One of the challenges here is that not everything we know shows in what we write unless we're doing deliberate work on that. The things that resonate in our own heads may do that not because they are in the writing, but because we know about them before we come to the writing. It's therefore really important to engage outside readers.
An outside reader is someone who doesn't know your world, but will be willing to read what you've written and tell you about their experience of the place. They will be able to see only the things that are actually shown in the words on the page, and hopefully, to tell you about it.
How do we manage to put so much on the page when we have so little space? Carefully chosen small details are vital tools. These can include objects or interactions.
A couple examples from my Varin world. Varin has a time system that is not entirely like our time system. I want people to know it's there, but I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining it. So I pick an interaction people might find familiar, like time estimation, and I change it. In our world, we'd say, "Five more minutes," and it would be a time estimate, not a precise number. "Four more minutes" would be a measured quantity of time. In Varin, "Four more minutes" is a time estimate, and "five more minutes" is measured time. I use the social context to help a reader interpret the tiny piece of information correctly. Another example is when one of my teen characters says "Can I borrow your Aloran?" He's asking to borrow the services of a bodyguard so he can go out, but the social context is set up to have it be as familiar as a teen asking to borrow the car so he can go out. It implies caste information in a comprehensible way.
We talked about syntax. Specifically, I mentioned that I like to use subordinate clauses to hide world information. Readers will often expect main clause material to be immediately relevant to the main conflict, and can sometimes resent being taken off into an explanatory aside. Putting this material in a clause subordinate to a main one, where the main one is relevant to the main conflict, can help you get the necessary information in under the radar. I'm not suggesting you jam your work with subordinate clauses, but they're there for you if you need them.
Idioms can also convey a lot of information. One Varin idiom is "When the sun rises in Pelismara," meaning NEVER.
Conflict is another great way to create context for informing the reader of things that people wouldn't ordinarily notice.
If you look at your writing, can you estimate the information density? Is it too dense already, or too thin? What kind of thing could enhance it or clarify it?
Creating context for your concepts is very important. You can do this on multiple levels. A surprise might be good or bad depending on the context. You can create context to introduce readers to invented words, or to redefine existing words. What you put in the story at one point will create context to strengthen other aspects of the story later down the line.
As the author, you have ideas of what the characters are like, and about what you mean. Outside readers don't have that. You might get a critique that totally lambastes you, but that doesn't necessarily mean your ideas are bad; it could be that your critiquer got lost, or didn't care. A lot of things can become tedious if you don't care!
Sometimes you might imagine a pice of information is on the page, but it's not.
OR
Sometimes you might imagine a piece of information is NOT on the page, when it is. (Racism and sexism and other biases unfortunately often fall into this category)
We spoke about how readers come to a story with different backgrounds, which means they bring different forms of social and cultural context that will give different meanings to what they read.
It's easy to think that when we write, we are transmitting ideas to another person, but we're not. The words on the page EVOKE a context of usage in the reader's mind, and they may have heard the same word in dramatically different circumstances from you. With conlang words (ones you make up), there is almost no context of meaning beyond the phonological. You are the one who has to do the job of creating the context in which those words become meaningful. Even words like replicators and skimmers require some work. Replicators in Star Trek produce food. Replicators in Stargate are scary.
The question of context also applies to second books in a series. How much can you count on readers to have experienced before? Do they have context to understand?
Good writing will provide contextual support in a seamless web so that readers almost don't notice how much they are learning.
Some series have carefully engineered entry points for unfamiliar readers/watchers. Stories with long continuing arcs are harder to come into in the middle.
Kate notes that it's very important to provide readers with information on whom they should be caring about and why. What is important? What is not?
How much do you explain? How much do you allow people to infer?
It's important to acknowledge that different people will have different visions of what is going on.
Writers typically put words on the page for a reason. The more words there are, the more time it takes to read them. This increases the sensation of time passing within the story. It also means that we consider things that are given lots of words to be more important, because we are taking more time, and they have to be worth our time.
In McCaffrey's Pern books, there was a creature called a watch-wher, and it had a very basic early introduction. Twenty years of writing and books later, you learn that's what dragons were bred from.
Kate says it's important to say yes to things you didn't necessarily plan to say yes to, as when her co-author added five characters. Give the story the space it needs.
Remember that each word you see => other words you see => words and ideas you can't see.
It can be frustrating, or it can be super cool! You have to know lots of things in order to make what's on the page come out well.
It's a good idea to set up environments, people, etc. before the climax so you don't have to distract from quick pacing by stopping to introduce new things. Put it on the page in one place so you don't have to put it in another place.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this interesting discussion!
#SFWApro
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