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A lot of beginning writers' fiction is like a lot of beginners' poetry: deliberately unintelligible so as to make the shallow seem deep.

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I realized that I do this a LOT. I rarely spell things out clearly or repetitively out of fear of hand-holding (or from lacking the skill to be clear without being over-bearing). I think this is a reaction to the type of writing that bugs me the most: the over-explained, write-down-to-the-reader type of fiction. I'm reading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn right now and I've actually said "Yeah, I get it already!" several times.

Then I think about some of the finer things I've read, and they are equally clear about motivations, actions, plot reasons, etc. as Sanderson (for example), but I didn't notice them being repetitive.

I guess this is one thing that makes workshops and feedback so helpful because other writers can tell you when you're not very clear and when you overdo the explanations, especially when you're still learning and can't really see for yourself.

However, like you say, the flip side of vagueness is over-telling. I'm reading a ton of mid-grade (just below young adult genre and age-group wise) and YA fiction right now and boy, some authors just want to pummel the kids with the facts/details, and others have really figured out the subtlety needed to tell a good story without being indirect. I find a lot of authors are playing tricks with witholding information that should be known to the reader long before it has, just to draw out tension in these mid-grade/YA novels. I think that's ridiculous, and I've actually changed my mind about a couple of authors because of this. Kind of a bummer, but maybe it signals a maturity of me as a writer that I can be critical of others who I used to hold in such high regard? (don't get me wrong, I know they're still awesome in that they've had their books published, but it makes me believe that I can be awesome in that same way before long.)

My experience reading and writing mid-grade/YA is that you don't really have to worry about being too direct (but yes, you do have to be careful not to be too repetitive.) That whole "show-don't-tell" piece of advice we're always getting as readers. Sometimes it's baloney - sometimes you should just come out and say that she's the evilist queen to rule the land in all these 50 ages. You don't have to prove it to me time and again by having her murder babies and kittens, know what I mean?

The series I'm recommending the most right now for clarity of message and concept while still being readable for younger readers, and holding nicely true to a fun fantasy/speculative fiction concept, is the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, by Rick Riordan. The Lightning Thief is the first book. It's a quick read for a grown-up (took me 2 days, with life going on around it) but it's a really nicely done story. There's some withholding, but things are revealed at the time they need to be, the withholding isn't done in the "I know something you don't know" kind of way I find annoying in other writers.

At any rate - I hope some of this is helpful! Good luck to you.

I was referring to the numerous instances where the MC will be listening to someone talk and then go (in her head), "Oh! He must mean (insert obvious explanation)" Then ten seconds later someone else says something, and Sanderson adds another explanation of the same thing. Also, his constant use of the word "However" makes it read like a textbook for junior high kids.

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That makes me think of Terry Goodkind. Phenomenal writer, but he has a habit of writing the same idea three times in a paragraph. It gets progressively worse as you get farther into the series. First he'll do a kind of abbreviated description of the idea, then he'll spend an entire paragraph telling you exactly what that abbreviated description told you with no new information, just a lot of padding, then he'll summarize it all with another abbreviated description that says basically the same thing.
I was a huge fan of his earlier books, but sometimes that aspect of his writing made me throw the book down and scream "just tell me it once darn it!"

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Not to mention repeating the same plot how many times? By about the fifth time Richard was taken away from Kahlan, had bad things done to him from which he learned something important, escaped and came back to Kahlan, I was done with Terry Goodkind.

But I can even forgive that, since the writing was good and his pace was fast and at least the annoying stuff wasn't too terrible. It was in the later books when he started spending hundreds of pages on pure dialogue preaching his viewpoints without even pretending like he was doing anything but using the book as a soapbox. To say nothing of how in every book he devoted a large portion of it to describing in sickening detail just how evil the bad guys were and JUST what they did that was evil and EVERYTHING they did to all the innocent people. After the third time one of them walked through a city ravaged by the Imperial Order and took the time to look inside every house to personally witness all the horrors...I kept on reading, because I wanted to finish the series, but it was definitely getting old.

Then he'd spend another healthy chunk of it in dialogue about how it was all hopeless but they wouldn't give up and Richard would find some way with magic to solve everything and THINK OF THE SOLUTION, NOT THE PROBLEM.

I should have realized that since you were talking about depth, you meant something else.

Maybe it just goes to show that different things can be overdone for different readers. (Merlion's "subjective" strikes again!)

So, let me think about this. It seems to me that there should be two rules about when and how much of anything to put in a story:

1--only put it in when it will make a difference to the characters (as in "aha!" moments where the character understands something and acts upon it)

2--since characters can be smarter than their readers AND their authors*, only spell out enough for the character to "get it" and then show the reader what's going on so that the reader can "get it" as well.

Is that any help?

Bringing this back to the main point of the thread with Caves of Steel, while there is some repetition in the sort of make it extremely clear the psychological limitations of humans who have become used to living in the huge city complexes and fear of robots, etc, it doesn't become heavy handed or painfully "I get it already" because it is delivered in a variety of ways. Characters actually discuss the differences, Lije ponders them while trying to work out the case, the reader is shown the action of a spacer robot and a earthman. The blend of showing and naturalized telling (i.e. telling through dialogue that doesn't seem forced, or too infodumpy) helps create psychological depth to the characters action without the "he did this because he had a rough past" type of telling or the "watch them torture kittens again" type of showing. While it is possible to do things well on either end of the spectrum, finding a way to blend them to enhance both does wonders (not that I am particularly good at this myself... yet).

Looking again at the quote alliedfive gave I think that what Hill may have also been touching on is the tendency of beginning writers to over explain, describe things instead of having a steadier hand in their descriptions. This isn't a purple prose or minimalism distinction so much as the difference of a sketch book artist that has a sure hand it doesn't matter whether you draw with a light airy line or a short thick bold one. You will draw with a assured hand with no excess marks. The excess is the beginner in my convoluted analogy.

Now I have rambled enough, I feel.

Just looking at the author's statement, it seems like the answer might be simply to be concise and clear. As others have pointed out, repetition is something not to overdo. The question of depth is partly contextual--if you strive for a highly literary story depth is more of a concern than it might be for a straight genre tale.

The most widespread advice I've seen is for beginning writers to keep things straightforward until they learn to tell a good story, and that more sophisticated facets will develop as one's skills mature. At the stage I am at I am taking pains to keep things as straightforward as possible.

And as with most things there's no one right answer. Different readers have different expectations in terms of how much is plainly spelled out and maybe even reinforced versus how much is left to the reader to infer and remember.

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At the stage I am at I am taking pains to keep things as straightforward as possible.

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Me too, dee_boncci. Clear, clear, to the point, no frills.

Edited to add: Merlion, I sent you an email.

On topic...this is definitely a hairy and yes, subjective issue. Both in terms of that different readers are going to want different levels, types, and intensities of explanation, and in that different types of stories will have different thresholds.

I also agree that this is one of those areas where critiquers...especially getting a number of crits from different people...can really help. I think it can be very tough to see where, in your own work, you've been too redundant or likewise haven't made information clear enough.

I think it can often overlap with "show don't tell" issues as well, if you've already done one and then wind up doing the other as well.