-- actually this kind of goes hand in hand with the thread about spoon feeding.

The person said that they were kinda bothered that they were on page 2, and still had no idea of the actual setting.

For my story, the place that this is all happening is a few star systems away from our own, and about 700 years in the future – though you wouldn’t know it by the way the people live as their lives have evolved into a different lifestyle. – and yeah, I get to learn more about quantum physics for this world.

Anyway, at the beginning… well, like page 10 or 15, a strange ship appears, and that ship is actually from here (the solar system) though that isn’t stated until late in the story, as the main characters find out what is going on.

So the question is… how much does one need to give away at the beginning so that the reader isn’t feeling alienated? I’m not sure if I have gotten jaded by stories, and just figure that unless they are putting people into the story that I recognize the name of… like Albert Einstein, or places like the New York subway system, I’m willing to go along with the author just telling me the story and until something jars me to a time that it should be, or puts in items which don’t go together as I know them, then it isn’t a problem.

If you are deliberately obfuscating information that would help the reader understand the setting, that's bad.

However, if you are just showing us people's lives, it's natural that some information won't come up at first, and it doesn't really need to be told to the reader until the reader needs to know.

For example, that fact that your story takes place 700 years in the future doesn't need to be specified until it becomes relevant. The average reader of SF will pick up on gentle clues. For example, the sentence "It wasn't quite winter, but the cold wind made the nanothreads in Krall's shirt respond by releasing a gentle warmth," is going to give readers a very different idea about the setting than, "It wasn't quite winter, but the cold wind made Krall clutch his furs more tightly."

If you throw in clues that the society is high-tech, readers will assume it's the future. They may not know if it's 50 years or 50 million, but until that becomes relevant, it doesn't really matter. "High-tech society" is a stereotype the reader will feel comfortable with. (This is a stereotype in the good sense, in that it allows the reader to naturally assume details that would be too boring if you had to describe them all.)

As long as you keep dropping clues tyhat allow the reader to properly refine his image of the world, it's not a problem. But if the reader has been imaginging a high-tech society, and then you reveal on page 82 that the whole society live underwater and the people have been genetically engineered to have gills... Well, that's something the reader needed by page two, preferably on page one. Not the genegineering part, but the fact that the characters are water-breathers.

ok... to give you an idea, the type of world that I have is kinda like "Star Trek Insurrection" - only there aren't strange people getting facelifts on a daily basis trying to take over the planet. -- but it is kinda rural, and life has slowed down again from the frantic pace that is 21st century living.

Many good science fiction stories are mysteries: some ask what is the scientific basis for this occurrence, others ask what sociological conditions led to this particular society existing, there are lots more kinds as well.

If you feel the right place to tell the reader some important fact is near the end of the story, I say go for it. But leave behind a few clues that could put a particularly observant reader on the right track.

But those good feelings come from the successful conclusion to a mystery, not from the sudden understand of the answer to "What the @#$*! is going on?"

What's the difference? I think choice of point of view is critical here. Because the reader should know *everything* the point of view character knows. If we don't, we're feeling cheated. If the point of view character is trying to solve a mystery, then it's exciting! We see, through the character's eyes, that something weird is going on and we wonder, as he/she does, what it is.

If, on the other hand, the point of view character knows something and simply wais until the end to tell us, it's a horrible feeling.

A good rule of thumb is to pay attention to the point of view you are telling the story from.

If the reader were actually there, seeing and hearing and feeling, etc, the things that are going on in the story, what would the reader notice?

Even if the point of view character is ignoring the space monkey swinging along in the titanium lattice overhead, and screaming profanities in three different alien tongues, if that space monkey is likely to play a part in the story, the reader needs to know about it because the point of view character is aware of it, and knows things without, thinking about them, about that space monkey and why it would be there.

You have to ask yourself how much the reader needs to know to "get it" when you bring something into the action of the story.

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Because the reader should know *everything* the point of view character knows. If we don't, we're feeling cheated.

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I agree there. However, if the character doesn’t know, or for whatever reason doesn’t care. – in the case of this story, it is a doesn’t know… but there are times where a story takes place on some part of Mars, but the character in question doesn’t think of it as Mars, but rather that small area that they are in – of course that brings up another issue.

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I have to say that I would not see the question of setting to ever be a mystery. I would always want to know about when and where we are, and whether or not the creatures are human.

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The description of the characters would lead one to believe they are human… which they are. There is even a comment when the “aliens” arrive where she says that some of the words sound familiar, though most don’t – this of course is a “sound familiar” as there are some words in Beowulf that kinda sound familiar.

One of the reasons I enjoy reading so much is because I like to think, I like a book to inspire me to reach beyond the daily grind to something more. I have discovered in my own writings I like to keep the reader guessing somewhat. I want them to get interested and feel a need to keep reading to learn the answer. I'll admit I'm still learning how to do this right, but its the way I want to write it. Its also the way I like to read it.

Forgive me if you are not a harry potter fan, but the 5th book was doing quite a bit of carrot dangling. The first several chapters the main character was in the dark. The answers were eventually given, but it kept up a mystery of what was really going on. Suspense works, and me and obviously others enjoy that greatly in a book.

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I think that part of my confusion stems from so many fantasy stories which could literally be set anywhere, and often don’t have set places where they exist – of course the label that a publisher puts on it or the magazine that it is printed in would help the reader with the idea of where a story could be taking place… in some made up world, in the known past, in the unknown future, etc.

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If it doesn't matter where the story takes place, then it doesn't matter whether the reader knows that this little bit of sword-and-sorcery takes place an a backwater village in medieval France from a parallel universe or on an Earth-like planet in the Andromeda galaxy. But the reader has to know the important details of the setting: people ride horses instead of driving cars or using personal wormholes, people kill others with swords or arrows or spells rather than with Uzis or matter disintigration rays.

Those details are enough for the reader to place the story within a context he understands. The farther your story's setting is from anything the reader would easily understand, the more details you must include for the reader to make sense of the story.

And those details need to be given as early in the story as possible, if they are details with which the POV character is familiar.

Yes, mystery and suspense are good things in a book. But the reader should feel a sense of mystery and suspense along with the POV character, rather than having a POV character who knows perfectly well what is going on while the reader is totally confused.

The examples you cite in Harry Potter work because Harry doesn't understand what is going on. In fact, Harry is very upset precisely because the people who know what's going on are deliberately hiding information from him.

If Harry knew what was going on, but you as the reader didn't, you would have been very annoyed with J.K. Rowling. Instead, you share Harry's annoyance at the people who are concealing information. Note that either way, the author is hiding information from the reader, but one way feels legitimate and one way feels like cheating.

Using a POV character who does not know the information that must remain hidden is good. Having a POV character know something important that is not shared with the reader breaks the trust between author and reader.

P.S. I am guilty of this in my own writing. It's a habit i'm trying to break.

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited July 23, 2003).]