dialogue, often without the support of surrounding description, and adverbs and tags with special content (not to mention redundant content!) distract from what people are saying. "Said" is relatively invisible, so long as it's not used for every turn. Janice Hardy had a great post on dialogue a few days ago; if you're interested, it's here. I agree with her that it's important to vary the rhythm of the tagging techniques so they don't stand out.
2. Keep characters distinct.
This operates on several levels. The voice of each character should be distinct; people use different styles of speech, sometimes different dialects or even different languages. Their speech will have different rhythms. Each person should speak out of his or her own motives. In addition to this, keep in mind that any two people will not talk about things in the same way. Each one will bring a worldview to his or her contribution.
3. Make sure people speak for their own purposes.
Especially when you're worldbuilding, or working with a complicated plot, it's tempting to turn to dialogue to get information across. This is actually okay, so long as the dialogue also functions and makes sense for the characters. I've often mentioned avoiding "As you know, Bob" dialogue in which people tell one another things they already know just for the purposes of exposition.
However. Even if you're being indirect and slipping the key information into the dialogue, it's vital to ask yourself two fundamental questions: a. Why would these people talk? b. Why would they talk about this? If you can't answer these questions, then whatever your characters say will fall flat. In real situations, people don't talk without motivation. And even if they talk vacuously, it will be for a reason - because they're nervous, for example. It's perfectly okay for dialogue to serve the author's purposes, but it has to serve the character's purpose first.
4. Be aware of all the many things that dialogue can convey.
Once you've gotten in touch with what messages your character wants to deliver and why, think about all the subtler messages that can be conveyed in the way they say what they say. Emotional states. Social status information. Worldbuilding information. Very often these things don't need to be out-and-out explained in the dialogue, only hinted at (hidden in plain sight).
I find it so exciting when I write a line of dialogue, and I can not only feel the purpose in it, but sense the depth of character motivation and world behind it. I hope you get to experience this too.
Dialogue has the power to make a scene feel more active, alive and real. It typically is perceived as fast-paced in comparison with description. It can create character, world, and drive for a story - or it can sound flat and authorial. Here are some of my thoughts on what features make for effective dialogue.
1. Keep dialogue unambiguous and dialogue tags unobtrusive.
By unambiguous I mean that I always try to make sure it's clear who is talking. I've read books, some by quite well known authors, where characters get into disputes and there will be a sequence of five or six lines in which it's just an exchange of dialogue with no tags at all. Now, you can rely quite a bit on the reader's turn-taking instinct. The default assumption in a two-person exchange will be that the two alternate in an orderly fashion. However, in a lengthy exchange it can be easy to lose track of who is saying what. Keeping voices distinct can go a long way toward disambiguating this (I'll come back to this), but judicious use of "said Eris" or "Eris said" is more effective and practically invisible. Another way to disambiguate is to include some internalization from the point of view character. Including internalization is also a great way to show when the pov character isn't telling the truth, without using an obvious tag like "he lied."
I've seen a lot on the internet on the topic of dialogue tags. The general consensus is that one should not use lots of adverbs like "he said angrily" nor should one use lots of fancy words for how to speak "she yelled/thundered/etc." and especially not in combination "he yelled angrily." I think this rule has to do with the fact that dialogue tags stand on their own in the midst of a stream of dialogue, often without the support of surrounding description, and adverbs and tags with special content (not to mention redundant content!) distract from what people are saying. "Said" is relatively invisible, so long as it's not used for every turn. Janice Hardy had a great post on dialogue a few days ago; if you're interested, it's here. I agree with her that it's important to vary the rhythm of the tagging techniques so they don't stand out.
2. Keep characters distinct.
This operates on several levels. The voice of each character should be distinct; people use different styles of speech, sometimes different dialects or even different languages. Their speech will have different rhythms. Each person should speak out of his or her own motives. In addition to this, keep in mind that any two people will not talk about things in the same way. Each one will bring a worldview to his or her contribution.
3. Make sure people speak for their own purposes.
Especially when you're worldbuilding, or working with a complicated plot, it's tempting to turn to dialogue to get information across. This is actually okay, so long as the dialogue also functions and makes sense for the characters. I've often mentioned avoiding "As you know, Bob" dialogue in which people tell one another things they already know just for the purposes of exposition.
However. Even if you're being indirect and slipping the key information into the dialogue, it's vital to ask yourself two fundamental questions: a. Why would these people talk? b. Why would they talk about this? If you can't answer these questions, then whatever your characters say will fall flat. In real situations, people don't talk without motivation. And even if they talk vacuously, it will be for a reason - because they're nervous, for example. It's perfectly okay for dialogue to serve the author's purposes, but it has to serve the character's purpose first.
4. Be aware of all the many things that dialogue can convey.
Once you've gotten in touch with what messages your character wants to deliver and why, think about all the subtler messages that can be conveyed in the way they say what they say. Emotional states. Social status information. Worldbuilding information. Very often these things don't need to be out-and-out explained in the dialogue, only hinted at (hidden in plain sight).
I find it so exciting when I write a line of dialogue, and I can not only feel the purpose in it, but sense the depth of character motivation and world behind it. I hope you get to experience this too.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Companions
Companions. Doctor Who is famous for them - Leela, Peri, Sarah Jane Smith, Adric, etc, etc - but almost everyone has them. In some cases they're sidekicks of a sort for a single main character. In other cases a larger group sticks together. Frodo has Sam. Aang has Katara, Sokka, Toff (and Appa!). Zuko has Iroh. The list could go on and on.
Why are companions so important?
One reason is social realism. There aren't that many complete loners out there. People have friends that they live their lives with.
Another reason is that the main character needs help. When you look at the Avatar group (Sokka wanted to call them "team Avatar" I believe), it's balanced between different types of people. There's an air-bender, a water-bender, an earth-bender and a warrior. That gives them a wide range of skills and strengths that they can use to get through their stories successfully.
Another big reason is information management. The Doctor has mountains of specialized skills and knowledge - because he's a Time Lord! - but without the companions he'd have no reason to explain any of it. If you have a major character who's an incredible specialist on some topic, you can always show him or her doing what he/she is good at... but if you build in an information imbalance between that person and someone else, it gives him/her an opportunity to explain where that skill came from, or how it works, or any number of other things that would otherwise feel like blatant infodumping.
Conflict is another reason. Conflict can serve the purposes of information management, as when two people start arguing and that lets them divulge information to the reader that the characters already know (without using as-you-know-Bobs), but I've separated it out because it actually does a lot more than that. Conflict is an enormous source of drive in the plot. Ongoing disputes (of the right variety) between a character and her companion can influence where the story goes and keep us wanting to see what happens. Conflict can also drive character development.
Dealing with an introverted character is a lot easier if that person has a companion. You can make good use of internalized thoughts when you're working with the written rather than the visual medium, but still, internalization can only take you so far. A companion gives the introverted character a reason to try to speak - or perhaps a reason to try not to speak! A companion will bring certain topics into the introverted person's thoughts. Appa gives Aang a reason to talk out loud even when he's alone, which is very useful to the storyteller who can't make any use of internalization.
Companions also create wonderful opportunities to explore language. Some companions maintain an ongoing banter which can really add to the ambiance of the whole story. Their talk can be helpful for a story not only for content reasons, but for dialect reasons, and for the way it reveals aspects of the social contract in the community from which they (or each one) comes.
I'm not going to end this by saying you need to go off and give your protagonist a companion. Sometimes that's the right thing for a story, and sometimes it isn't - but it's worth considering. Even if the companionship is short-lived within the story, it can still be a valuable addition to what you're creating.
Chances are that if you've gotten much of a story written (especially a novel) you already have companions built into it. If you do, then it's worth looking at them and thinking explicitly about how they are functioning and what kind of work they are doing for you, the writer, as well as what they're doing for the other characters. That way you can deepen them, tune them, and strengthen them so that they're making a bigger difference for your story.
It's something to think about.
Why are companions so important?
One reason is social realism. There aren't that many complete loners out there. People have friends that they live their lives with.
Another reason is that the main character needs help. When you look at the Avatar group (Sokka wanted to call them "team Avatar" I believe), it's balanced between different types of people. There's an air-bender, a water-bender, an earth-bender and a warrior. That gives them a wide range of skills and strengths that they can use to get through their stories successfully.
Another big reason is information management. The Doctor has mountains of specialized skills and knowledge - because he's a Time Lord! - but without the companions he'd have no reason to explain any of it. If you have a major character who's an incredible specialist on some topic, you can always show him or her doing what he/she is good at... but if you build in an information imbalance between that person and someone else, it gives him/her an opportunity to explain where that skill came from, or how it works, or any number of other things that would otherwise feel like blatant infodumping.
Conflict is another reason. Conflict can serve the purposes of information management, as when two people start arguing and that lets them divulge information to the reader that the characters already know (without using as-you-know-Bobs), but I've separated it out because it actually does a lot more than that. Conflict is an enormous source of drive in the plot. Ongoing disputes (of the right variety) between a character and her companion can influence where the story goes and keep us wanting to see what happens. Conflict can also drive character development.
Dealing with an introverted character is a lot easier if that person has a companion. You can make good use of internalized thoughts when you're working with the written rather than the visual medium, but still, internalization can only take you so far. A companion gives the introverted character a reason to try to speak - or perhaps a reason to try not to speak! A companion will bring certain topics into the introverted person's thoughts. Appa gives Aang a reason to talk out loud even when he's alone, which is very useful to the storyteller who can't make any use of internalization.
Companions also create wonderful opportunities to explore language. Some companions maintain an ongoing banter which can really add to the ambiance of the whole story. Their talk can be helpful for a story not only for content reasons, but for dialect reasons, and for the way it reveals aspects of the social contract in the community from which they (or each one) comes.
I'm not going to end this by saying you need to go off and give your protagonist a companion. Sometimes that's the right thing for a story, and sometimes it isn't - but it's worth considering. Even if the companionship is short-lived within the story, it can still be a valuable addition to what you're creating.
Chances are that if you've gotten much of a story written (especially a novel) you already have companions built into it. If you do, then it's worth looking at them and thinking explicitly about how they are functioning and what kind of work they are doing for you, the writer, as well as what they're doing for the other characters. That way you can deepen them, tune them, and strengthen them so that they're making a bigger difference for your story.
It's something to think about.
Monday, March 8, 2010
The writer's relationship to the reader
When you read a book, can you tell what the author is saying to you?
In academia, people tend to be very careful about making statements about authorial intent, especially when an author has been dead for over a hundred years. So they'll talk about the narrator and what the narrator says, or they'll talk about patterns in the text that might suggest different kinds of meanings.
For current writers, the question of a relationship to the reader is a complex one as well. It's better in some ways to figure that once a book or story is published, people will get what they want out of it, on the basis of their own experiences as readers, and this may not have much to do with what you intended - especially as it comes to reading your own reviews.
But whether or not we as writers have a particular message we want to get across (as discussed here in a related post), we DO want to have control over our stories - in particular, how the information in the story gets distributed so that the story is focused and its effect is maximized in the way we intend.
There are easy and hard ways to communicate with a reader. The easiest one is to appoint yourself the narrator and say things straight to the reader. That way, if you're Beatrix Potter, you can say:
"So that is the story of the two Bad Mice, but they were not so very naughty after all, because Tom Thumb paid for everything he broke."
or
"And besides - I have seen that door into the back of the hill called Cat Bells - and besides I am very well acquainted with dear Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle!"
You might say that this isn't the writer speaking to us. Sure, it's not - just as I said above, it's the narrator. But the narrator appears to be using a voice like that of the author, and we might hazard a guess that the author used these devices to back us off the story, while also reassuring the reader about certain things. One thing seems clear to me in the second passage - that Beatrix Potter doesn't want entirely to leave children with the idea that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was only a hedgehog, but to leave them with a certain sense of wonder.
Direct narrator speaking to the reader isn't just about suddenly breaking into your narrative with discussion of "the story" and what "I" know about it. It occurs all the time in third person omniscient point of view, whenever the narrator describes something that isn't directly observable, or judgeable, by the point of view character.
And in fact, I think you could argue that there's another tool available to the writer using an omniscient narrator - since omniscient viewpoints zoom in and out, drawing closer or farther away from a particular character's judgment, the writer can choose to make these zooms, or not to, in order to control the amount and kind of information given to the reader.
Controlling the amount and kind of information given to the reader is how we keep the story under control, focused and moving forward. Keeping momentum and giving information about the progress of the main story conflict is critical. But so is providing world information so a reader doesn't get lost. That's where the problem of infodumping comes up. What is it but the problem of the writer "getting information across" to the reader? To make the story work, we have to decide what information is really critical for the reader to know.
As J. Kathleen Cheney noted in her post on description, sometimes stains on priest's hems or field-stripping of weapons appears to come into it. But why would we as authors want to give such tiny details if they're at such risk of appearing irrelevant? To keep people oriented in the world, but not only that - it's to give the impression that we as writers are knowledgeable, and more importantly, reliable and authoritative reporters of the world in which the story takes place. The description of the weapon may seem pointless because it doesn't have sufficient relevance support in story conflict, character, etc. and its only underlying message may be "trust me, the writer, because you see that I know what I'm talking about." To my mind, that message alone is not enough - yet it is a very critical one for an author to deliver, whether in sf/f or mainstream work.
Other information we give needs to keep the reader feeling like they're grounded and on their feet in the story world (whatever world it happens to be) and ready to run in whatever direction the hook pulls them, so they don't feel like they're getting dragged behind a galloping horse. I struggle with this question constantly, given that I'm trying to create the impression of very alien worlds - but at the same time I have to keep readers able to follow the complexity of what I'm doing. Typically a reader won't object to information - and a critiquer might even ask for more information - if they feel that information helps them keep oriented in a fully fleshed world. But it's a tricky borderline to walk, as you don't want people to feel you're treating them like they're stupid. I personally recommend that writers trust the reader as much as possible.
I ran across another way that an author speaks to a reader over this weekend, when I was thinking about Harry Potter (which my husband has been reading with my kids). The way you choose to name your character is very important. In my science fiction, I try to keep my choice of names grounded in a language and world system, but also to give the names a flavor that will suggest their character. Bright and dark vowels are a part of this. If you look at the wizards' names in Harry Potter, you'll realize that often, that's J.K. Rowling intentionally trying to share information with you as a reader. Take Professor Remus Lupin, for example. It would be a staggering coincidence if that were truly his last name, and further, at his birth, his parents decided to give him such a lovely wolfly name. Far more likely is that Ms. Rowling is giving him the name for flavor, and to say to her readers something like, "Nudge nudge, here's a hint and if you can figure it out I'll be proud of you."
At this point it seems logical to ask, "What if you're using strictly internal point of view?" Doesn't that make it virtually impossible to communicate directly with readers?
Well, of course not. I've discussed unreliable narrators before, and how a writer can go about separating the sensory impressions and judgments of an unreliable narrator from the total impression a reader gets. Writers can not only use tricks like inclusion of details from the setting that a character doesn't judge. We can also include details that the character does notice, but which offer something else to the reader that the character doesn't pick up on. Every time you repeat a word, or a phrase, or an association of one object with a particular type of emotion, you begin to create a pattern (often an unconscious pattern) in a reader's mind. Literary writers do this all the time, but so do writers of other genres, even without realizing it.
The other thing you can do as a writer using internal point of view is choose when to switch from one point of view to another. This will allow you to control not only what information the reader gets from which character at which time, but also to create a sense of confidentiality with the reader. The spot where a point of view switch occurs doesn't need to be at a moment of low intensity - a safe switch point. It can be at a moment of critical high intensity, a charged switch point, where it will serve the writer's intention. I love to start a situation, such as a scene when one character puts another under pressure, build up a strong sense of character 1's motives and hopefully a sense in the reader of how they want the scene to come out - and then switch points of view to the other character in the same interaction. It not only surprises the reader, it also makes them question the set of expectations they've built up for character 1 by comparing them with those for character 2. And it gives them the sense that they know more than either character does alone, creating a sense of confidentiality with the author.
Before I go, a few thoughts on pov switches. It's important when dealing with point of view switches of this type to keep your descriptions of the cross-pov phenomenon, or object, totally different. If you describe the same thing the same way from two points of view, the whole significance of the switch will be lost. This is why it's often best for a story to stick with one point of view. The difference between the two descriptions is part of the author's message for the reader. In "At Cross Purposes" (the otter story), for example, I have a facial feature for my aliens that gets described from the human point of view and from the alien point of view. My human describes the aliens like this:
"...they have no eyebrows; above each of their wide-set eyes a strip of pebbly black skin extends up to the ear."
My alien describes this same facial feature on another pair of her kind as follows:
"Both have prominent, masculine brow-character – attractive – but Kir bears a pattern like thorns, while Haa has deep folds like cooled lava."
The descriptions are different, but for me, the important part is that each description shows that the feature means something different to the individuals observing it. Because one of my favorite issues to tackle is the different ways that people understand the things that they experience, I'm excited when I get an opportunity to describe the same thing twice. Readers will notice the repetition, and that repetition will in turn bring attention to the difference between the two descriptions. And then my reader and I will be sharing something that none of my characters are experiencing at all.
It's something to think about.
In academia, people tend to be very careful about making statements about authorial intent, especially when an author has been dead for over a hundred years. So they'll talk about the narrator and what the narrator says, or they'll talk about patterns in the text that might suggest different kinds of meanings.
For current writers, the question of a relationship to the reader is a complex one as well. It's better in some ways to figure that once a book or story is published, people will get what they want out of it, on the basis of their own experiences as readers, and this may not have much to do with what you intended - especially as it comes to reading your own reviews.
But whether or not we as writers have a particular message we want to get across (as discussed here in a related post), we DO want to have control over our stories - in particular, how the information in the story gets distributed so that the story is focused and its effect is maximized in the way we intend.
There are easy and hard ways to communicate with a reader. The easiest one is to appoint yourself the narrator and say things straight to the reader. That way, if you're Beatrix Potter, you can say:
"So that is the story of the two Bad Mice, but they were not so very naughty after all, because Tom Thumb paid for everything he broke."
or
"And besides - I have seen that door into the back of the hill called Cat Bells - and besides I am very well acquainted with dear Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle!"
You might say that this isn't the writer speaking to us. Sure, it's not - just as I said above, it's the narrator. But the narrator appears to be using a voice like that of the author, and we might hazard a guess that the author used these devices to back us off the story, while also reassuring the reader about certain things. One thing seems clear to me in the second passage - that Beatrix Potter doesn't want entirely to leave children with the idea that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was only a hedgehog, but to leave them with a certain sense of wonder.
Direct narrator speaking to the reader isn't just about suddenly breaking into your narrative with discussion of "the story" and what "I" know about it. It occurs all the time in third person omniscient point of view, whenever the narrator describes something that isn't directly observable, or judgeable, by the point of view character.
And in fact, I think you could argue that there's another tool available to the writer using an omniscient narrator - since omniscient viewpoints zoom in and out, drawing closer or farther away from a particular character's judgment, the writer can choose to make these zooms, or not to, in order to control the amount and kind of information given to the reader.
Controlling the amount and kind of information given to the reader is how we keep the story under control, focused and moving forward. Keeping momentum and giving information about the progress of the main story conflict is critical. But so is providing world information so a reader doesn't get lost. That's where the problem of infodumping comes up. What is it but the problem of the writer "getting information across" to the reader? To make the story work, we have to decide what information is really critical for the reader to know.
As J. Kathleen Cheney noted in her post on description, sometimes stains on priest's hems or field-stripping of weapons appears to come into it. But why would we as authors want to give such tiny details if they're at such risk of appearing irrelevant? To keep people oriented in the world, but not only that - it's to give the impression that we as writers are knowledgeable, and more importantly, reliable and authoritative reporters of the world in which the story takes place. The description of the weapon may seem pointless because it doesn't have sufficient relevance support in story conflict, character, etc. and its only underlying message may be "trust me, the writer, because you see that I know what I'm talking about." To my mind, that message alone is not enough - yet it is a very critical one for an author to deliver, whether in sf/f or mainstream work.
Other information we give needs to keep the reader feeling like they're grounded and on their feet in the story world (whatever world it happens to be) and ready to run in whatever direction the hook pulls them, so they don't feel like they're getting dragged behind a galloping horse. I struggle with this question constantly, given that I'm trying to create the impression of very alien worlds - but at the same time I have to keep readers able to follow the complexity of what I'm doing. Typically a reader won't object to information - and a critiquer might even ask for more information - if they feel that information helps them keep oriented in a fully fleshed world. But it's a tricky borderline to walk, as you don't want people to feel you're treating them like they're stupid. I personally recommend that writers trust the reader as much as possible.
I ran across another way that an author speaks to a reader over this weekend, when I was thinking about Harry Potter (which my husband has been reading with my kids). The way you choose to name your character is very important. In my science fiction, I try to keep my choice of names grounded in a language and world system, but also to give the names a flavor that will suggest their character. Bright and dark vowels are a part of this. If you look at the wizards' names in Harry Potter, you'll realize that often, that's J.K. Rowling intentionally trying to share information with you as a reader. Take Professor Remus Lupin, for example. It would be a staggering coincidence if that were truly his last name, and further, at his birth, his parents decided to give him such a lovely wolfly name. Far more likely is that Ms. Rowling is giving him the name for flavor, and to say to her readers something like, "Nudge nudge, here's a hint and if you can figure it out I'll be proud of you."
At this point it seems logical to ask, "What if you're using strictly internal point of view?" Doesn't that make it virtually impossible to communicate directly with readers?
Well, of course not. I've discussed unreliable narrators before, and how a writer can go about separating the sensory impressions and judgments of an unreliable narrator from the total impression a reader gets. Writers can not only use tricks like inclusion of details from the setting that a character doesn't judge. We can also include details that the character does notice, but which offer something else to the reader that the character doesn't pick up on. Every time you repeat a word, or a phrase, or an association of one object with a particular type of emotion, you begin to create a pattern (often an unconscious pattern) in a reader's mind. Literary writers do this all the time, but so do writers of other genres, even without realizing it.
The other thing you can do as a writer using internal point of view is choose when to switch from one point of view to another. This will allow you to control not only what information the reader gets from which character at which time, but also to create a sense of confidentiality with the reader. The spot where a point of view switch occurs doesn't need to be at a moment of low intensity - a safe switch point. It can be at a moment of critical high intensity, a charged switch point, where it will serve the writer's intention. I love to start a situation, such as a scene when one character puts another under pressure, build up a strong sense of character 1's motives and hopefully a sense in the reader of how they want the scene to come out - and then switch points of view to the other character in the same interaction. It not only surprises the reader, it also makes them question the set of expectations they've built up for character 1 by comparing them with those for character 2. And it gives them the sense that they know more than either character does alone, creating a sense of confidentiality with the author.
Before I go, a few thoughts on pov switches. It's important when dealing with point of view switches of this type to keep your descriptions of the cross-pov phenomenon, or object, totally different. If you describe the same thing the same way from two points of view, the whole significance of the switch will be lost. This is why it's often best for a story to stick with one point of view. The difference between the two descriptions is part of the author's message for the reader. In "At Cross Purposes" (the otter story), for example, I have a facial feature for my aliens that gets described from the human point of view and from the alien point of view. My human describes the aliens like this:
"...they have no eyebrows; above each of their wide-set eyes a strip of pebbly black skin extends up to the ear."
My alien describes this same facial feature on another pair of her kind as follows:
"Both have prominent, masculine brow-character – attractive – but Kir bears a pattern like thorns, while Haa has deep folds like cooled lava."
The descriptions are different, but for me, the important part is that each description shows that the feature means something different to the individuals observing it. Because one of my favorite issues to tackle is the different ways that people understand the things that they experience, I'm excited when I get an opportunity to describe the same thing twice. Readers will notice the repetition, and that repetition will in turn bring attention to the difference between the two descriptions. And then my reader and I will be sharing something that none of my characters are experiencing at all.
It's something to think about.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Question Your Assumptions
I've spent a good bunch of time, and several posts, talking about how to take all the details of a complex world and build them into how you write your story rather than writing out a whole explanation as an infodump. I've essentially said "see, if you get close enough to your character, then it will become clear that everyone does things in X way, because the way the character thinks will demonstrate X by implication."
Today I'm going to flip that around:
You're telling people things without realizing it.
Look at it from an alien language perspective. Just using our language implies that we identify objects as separate from one another, able to be acted upon by subjects in particular ways. If you read our language it becomes evident how we categorize things - what we lump into which baskets.
Then look at it from a story-writing perspective. The things you know are slipping into your narrative. When those are things about your world and your characters, it's great! It means you're transmitting critical information below the radar, hiding it in plain sight (here's my article on hiding information in plain sight). However, sometimes things we know about our own world - the writer's world - can slip in too, and then it's not so good.
When you work in any fantasy or science fictional world - at the short story length or the novel length - it's vital to spend some time thinking through the underpinnings of your story.
Question your assumptions. Even the really basic stuff.
So what are your assumptions? That's a harder question than it looks like - because they're assumptions, they're hiding in your head.
Hard science fiction writers would probably be swift to point out that you need to know whether there's gravity, whether the air is breathable, what the sun, or suns, look like, etc. Someone on the Analog forum mentioned that if the Pandoran atmosphere is poisonous to humans, then their skin would have to be protected from it as well, so face masks wouldn't really do the trick. I'm not the expert on this topic, personally, so I'm not sure if the Avatar folks had a particular idea for what was in their atmosphere which would mean re-breathers would work perfectly - but I thought it was an interesting observation.
There's more to it than just chemistry and physics, though.
I'm revising an Allied Systems story at the moment. For me, making up an alien species, creating their language and culture, and writing in their point of view is in some ways easier than writing about the humans in the story. Crazy, I know. But here's the thing: if you put it in comedy terms, the humans of the Allied Systems are the "straight man" and the aliens are the flamboyant comedians. Not that it's intended to be comedy, but I think you see my point. It's an issue I mentioned in my post on focus: the complexity of the aliens is such that I want the humans to be easy. They form the relatively neutral background upon which the aliens stand out. This is why they often come across as kind of retro.
The hazard of having retro humans, for me, is that the Star Trek model starts creeping in my head. I don't suppose this is so unusual. Our assumptions are built up from our experiences. People in the 1950's would make assumptions about aliens based on their experiences, and come up with The War of the Worlds, or classic pulp sci fi, if they didn't model their ideas on the Cold War. They would expect aliens either to make war or experiment on them, and certainly expect the end of the world as they knew it. My experience with space and aliens comes from Star Trek (TNG, mostly), so I get that set of assumptions. Not with my aliens, since I intentionally break the expectations there, but with my humans.
So there I was, looking at my story, and I realized I hadn't defeated the Star Trek default assumption that everybody out there has a spaceship. If you live in the Star Trek universe, you expect aliens to make war, to have funny powers or rules, or to make friends - but any way it works out, you're not particularly surprised to meet them.
Magic:
Do they expect everyone to be able to do magic? Or just one person, or a few? That will influence their reaction to magical occurrences and for example, what kind of guesses they might make when faced with unexplained magical happenings.
Social Justice:
Do they expect to be treated fairly by the people around them? If they're members of a socially lower group, they probably don't. But here's the trap: if bad treatment is normal to them, they probably don't question it nearly as much as we would. They wouldn't take offense at every little thing, and most probably wouldn't even spare much thought for revolution, which would seem dangerous and impractical anyway.
Technology:
What do they expect to be able to accomplish using scientific and technological means? What do they expect others to be able to accomplish? If they've seen a lot of different technology levels, they'll tend to take surprises more in stride. If they haven't, their reactions will be completely different.
So question your assumptions before you call it your final draft. It will go a long way toward having your characters' behavior seem well-grounded, and helping their reactions not to ring false.
It's something to think about.
Today I'm going to flip that around:
You're telling people things without realizing it.
Look at it from an alien language perspective. Just using our language implies that we identify objects as separate from one another, able to be acted upon by subjects in particular ways. If you read our language it becomes evident how we categorize things - what we lump into which baskets.
Then look at it from a story-writing perspective. The things you know are slipping into your narrative. When those are things about your world and your characters, it's great! It means you're transmitting critical information below the radar, hiding it in plain sight (here's my article on hiding information in plain sight). However, sometimes things we know about our own world - the writer's world - can slip in too, and then it's not so good.
When you work in any fantasy or science fictional world - at the short story length or the novel length - it's vital to spend some time thinking through the underpinnings of your story.
Question your assumptions. Even the really basic stuff.
So what are your assumptions? That's a harder question than it looks like - because they're assumptions, they're hiding in your head.
Hard science fiction writers would probably be swift to point out that you need to know whether there's gravity, whether the air is breathable, what the sun, or suns, look like, etc. Someone on the Analog forum mentioned that if the Pandoran atmosphere is poisonous to humans, then their skin would have to be protected from it as well, so face masks wouldn't really do the trick. I'm not the expert on this topic, personally, so I'm not sure if the Avatar folks had a particular idea for what was in their atmosphere which would mean re-breathers would work perfectly - but I thought it was an interesting observation.
There's more to it than just chemistry and physics, though.
I'm revising an Allied Systems story at the moment. For me, making up an alien species, creating their language and culture, and writing in their point of view is in some ways easier than writing about the humans in the story. Crazy, I know. But here's the thing: if you put it in comedy terms, the humans of the Allied Systems are the "straight man" and the aliens are the flamboyant comedians. Not that it's intended to be comedy, but I think you see my point. It's an issue I mentioned in my post on focus: the complexity of the aliens is such that I want the humans to be easy. They form the relatively neutral background upon which the aliens stand out. This is why they often come across as kind of retro.
The hazard of having retro humans, for me, is that the Star Trek model starts creeping in my head. I don't suppose this is so unusual. Our assumptions are built up from our experiences. People in the 1950's would make assumptions about aliens based on their experiences, and come up with The War of the Worlds, or classic pulp sci fi, if they didn't model their ideas on the Cold War. They would expect aliens either to make war or experiment on them, and certainly expect the end of the world as they knew it. My experience with space and aliens comes from Star Trek (TNG, mostly), so I get that set of assumptions. Not with my aliens, since I intentionally break the expectations there, but with my humans.
So there I was, looking at my story, and I realized I hadn't defeated the Star Trek default assumption that everybody out there has a spaceship. If you live in the Star Trek universe, you expect aliens to make war, to have funny powers or rules, or to make friends - but any way it works out, you're not particularly surprised to meet them.
This is where you see the biggest influence on the story: in human reactions to what is happening. I just about hit myself in the head when I realized that the humans were way too calm about the idea of encountering spacefaring aliens. Sure, the Allied Systems have lots of aliens, but humans are one of only two spacefaring races. Which means that encountering a third one is a BIG DEAL.
Take a moment to look at what you're writing, and give some attention to how your characters react to the events that occur. Think about their expectations.Magic:
Do they expect everyone to be able to do magic? Or just one person, or a few? That will influence their reaction to magical occurrences and for example, what kind of guesses they might make when faced with unexplained magical happenings.
Social Justice:
Do they expect to be treated fairly by the people around them? If they're members of a socially lower group, they probably don't. But here's the trap: if bad treatment is normal to them, they probably don't question it nearly as much as we would. They wouldn't take offense at every little thing, and most probably wouldn't even spare much thought for revolution, which would seem dangerous and impractical anyway.
Technology:
What do they expect to be able to accomplish using scientific and technological means? What do they expect others to be able to accomplish? If they've seen a lot of different technology levels, they'll tend to take surprises more in stride. If they haven't, their reactions will be completely different.
So question your assumptions before you call it your final draft. It will go a long way toward having your characters' behavior seem well-grounded, and helping their reactions not to ring false.
It's something to think about.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Hiding Information in Plain Sight
What do you do with information that you need to "get across," but can't "explain"?
If you write science fiction or fantasy, you're certainly aware of the magnitude of this problem - the one we fondly refer to as "infodumping." A big infodump can take readers off the main drive of the story, bore them and eventually dump them out of the story completely. Not good.
So what do you do to keep them? Well, the common suggestion is to avoid infodumping, but the question is, how do you do that? This post will attempt to give you some ways - I hope, not the most common or obvious ways - to approach the problem.
First suggestion: resist the instinct to explain. Explaining means you're stopping out of the main thrust of your story to speak to the reader as an author and let them know "this is how it works." If you generally use a third person omniscient narrator, it may be easier to do this without actually having it feel strange. But if you're in a close narrator like a third person limited, or first person present tense, stopping out of the action for a paragraph, even a sentence, can be very distracting. Pure explanation will tend to stick out like a sore thumb, so only do it if you absolutely have to.
One common solution to the infodumping problem is to set things up so that one of your characters will explain the necessary information to another. It can be done successfully, but here are some things to watch for if you're planning to do it. First, stay away from "As you know Bob," dialogue. This is where one person explains something to someone else who can't help but know the information already. Like saying, "As you know, Bob, this space station orbits around planet Zobob." You've doomed yourself immediately because readers see right through this. This isn't to say that you can't put very obvious information about location into dialogue - but there has to be a good reason. One good reason might be conflict between characters. There's a great example of this in Mary Pope Osborne's book, Dinosaurs Before Dark.
"Help! A monster!" said Annie.
"Yeah, sure," said Jack. "A real monster in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania."
These are the first two lines of the book! And already she's told you that Jack and Annie live in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania. But she didn't explain it. Neither did she have Jack say, "As you know, Annie, we live in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania." She did something much more clever, which I will call hiding information in plain sight, or backgrounding.
The information sneaks in, in this example, because of Jack's sarcasm. The point of what he's saying isn't where they live - it's his message of "you've got to be kidding," which he has phrased in terms of a sarcastic attack on her claim. He could have said, "Yeah, sure, a real monster. Right." But the author chose here to dispense a critical piece of information by turning Jack's words in another direction.
Very often, you can contribute to the ongoing drive and conflict in a story using the main point of a sentence, and then use the back door of that same sentence to sneak in information. Not a lot, mind you - just a piece here, a piece there. When I studied pragmatics, we talked about backgrounding in terms of things like implicature and presupposition. In this post, though, I think I'm going to use a few concrete examples so I don't send everyone scrambling to buy a Pragmatics textbook that won't directly address what you're trying to do in a story.
From Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief:
"Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood."
This line tells us that the main character (Percy) is a half-blood. Yes, it's obvious, but no, it's not actually the main message of the sentence. The statement that he didn't want to be one implies that he is one - takes that message, which probably could have been stated directly without losing the reader, and backgrounds it to a statement about Percy's desires, with extra implications about his attitude. Suddenly the sentence is doing more than telling us Percy's a half-blood. It's telling us that he has strong desires and resentments, and showing us his character. Bravo.
"Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon."
I love this one. At this point Percy's told you he's a troubled kid going to boarding school, but not much about his history. Now he starts telling you some of the reasons he's been in trouble. Take a look at the phrase Riordan slips in there: "my fifth-grade school." This single phrase presupposes that such a school exists, i.e. Percy could not use the phrase if he had not had a school that lasted only for fifth grade. Therefore, though it's hidden inside a sentence that centers on "I had this accident...", suddenly we know by implication that Percy's trouble isn't recent, and that he has a history of changing schools. Not surprisingly, later in the same paragraph we find "my fourth-grade school." Riordan can later build on this concept of Percy's itinerant schooling without ever having explained it outright.
From Nnedi Okorafor's The Shadow Speaker:
"Ejii fought against her surety that this time the world really was ending, that the Sahara Desert was finally finishing what it had started, swallowing up the rest of what was there."
This is a great sentence. The main point of it is that Ejii is fighting the certainty of an idea - similarly to the first Riordan example above, making a statement about the mental state or judgments of the main character. The idea itself has at least two critical worldbuilding phrases in it. The first one, "this time the world really was ending," implies that there was a last time when everyone thought the world was going to end - critical history for this book, but information which (if Okorafor explained it) would detract from the action of Ejii reacting to an earthquake. The second phrase is "the Sahara Desert," which unequivocally locates Ejii and her story in Africa.
These phrases are critical to reader orientation, but because they work indirectly, by implication, we often don't notice they are there or what they are doing. And by not explaining, they make us more curious, not less.
I don't want to leave this post without addressing the issue of explanation. Sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes you have a really complex concept that is absolutely necessary to understand your story, and it would take you lots and lots of strenuous work-arounds to get across, and maybe even then you couldn't be sure if readers would be able to put it together. In that case, you need your explanation. So here are a few suggestions. First, streamline to make it as concise as possible. Second, make it as relevant as possible. Put it in a place where your character has every reason to think of it, and not only that, but every reason to think about it in those terms.
If your character needs to know how to use a complex piece of technology, ask yourself precisely how much they need to know about it in order to use it. My daughter started being able to use the internet to click around her favorite PBS website before she was four. If she needs to be able to do this for the story to work, it doesn't mean that I need to explain the technological basis for the internet. Still, if something about what she finds is fundamental to the plot, I may have to give some detail about how she thinks about what she does. It's a matter of judgment.
This "explanation" example is from my own story, "Cold Words," because I know what I intended when I included it in the story, and why I placed it where I did - something that would be harder for me to guess at in another person's story. This story centers on trouble with status dialects in an alien language. When the story opens, Rulii and Parker are speaking the less-marked dialect, called Warm Words. Then Rulii goes out to speak to his Majesty, and this is where I need to make the distinction between the dialects clear. I could just throw readers in, but figuring out what the difference is between the two styles of talk is not the point of the story, exactly - it's about the consequences of the two styles of talk. So I take advantage of Rulii's antagonism toward Majesty and the other councilors to place his explanation of the dialects right before he has to start speaking the second one.
"Blunted now is the fierceness that incited their tundra ancestors to annex our lands. They depend on the urrgai that our Lowland Clans first bred tame, and their ancient hunt-calls have changed in sense, to Cold Words proclaiming dominator status. Only in Majesty's exalted presence must the Cold Words be used by all as they were long ago: the language of the ice-hunters."
This paragraph is still trying to do multiple things (because I can't help myself!). The first sentence is something of an insult about how these guys he's looking at aren't fierce any more, with the history of tundra ancestors and annexing lands backgrounded in the "that" clause. The second sentence is similar, calling them dependent - and the explicit statement about the hunt-calls changing into Cold Words fits into this feeling of the decline of fierceness, even as it directly tells what the Cold Words are supposed to do. The final sentence sets up the rule that Rulii will be following as he enters his next interaction, so that nobody has to guess what's going on and why he's talking a little differently. But at the same time it fits into the attitude that has come before, making the Majesty's presence special but also somewhat pretentious-sounding.
If you're writing right now, chances are you're already hiding information in plain sight. We do it all the time. The trick is just to look for these opportunities consciously, to make it easier to place hints about world and culture while we're giving our primary attention to the ongoing action of the story.
As always, I welcome any comments.
If you write science fiction or fantasy, you're certainly aware of the magnitude of this problem - the one we fondly refer to as "infodumping." A big infodump can take readers off the main drive of the story, bore them and eventually dump them out of the story completely. Not good.
So what do you do to keep them? Well, the common suggestion is to avoid infodumping, but the question is, how do you do that? This post will attempt to give you some ways - I hope, not the most common or obvious ways - to approach the problem.
First suggestion: resist the instinct to explain. Explaining means you're stopping out of the main thrust of your story to speak to the reader as an author and let them know "this is how it works." If you generally use a third person omniscient narrator, it may be easier to do this without actually having it feel strange. But if you're in a close narrator like a third person limited, or first person present tense, stopping out of the action for a paragraph, even a sentence, can be very distracting. Pure explanation will tend to stick out like a sore thumb, so only do it if you absolutely have to.
One common solution to the infodumping problem is to set things up so that one of your characters will explain the necessary information to another. It can be done successfully, but here are some things to watch for if you're planning to do it. First, stay away from "As you know Bob," dialogue. This is where one person explains something to someone else who can't help but know the information already. Like saying, "As you know, Bob, this space station orbits around planet Zobob." You've doomed yourself immediately because readers see right through this. This isn't to say that you can't put very obvious information about location into dialogue - but there has to be a good reason. One good reason might be conflict between characters. There's a great example of this in Mary Pope Osborne's book, Dinosaurs Before Dark.
"Help! A monster!" said Annie.
"Yeah, sure," said Jack. "A real monster in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania."
These are the first two lines of the book! And already she's told you that Jack and Annie live in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania. But she didn't explain it. Neither did she have Jack say, "As you know, Annie, we live in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania." She did something much more clever, which I will call hiding information in plain sight, or backgrounding.
The information sneaks in, in this example, because of Jack's sarcasm. The point of what he's saying isn't where they live - it's his message of "you've got to be kidding," which he has phrased in terms of a sarcastic attack on her claim. He could have said, "Yeah, sure, a real monster. Right." But the author chose here to dispense a critical piece of information by turning Jack's words in another direction.
Very often, you can contribute to the ongoing drive and conflict in a story using the main point of a sentence, and then use the back door of that same sentence to sneak in information. Not a lot, mind you - just a piece here, a piece there. When I studied pragmatics, we talked about backgrounding in terms of things like implicature and presupposition. In this post, though, I think I'm going to use a few concrete examples so I don't send everyone scrambling to buy a Pragmatics textbook that won't directly address what you're trying to do in a story.
From Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief:
"Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood."
This line tells us that the main character (Percy) is a half-blood. Yes, it's obvious, but no, it's not actually the main message of the sentence. The statement that he didn't want to be one implies that he is one - takes that message, which probably could have been stated directly without losing the reader, and backgrounds it to a statement about Percy's desires, with extra implications about his attitude. Suddenly the sentence is doing more than telling us Percy's a half-blood. It's telling us that he has strong desires and resentments, and showing us his character. Bravo.
"Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon."
I love this one. At this point Percy's told you he's a troubled kid going to boarding school, but not much about his history. Now he starts telling you some of the reasons he's been in trouble. Take a look at the phrase Riordan slips in there: "my fifth-grade school." This single phrase presupposes that such a school exists, i.e. Percy could not use the phrase if he had not had a school that lasted only for fifth grade. Therefore, though it's hidden inside a sentence that centers on "I had this accident...", suddenly we know by implication that Percy's trouble isn't recent, and that he has a history of changing schools. Not surprisingly, later in the same paragraph we find "my fourth-grade school." Riordan can later build on this concept of Percy's itinerant schooling without ever having explained it outright.
From Nnedi Okorafor's The Shadow Speaker:
"Ejii fought against her surety that this time the world really was ending, that the Sahara Desert was finally finishing what it had started, swallowing up the rest of what was there."
This is a great sentence. The main point of it is that Ejii is fighting the certainty of an idea - similarly to the first Riordan example above, making a statement about the mental state or judgments of the main character. The idea itself has at least two critical worldbuilding phrases in it. The first one, "this time the world really was ending," implies that there was a last time when everyone thought the world was going to end - critical history for this book, but information which (if Okorafor explained it) would detract from the action of Ejii reacting to an earthquake. The second phrase is "the Sahara Desert," which unequivocally locates Ejii and her story in Africa.
These phrases are critical to reader orientation, but because they work indirectly, by implication, we often don't notice they are there or what they are doing. And by not explaining, they make us more curious, not less.
I don't want to leave this post without addressing the issue of explanation. Sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes you have a really complex concept that is absolutely necessary to understand your story, and it would take you lots and lots of strenuous work-arounds to get across, and maybe even then you couldn't be sure if readers would be able to put it together. In that case, you need your explanation. So here are a few suggestions. First, streamline to make it as concise as possible. Second, make it as relevant as possible. Put it in a place where your character has every reason to think of it, and not only that, but every reason to think about it in those terms.
If your character needs to know how to use a complex piece of technology, ask yourself precisely how much they need to know about it in order to use it. My daughter started being able to use the internet to click around her favorite PBS website before she was four. If she needs to be able to do this for the story to work, it doesn't mean that I need to explain the technological basis for the internet. Still, if something about what she finds is fundamental to the plot, I may have to give some detail about how she thinks about what she does. It's a matter of judgment.
This "explanation" example is from my own story, "Cold Words," because I know what I intended when I included it in the story, and why I placed it where I did - something that would be harder for me to guess at in another person's story. This story centers on trouble with status dialects in an alien language. When the story opens, Rulii and Parker are speaking the less-marked dialect, called Warm Words. Then Rulii goes out to speak to his Majesty, and this is where I need to make the distinction between the dialects clear. I could just throw readers in, but figuring out what the difference is between the two styles of talk is not the point of the story, exactly - it's about the consequences of the two styles of talk. So I take advantage of Rulii's antagonism toward Majesty and the other councilors to place his explanation of the dialects right before he has to start speaking the second one.
"Blunted now is the fierceness that incited their tundra ancestors to annex our lands. They depend on the urrgai that our Lowland Clans first bred tame, and their ancient hunt-calls have changed in sense, to Cold Words proclaiming dominator status. Only in Majesty's exalted presence must the Cold Words be used by all as they were long ago: the language of the ice-hunters."
This paragraph is still trying to do multiple things (because I can't help myself!). The first sentence is something of an insult about how these guys he's looking at aren't fierce any more, with the history of tundra ancestors and annexing lands backgrounded in the "that" clause. The second sentence is similar, calling them dependent - and the explicit statement about the hunt-calls changing into Cold Words fits into this feeling of the decline of fierceness, even as it directly tells what the Cold Words are supposed to do. The final sentence sets up the rule that Rulii will be following as he enters his next interaction, so that nobody has to guess what's going on and why he's talking a little differently. But at the same time it fits into the attitude that has come before, making the Majesty's presence special but also somewhat pretentious-sounding.
If you're writing right now, chances are you're already hiding information in plain sight. We do it all the time. The trick is just to look for these opportunities consciously, to make it easier to place hints about world and culture while we're giving our primary attention to the ongoing action of the story.
As always, I welcome any comments.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Educational Backstory: avoiding arbitrary superpowers
Have you ever noticed how characters in science fiction and fantasy seem to have superpowers? I'm not even talking about the superhero type. I mean special skills - things that nobody else can do, that usually make these people indispensable to the plot. To pull from David Eddings, maybe one guy can steal anything and speak a secret sign language, maybe another can turn into a bear, maybe another never gets scared, etc. The nice thing about Eddings' characters is that he usually has a personal history for the character which explains their terrific strengths (and peculiar weaknesses).
This is really important.
A character who can do unusual things is really great, even if it's something as subtle as being graceful in movement. But without grounding, those special skills can seem arbitrary. When you look at actual superheroes, one of the coolest things about them is that they have special origin stories. Even the X-men's relatively arbitrary powers are grounded in a general tendency for human mutation.
So think through how your character got to be this way. Does she fight well because she was trained in kung fu? Does he have strong arms because he was apprenticed to the blacksmith? Does he know about lightspeed physics because he's a professor, or the ship's engineer? Does he know about linguistics in spite of his young age because he's the son of a famous linguist?
One of the things I always enjoyed about the character Pazu from Miyazaki's film, Castle in the Sky, was that he was a miner. As the movie starts, you see him hefting heavy weights and crawling all over (and repairing) these massive steam engines that bring the miners up from the tunnels below. You also see him being comfortable in dark tunnels - and all this seems perfectly natural. Then later when he's volunteering to repair the engine of a pirate's airship, climbing like crazy over the outside of the actual castle in the sky, and running through the dark tunnels inside it, you have no problem with any of it. You've seen him do it before, and it all works.
This is one of those instances where you can make your world personal. Think about your character's educational background. Is it based in experience? What kind? Is it based in institutionalized education? What kind of people does your character admire as mentors or teachers, and why?
You can even take it a little further - ask yourself what ideologies might come along with your character's experience or education. Was the master abusive, inadvertently teaching hatred of his social group? Did the teacher rescue the student from poverty or some other social situation, leading the student to adopt similar social views? Did the institution teach larger social values, or the values of the particular social group it serves?
Explore the possibilities.
This is really important.
A character who can do unusual things is really great, even if it's something as subtle as being graceful in movement. But without grounding, those special skills can seem arbitrary. When you look at actual superheroes, one of the coolest things about them is that they have special origin stories. Even the X-men's relatively arbitrary powers are grounded in a general tendency for human mutation.
So think through how your character got to be this way. Does she fight well because she was trained in kung fu? Does he have strong arms because he was apprenticed to the blacksmith? Does he know about lightspeed physics because he's a professor, or the ship's engineer? Does he know about linguistics in spite of his young age because he's the son of a famous linguist?
One of the things I always enjoyed about the character Pazu from Miyazaki's film, Castle in the Sky, was that he was a miner. As the movie starts, you see him hefting heavy weights and crawling all over (and repairing) these massive steam engines that bring the miners up from the tunnels below. You also see him being comfortable in dark tunnels - and all this seems perfectly natural. Then later when he's volunteering to repair the engine of a pirate's airship, climbing like crazy over the outside of the actual castle in the sky, and running through the dark tunnels inside it, you have no problem with any of it. You've seen him do it before, and it all works.
This is one of those instances where you can make your world personal. Think about your character's educational background. Is it based in experience? What kind? Is it based in institutionalized education? What kind of people does your character admire as mentors or teachers, and why?
You can even take it a little further - ask yourself what ideologies might come along with your character's experience or education. Was the master abusive, inadvertently teaching hatred of his social group? Did the teacher rescue the student from poverty or some other social situation, leading the student to adopt similar social views? Did the institution teach larger social values, or the values of the particular social group it serves?
Explore the possibilities.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Worldbuilding is more than just World
Worldbuilding is an enormous topic. As huge as the world, really - and tonight I'm picking a place to start, a little like the way writers pick an entry point into the worlds they create. But since a lot of you out there have done quite a bit of worldbuilding already, and certainly all of you have experienced worlds created by other people, I'll skip the nuts and bolts part and begin with a language-and-culture observation:
People are inextricable from their worlds.
Yes (no big surprise), characters in stories behave as if they are from the places that they're from. And when we hear or read them, we can tell. Automatically, subconsciously, the little hints add up.
So what does this mean?
It means a lot of things. One, which links back to my entry about point of view earlier, is that a writer should be careful to consider the observer's background experience in the world whenever writing descriptions. For me personally, this is the primary reason why I try to avoid third person omniscient point of view; I find it hard to decide whose point of view to use for the narration. Should I hop from head to head, like Frank Herbert did in Dune, or Mary Doria Russell did in The Sparrow? Should I try to imagine an independent storyteller telling the story, like C.S. Lewis did in the Narnia books? Should I stay mostly in one head but bring in regular glimpses of alternate points of view, like J.K. Rowling did in the Harry Potter series? Just thinking about that stuff makes me crazy! So my usual solution is to try to keep the narrative point of view as close to the character's point of view as possible, even when I'm using third person. The last thing I want is for my readers to be able to tell that part of the description was written from my own, the author's, point of view.
For me, close point of view is a fantastic way to keep a really gigantic and detailed world under control, because the limits on one person's perception and experience give you a great way to limit the kinds of information you're trying to dispense to the reader. It cuts down on the infodumping, big time. There are always things that characters don't understand about their own worlds - and that's okay. As long as your character knows what's going on, and lets people know when they're confused, that helps the reader figure things out.
Let me get down to some concrete details. My Varin world consists of eight cities, all of them built underground. They have good quality lighting to distinguish day and night, but it is provided by high-tech lamps all over the ceiling. So they don't talk about dawn, dusk, or twilight. They have dayrise and nightfall, and they have daylights instead of daylight. If somebody brings up a topic unexpectedly, they say that it "came out of the dark" instead of "came out of the blue." So vocabulary surrounding unique aspects of the setting should reflect that setting, as should expressions people use in conversation. So far so good.
The other thing I like to do with Varin is play with the fact that people who grow up in the Eight Cities aren't afraid of or bothered by being underground. It's totally normal to them - so of course when they go up to the surface, that's when things get weird. And by the way, they don't generally say "up to" the surface, but "up the surface" and "out the surface" - a dialect-like alteration to reflect their sense of place. I'm sure none of you are surprised that the idea that Varin citizens would find the lack of a roof scary, or outside daylight very bright. But as I've spent time developing my world and the characters in it, I've tried to push it further than that. When we describe things, we often say what they're like, and we generally compare them to things we know. So I'll have a character compare a waving field of grass to billowing bedsheets, or a rock face gleaming with sunshine to a clean plate. A sort of reversal, where daylight could be "as bright as fire" but not vice-versa.
The huge temptation for me, and I'm sure for many others who really love the worlds they've created, is to try to give too much, or to fall into infodumping. This to me means taking attention away from the story - the central drive of the narrative - and putting it instead into lots of explanatory details that are intended to flesh out how the world works. The single principle I've found most helpful for controlling my tendency to go crazy infodumping is that of relevance to point of view.
People do not talk or think about things that they don't notice, things that aren't important to them, or things that are so normal that they don't stand out.
Take for example an alien. That alien thinks that everything about his world is totally normal, and so he will generally not explain it. He has no reason to! But change the context - put that alien in a conversation with a human being - and suddenly everything changes. The presence of contrast will cause the alien to notice things about his own world, people, language etc. - but still, those things he notices will depend on surrounding circumstances. The alien's state of mind (calm and reflective? anxious and aggressive? in a state of shock?) will affect the kinds of things that he notices.
And don't forget to ask yourself: would this alien really refer to his people as "the Gegogians"? Or would they be "my people"? Under what circumstances?
I'd like to add one final note on using invented words for elements of a world. Invented words are wonderful fun, and they demonstrate the language of a region. Wonderful. They also make for a sense of alienness, of not being in the world we're used to. But to be used most effectively, they need to have a lot of supportive surrounding context. I don't remember who it was that said "if your world has rabbits, then call them rabbits," but they had a really good point. When too many things have foreign names, the reader can be distracted, and start to dissociate from the setting instead of staying absorbed in it. In Varin stories, a sense of familiarity is more important to me than a sense of alienness, so I tend to use names like "kelo mushroom" or "river lettuce," or even just "apples." In my linguistics universe I want to go a bit more alien, so I'll talk about "white-spotted gharralli furs," (who knows how big a gharralli is?) or "grazers" (it might eat like a cow, but I'm betting it doesn't look like one!).
I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this topic, so I'd really love to have some questions or comments, so I can return to it in the coming days.
A final thanks goes out to my awesome friend Janice Hardy, who put me onto the word "daylights" just a few weeks ago (after I've been working with Varin for more than ten years!). I'll shout out for her a little, too - she's got a great fantasy novel she just sold, called The Pain Merchants, and yes, it is as amazing as it sounds. Watch for it!
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