Sometimes what feels like a sledgehammer blow of information to the writer may be just a gentle tap for the reader.One of the things we spend some time on in the Writing F&SF class is how to explain things to the reader. As part of this, I usually give them the Expository Lump exercise from Ursula LeGuin’s excellent book on writing, Steering the Craft.
Many of us know the term “infodump,” where a whooooole bunch of information necessary for understanding the story gets thrown at the reader, sometimes in the form of dialogue, sometimes outright chunks of books, or some other form. We want to avoid these because they’re usually dry and a little boring, and because they put readers off.
But at the same time, there is information we -need- for readers to know. And sometimes we may not realize it. If we don’t give it, then events may seem unlikely or heavy-handed or even incomprehensible.
I’ve been reworking a novel for the final time, and one thing I’ve realized in doing it is that the progression of scenes in the last section is not clear. I needed to spend more time being clear that the characters were moving from one place to another so readers could understand where they ended up. And I’d been coy about it, to the point where the reader just wasn’t getting that information.
This is where getting someone else to read a piece is crucial. Because that progression is so clear in the writer’s head that we cannot perceive what’s missing for the reader. One of the most important questions you can ask a reader is “What questions did this leave you with?” or “What didn’t you understand?” Because it’s just as easy to be too subtle — perhaps even easier — than to be overt, since what feels very obvious to you may not be a fraction as apparent to your reader.
And holy cow, how is it that in this version, which I had sent out to my agent already, that I found this on one page: “(insert description later)”? ARGH.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
You may also like...
Writing Thoughts: Dwelling On Process
Here is the only thing I know to be true about writing advice: none of it is 100% true. There are always exceptions, always idiosyncrasies of individual process.
Here is the smartest piece of writing advice I ever got: said by Syne Mitchell while I was at Clarion West in 2005, “Try different things, find what works for you, and do that. Lots.”
Writers should pay attention to our own process. Sometimes we’re reluctant to do so. We worry that like the centipede in the story who stops being able to walk after thinking about exactly how she does it, looking at our own process will damage or kill it. A Schrödinger’s cat: we know we’re doing something, but if we look to prove that, it’ll vanish.
This is not actually true. Looking will, most probably, not kill it. If you are the rare exception that cannot look at their process without damaging it, a brief examination will let you know this without damaging anything too much. Maybe. There are no guarantees in writing advice.
But if you are part of the vast majority that WILL learn from it, what will you gain?
A knowledge of WHEN you’re productive that will help you make the most of that time. Is the morning your most productive time? Then schedule your writing for those hours rather than the draggy and low word count afternoon.
A knowledge of WHAT conditions make you productive. Does the coffee shop’s bustle and a few doses of caffeine stimulate you into productivity? Or do you need solitude and the ability to read aloud as you go? Find it out and do it, do it, do it.
Permission to indulge yourself. Do new notebooks spur you to new stories? Then go for it. Does a two hour walk shake loose the clarifications you need for that revision? Then put on your sneakers.
A sense of yourself as an artist. Because you are, you know. Your mind is a precious machine capable of creating wonderful things. Coddle and care for it. Appreciate the amazing combinations it makes, the verbal webs it spins, the hard glitter of its jewels.
Take a few weeks. Track your daily word count as well as the circumstances that accompany it, such as when and where you wrote. But go further than that. Track the other things that affect it: your mood, your diet, your sleep. You may find that daily walk doubles your output, that the days when you took time to eat breakfast rather than just slug down a latte, change your outlook.
FOr many of us, stress is a killer of productivity. I know nothing can drive me faster to the distraction of Bejeweled Blitz or cruising my Twitter stream. All the more reason to de-stress your life whenever you can, all in the name of writing.
Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.
Submerging, And Other Random Thoughts about Novelspinning
Found in a Seattle alley. They smelled like grandmothers and summer.One of the questions I’ve been asked several times and never known how to answer before is “How is writing a novel different than writing a short story?” The smart-ass answer is, of course, a novel is longer, but it’s more than that, more a question of the complexity that a greater length affords you, an ability to move in four dimensions rather than just three.
A short story is smaller, flatter, closer to two-dimensional, while a novel has at least four dimensions and probably much more than that. Things interconnect in a short story, but in a novel those interconnections become even more important, indeed are their own kind of building block. In a novel, things reflect, are doubled, made more complicated, imbued with meaning. So what’s the difference beyond that? For me, it’s what’s required in the writing, in getting enough of the book in my head to be able to figure out where it’s going next.
How does one achieve that? The answer that’s emerged for me is submersion. There needs to be — at least for me — a period where I’m focused on the writing to the exclusion of anything and everything else. To go to sleep with my words echoing in my head, to wake with dreams lingering in which pieces of the story have been predicted or deciphered. To not be watching television or playing videogames, which fills up my head with pop culture crap (I do not decry it in its place, simply claim that for a writer, too much can be detrimental.)
To work at novel length — at any length, really, though — is a willingness to let your unconscious wander and then capitalize in the rewrite on the wonderful things that process has revealed. You can’t hold a novel in your head the way you can contain a story, seeing it as a complete entity. Instead you exist within it, seeing outward, creating a hollow space in which the reader can live while experiencing the funhouse ride you have constructed.
I start with a roadmap that tells me the basic arc, but every few chapters I have to recalculate and check that map, and make sure no necessary sidetrips have presented themselves (or need to be dropped from the itinerary). I know by now, having completed five of these things, that I can reach the end. I just don’t know exactly how much gas it’ll take or what the terrain will present me with. That’s half the joy and most of the terror of this enterprise.
I don’t want to discount writers with a more straightforward plotting process — mileage will always, inevitably, vary and anyone who claims to have found the One True Way for anyone other than themself is full of hooey. Here’s a truth: all that matters is that you write. That you produce words of fiction rather than words about the art of fiction writing or the state of the world or the publishing industry or any of the ways in which the world has wronged you (a fascinating topic to you, but few others). This is not to say that critique and revision are not important as well, but simply that for either to take place, the act of creation must have preceded it.
I’m counting down the days till July because I’m taking a month and a half for submerging myself, heading off to housesit for a friend in another state. It’s what both my waking and unconscious mind are telling me to do in order to finish up this book and get a running start on the next, Exiles of Tabat. To dive deep into the roots of the story and blunder around, colliding with those hidden pillars, overgrown with metaphor and symbology, so semiotically-shagged that you must reach out for them with something like a special bat-sense, akin to sonar, because otherwise you’re just a blind man, holding onto an elephant’s tail and gravely expounding on how like a snake an elephant truly is.
Those pillars inform everything because they hold it all up. A story is just a story, a spaceship just a spaceship… but that’s not true at all, is it? In a novel, a spaceship’s cargo hold is packed tight with meaning: exploration, escape, the forces of technology, even fripperies like references to other fictional spaceships or science.
Things in books are more than just things, because even when we’re reading “just for entertainment,” there’s a level on which they show us what is and isn’t okay for humans to do. Everything is political in that it works to normalize (or mark as abnormal) what’s presented in it. A book with a protagonist preaching libertarian values or fondling her gun is just as political as any other viewpoint and to pretend such stories are not political is disingenuous or ignorant at best and outright dishonest at its worst.
But I digress, because I don’t want to talk about opinions of art, but rather what I can say about its creation. I’ll have wireless, so I’ll be teaching some classes, and there’s a few other things to do, but mainly I’m just going to write and write and see what I can get done. The book for sure, and a handful of stories that I’ve promised people, and at least an outline for Exiles. I am extremely lucky to have a spouse who doesn’t mind my heading off to hole up, as well as the economic circumstances to do this, and I am going to make the most of it, particularly in the post-Nebulas lull, because I’m itching to get the second book out there and see what people think, because it’s a weird structure, and man, the people who didn’t like the cliffhanger in the last are not going to be happy with this one.
Life’s been contentious lately, at least in the overall climate. If you want to feel happier, go do something nice for someone else. Give someone a kind word or a smile. And wish me luck, because today’s got a series of downers in it – but they are all quite survivable and July is coming soon.
