posted
I'v read over Alan Moore's Watchmen, and i'v noticed something about his style . Backround information that nobody needed to know, was placed seperate from the main story, at the back , completely optional to read. Basically : Info is dumped before and/or after the main story, the characters themselves are allowed to stay in character and not monalogue . But i'm not sure the best way to use this , I'm thinking relatively unimportant or boring pieces like News to illustrate the state of affairs in the world could be put at the beginning of the chapters or after them , easy to gloss over. If for example its science fiction , complicated bits on the actual technology could be placed at the back of the book for readers interested in it... Any help?
Posts: 51 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
A writer should not count on an appendix or any form of "infodump" that isn't part of the story. I mean, you can write it, but whether an editor oks it for publication might be another matter.
Make sure your writing is strong enough, and clear enough that it stands on its own. Auxillary info should be an add-on that is purely optional.
posted
My take: if anything can be glossed over without detracting from the story, leave it out of the story. I suppose there's no harm in an appendix for the morbidly curious. In general, I think the author needs a lot more information to write the story than the reader does to read it. Mostly, we readers want to see the characters thrown into the forge, and what they become as a result.
Posts: 612 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Tolkien would come up with a bunch of interesting stuff, then wind up rewriting and removing it to the front or back. I found most of it interesting, but (once I was more aware of how writing worked) definitely a correct decision.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I was thinking the same thing as Robert. Only after I really cared about the characters did I go back and read the backstory (and future story) of, say, Aragorn and Arwen. If Tolkien had included it up front, it would have been too much stuff to get through. It didn't move the plot of LotR forward.
Posts: 671 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
IMO, if it's unimportant enough that it can be skipped, then it has no place in the story. If it's important, then it needs to be put in the story in a way that readers will notice and not just gloss over. Depending upon the story, politics, technology, religion, culture, etc. can all be important.
A couple of truths: First, just because it's in your notes does not mean it needs to be in the novel. If you get a cult following, you can publish books of background (like Tokien).
Second, background information is hard in any genre, but especially in speculative fiction. I am currently rewriting a novel that I wrote some three years ago. With three years of practice, reading, practice, and reading I have learned a few tricks since then and now the things that I thought had to be dumped (because where else would I put them?) are either leaving the story entirely or getting woven into the action. Sometimes you just have to say something and so you do, but it should be short.
posted
I was thinking of the occasion in the now-published rough drafts, where Aragorn & Co. plus the rulers of Rohan caught up with Merry and Pippin at the ruins of Isengard...and there springs up a lengthy discussion of the origins of pipeweed. Interesting, but appropriate to move somewhere else.
Of course Tolkien did dump stuff straight into the narrative, too. Remember Aragorn chanting a poem and then laying out the story of Beren and Luthien? I don't know how others found it, but it was just as interesting to me where it lay...
posted
But it gives a profound insight into Aragorn's character that is otherwise completely missing from the narrative. It develops our understanding of him and what's at stake for him on this quest, the kind of information we get about Frodo from having started out in the Shire. The discussion of pipeweed...pretty minor in comparison. It works well as a bit of a running gag about the hobbits' fondness (and talent) for getting such little creature comforts. But, in and of itself, it doesn't tell us anything of profound importance. The hobbits would still be hobbits without pipeweed, but Aragorn wouldn't be himself without the legend of Beren and Luthian (not least because he wouldn't exist at all).
All of your information should be placed where it will be most interesting and accessible to the reader. If you have items that will be of interest only to the reader who has already read (and loved) your story, then by all means put it in an appendix and leave it there. Don't force the reader to keep flipping to the appendix in order to follow your story. Ask yourself this...am I saving the readers money by giving them something they'd be willing to buy in a separate volume?
quote:Note: A double-blind study performed between 2462 and 2471 purported that males of several sophont terran species are over 73% less likely to consult instruction manuals than were females of the same species. The impact on public education was immediate, and the "why don't you ask for directions" jokes did not let up for almost thirty years. The study was discredited in 2508 when artifacts in the raw data indicated that someone had mis-processed the genetic material analyzed. Ironically, this was due to a male researcher failing to consult the Gene-EE 3000's online help.
Of course, I mention this as someone who finds this genuinely puzzling. Whenever there are instructions to be decoded, my female relatives always turn to me for help. I always read the provided documentation before trying to use anything designed by a human. I occasionally decide, after reading that documentation, not to use something at all. This is particularly true of books that come with instructions (i.e. an introduction or prologue or glossary or what-have-you).
posted
Also thanks to Aragorn, we know who Beren and Luthien are when they come up later in the story---say, when Sam talks of them and their adventure while on the stairs of Cirith Ungol trying to sneak into Mordor. It's all part of the depth Tolkien gives his work, one of the things that makes "The Lord of the Rings" so interesting...
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posted
I really enjoyed the use of footnotes to give little side stories and other infodumps in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Posts: 1517 | Registered: Jul 2003
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