The more sophisticated the writing and plotting, the less obvious the exposition. But that doesn't mean there's no exposition, only that it's done subtly and carefully through the characters in a way that is consistent with the way they think, speak, and interact.
An example of subtle exposition is in the movie Lincoln, which by narrowing the focus to a couple weeks before Lincoln's second inauguration, presents an unfamiliar take on a very familiar subject. That means that there has to be exposition (there's a lot we don't know), but it has to be rendered carefully (we think we know a lot, and we'll notice any "lecturing" or "As you know, Alphonse" explanations). So what the writer and director did was to portray Lincoln as someone who likes to hear and tell stories. (This happened to be true to the historical character, but is universal enough a trait that it could have been invented without penalty.) From the start, Lincoln is shown telling stories about people he knew, people he represented in court cases. So when in the middle of a folksy story, there's a nugget of actual information, it goes down easy. It "sounds" in character.
Oppositional characters-- the opposite of attentive listeners-- are used to evoke-- paradoxically, through their opposition to the telling-- more information. At one point, a fellow Republican exclaims, "Not another story! I can't stand to hear another of your stories!" which just provokes Lincoln to grin and tell another.
At one point, Lincoln provides his own opposition. There's a particularly knotty bit of explanation needed, because we all know about the Emancipation Proclamation, and I'm sure I'm not the only viewer who was thinking, "Why wasn't that enough?" Whenever readers are going to have questions, then it's a good idea to consider giving them an answer-- but subtly. So Lincoln asks this himself, and plays devil's advocate-- it might have been unconstitutional. Or maybe it was all right during the war, but the war is ending. Maybe he did the wrong thing. He argues with himself (to an audience of younger aides), and through this conflict, we get all the information we need to answer our question, why do we need an amendment?
So: Subtle.In character. In conflict. Use opposition. Use interaction.
But there's subtle exposition, and then there's obscure. I'm reading a book now which has a fairly complex set of events leading to the characters' having to make big serious decisions. I'm at the point where one major character is going to take some major action. So two of his aides are talking. A says to B, "I hope that C will do the right thing." B gets angry, and replies, "C always does the right thing." A comes back, "Well, just tell him, we're counting on him to do the right thing."
So I read that scene, and I went back and skimmed the previous chapter, and I still had no idea what "the right thing" is. I mean, it's not just that I don't know precisely what they meant. I don't even know the basic area of what they meant. Did they mean morally? Did they mean about the staff? Did they mean legally? Did they mean about themselves?
That's too subtle. I'm a good reader, and I was paying attention. And while I'm okay with not knowing everything, I'd like to know a little. (There are about 12 major characters in this book, so, alas, I don't know enough about C even to know what -he'd- think this was.) But really, this is just a dialogue problem. A few more words here and there, and there would be enough to satisfy-- maybe not enough to make it all clear, but enough to keep me aware so that when (I hope) there's a resolution I'll know it's happening.
For example:
A says to B, "I hope that C will do the right thing about (one word, maybe? us? about the evaluation? about the account?)."
B gets angry, and
replies, "C always does the right thing. He's no (deadbeat? traitor? idiot?)."
A comes back, "Well, just
tell him, we're counting on him to (what? keep us safe? tell the truth? solve the problem?)."
That is, with just a few words-- completely in character, because we don't actually speak that cryptically unless we're being overheard, and that wasn't happening here-- we could get a sense of whether this is the staffer scared they're going to be used as a scapegoat, or if this is about some payment, or if it's a problem only he can solve. We don't need to know everything-- but we do need to know a little.
And it only takes a little. How would these two converse if they weren't being forced by their author to be obscure? They'd still be subtle. But they wouldn't be cryptic.
The reader has only what we put in there. Now exposition can be handled many ways. But if there's exposition needed, decide how much the reader needs to know, and find a way to tell it.
Alicia
Showing posts with label exposition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exposition. Show all posts
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Saturday, July 7, 2012
POV Choices
I've been trying to figure out for some time now how to blog about a book I'm reading without actually identifying the book. I don't want to hurt the author's feelings because I'm convinced the problems in the book are not her fault. I know her editor. I know the kinds of errors her editor routinely fumbles, and I keep thinking that experience will cure these problems -- she's still a new editor, in her defense, and she's still learning her job. Maybe once or twice a year, I will pick up a book this editor worked on just to see if she has figured out how to repair these things I keep spotting. The books are always brimming with unreached potential, and every time I finish one, I swear that the next time I see this editor, I'm going to take her aside and give her a few tips. Not that I'll ever actually do that -- but that is my standard response to one of her projects.
Without getting into too much detail, this is an historical novel with an actual historical event forming the spine of the plot. There have been other historical novels written about these events and people, both from the points of view of the central figures and from a meta-pov of a non-central actor who was impacted by these events. We probably have passed the tipping point of reader interest about this time and these people, and it would be hard to come up with a fresh angle.
But they tried. They chose as the pov character someone who witnessed the key events without actually being involved in them. With this choice, they were stuck with one inescapable fact. The pov character was a very young person when events began to unfold. We'll call the pov character VYP for Very Young Person. How young? Young enough to lack manual dexterity. Young enough to be incapable of basic daily tasks for the time period, such as riding a horse. So young that the meaning of the witnessed events would escape our pov character.
By the way, they chose first person pov, too. This created some difficulties with the plot because, in first person, it's very difficult to insert information not available to the pov character -- and the pov character in this case would have little ability to provide analysis or commentary. Imagine, for example, VYP at a big family party. Where would VYP naturally spend the party? In the company of other children, not at the grown-up's table, right? VYP might notice that certain adults spoke to other adults without being able to supply insight about the implications of those moments. VYP would be naturally more interested that cousin Johnny found a bug than that rich Uncle Frankie gave the family wastrel a loan. This leads to a problem in the text: how to provide the reader with information that would not be available to VYP.
As I see it, they had two workable options.
1 - Hack off the first third of the plot, which occurs when VYP was too young to grasp the events.
2 - Choose a different pov character.
Instead, they made a mistake I've seen over and over in works handled by this editor. They used narrative compression to try to patch the damage. Long passages -- pages and pages, even entire chapters -- summarize years of events in a sort of viewpointless exposition, with occasional dips into actual scene material from VYP's pov. It's like reading a long essay about the political situation interspersed with short bits where a tall person helps VYP get something down from a shelf. Six pages of family interrelations explained, then a half-page about what VYP ate for dinner.Nine pages about a war happening elsewhere, then a page about someone giving VYP a present.
It doesn't work.
The real-time scene material is too trivial, and the exposition is too compressed, too dense with facts, and too dull. And it went on this way for well over 100 pages. Out of curiosity, I checked the book's reviews to see if ordinary readers reacted the same way I did. Sure enough, in many reviews, people complained that they couldn't get into the story and that they were bored. I saw a few that said they did not finish the book.
We talk a lot about using a pov character who has something at stake in the events. In this case, the character did have something at stake (not much, but something), but lacked the maturity to understand that and the ability to convey it to the reader. So it has to be about more than the stakes. You have to choose a character who will serve as a good medium for the story. The reader will experience the events through the prism of this character's pov, and choosing a cracked prism will only distort the experience.
Theresa
Without getting into too much detail, this is an historical novel with an actual historical event forming the spine of the plot. There have been other historical novels written about these events and people, both from the points of view of the central figures and from a meta-pov of a non-central actor who was impacted by these events. We probably have passed the tipping point of reader interest about this time and these people, and it would be hard to come up with a fresh angle.
But they tried. They chose as the pov character someone who witnessed the key events without actually being involved in them. With this choice, they were stuck with one inescapable fact. The pov character was a very young person when events began to unfold. We'll call the pov character VYP for Very Young Person. How young? Young enough to lack manual dexterity. Young enough to be incapable of basic daily tasks for the time period, such as riding a horse. So young that the meaning of the witnessed events would escape our pov character.
By the way, they chose first person pov, too. This created some difficulties with the plot because, in first person, it's very difficult to insert information not available to the pov character -- and the pov character in this case would have little ability to provide analysis or commentary. Imagine, for example, VYP at a big family party. Where would VYP naturally spend the party? In the company of other children, not at the grown-up's table, right? VYP might notice that certain adults spoke to other adults without being able to supply insight about the implications of those moments. VYP would be naturally more interested that cousin Johnny found a bug than that rich Uncle Frankie gave the family wastrel a loan. This leads to a problem in the text: how to provide the reader with information that would not be available to VYP.
As I see it, they had two workable options.
1 - Hack off the first third of the plot, which occurs when VYP was too young to grasp the events.
2 - Choose a different pov character.
Instead, they made a mistake I've seen over and over in works handled by this editor. They used narrative compression to try to patch the damage. Long passages -- pages and pages, even entire chapters -- summarize years of events in a sort of viewpointless exposition, with occasional dips into actual scene material from VYP's pov. It's like reading a long essay about the political situation interspersed with short bits where a tall person helps VYP get something down from a shelf. Six pages of family interrelations explained, then a half-page about what VYP ate for dinner.Nine pages about a war happening elsewhere, then a page about someone giving VYP a present.
It doesn't work.
The real-time scene material is too trivial, and the exposition is too compressed, too dense with facts, and too dull. And it went on this way for well over 100 pages. Out of curiosity, I checked the book's reviews to see if ordinary readers reacted the same way I did. Sure enough, in many reviews, people complained that they couldn't get into the story and that they were bored. I saw a few that said they did not finish the book.
We talk a lot about using a pov character who has something at stake in the events. In this case, the character did have something at stake (not much, but something), but lacked the maturity to understand that and the ability to convey it to the reader. So it has to be about more than the stakes. You have to choose a character who will serve as a good medium for the story. The reader will experience the events through the prism of this character's pov, and choosing a cracked prism will only distort the experience.
Theresa
Thursday, January 26, 2012
As You Know, Alphonse...
Theresa's post about exposition reminds me of something our friend Lynn Kerstan used to laugh about, the "As You Know, Alphonse" dialogue, where one character tells another something they both know, just to get the information (exposition) out. Like:
What's the problem? Well, of course Alphonse already knows his father's name and that Paula is his sister, and surely knows he himself is afraid of windmills. It sounds artificial, and it is, because of course Paula would never really say it that way. She'd never recite a bunch of info that her conversation partner already knows. It's a clumsy way to avoid putting exposition in the narrative (where it belongs-- that's one of the purposes of the non-dialogue parts).
Of course, we can do exposition (information conveyance) clumsily in narrative too. But while it might be clumsy, it won't be too inauthentic if it's not in the mouth of someone who would never say it.
How then can we convey to the reader the reason for Alphonse's terror of windmills? Or whatever the important info is there? The ticket to Holland? The name of their father? One question is, of course, what does the reader NEED to know to understand this scene and to build suspense or interest for what's to come? One problem I see a lot in exposition passages (in or out of dialogue) is that the information is thrust out indiscriminately, without consideration for what is the important piece of information, and without consideration of if this is the best time to tell it, or if maybe it should be presented only partially (to build suspense). Another aspect which is important especially in dialogue but also for character point of view is the character's motivation for telling/thinking this bit of info.
Let's start at the top. What's the important info here we want the reader to know? Maybe it's that ticket to Holland. (Don't ask me what the plot is where that's most important. This is just an example!) In that case, maybe all that other stuff isn't necessary right here. Maybe it is, but notice-- all that is ALPHONSE'S motivation, not Paula's. Paula didn't see the windmill accident and suffer lifelong trauma. What's Paula's motivation here? What does she want? Why is she bringing up this no-doubt painful subject? Once we know that, we can decide what about that paragraph of info is really necessary, and we can decide how best to convey it.
I generally use a mix of dialogue and narrative, in the point of view of one character. That is, the speaker says something, and the POV character (the speaker or listener) reacts mentally, maybe filling in some important bit of information, maybe translating the information (rightly or wrongly). And the dialogue doesn't have to say much-- just enough that the listener and speaker both have enough to know what this is about, and the reader gets some idea too. (It's important to cut the speech off -after- the speaker has said enough that the reader has at least some notion of what this is about.)
For example, let's say the whole point of this, Paula's motivation, is that she wants Alphonse to accept a gift of money that he needs but is too proud to accept. So she wants to remind him that she owes him because he gave her that trip to Holland. See how immediately this will transform that exposition? Now there's a reason for it to be there-- her desire to give back. Let's see:
Let's say you want to convey a bit more, maybe that Alphonse is her brother, which isn't apparent there (and presumably wasn't established before-- if it was, don't worry about it now). Well, in narrative, a bit of explication isn't all that noticeable, so you could amend a bit:
It's one of those narrative conventions that a name can be replaced in dialogue with either the pronoun (he) or a simple descriptor that the character might actually use. We do think of our siblings as "my brother" or "my sister," so that wouldn't strike the reader as odd.
Notice that the exposition there is confined to just his fear, but notice that the addition of "secret" helps make this seem more important. No, I didn't talk about the tragic windmill accident... but now the reader is alerted to something about windmills. Suspense is all about making the reader anticipate something bad-- in this case, some secret event involving windmills that terrified Alphonse. Later maybe one or the other could mention or think about dear old Dad's tragic end.
Now what if I want to be in her POV, but convey that Alphonse is still reactive to this subject? Add her perception of his body language, like:
One thing to keep in mind is that the POV character is the one that tells us what's going on (for example, she sees the body language of her brother). The POV character doesn't have to interpret this correctly (Alphonse could be tensing up because he heard a car door slam outside and thinks it's the police), but how she interprets it can be a way to slide in more information gracefully (that he'd confessed a fear of windmills).
Now watch how different it can be in Alphonse's POV. Why? Because then we know his motivation at this moment, and also we can see him interpret (or misinterpret) Paula's purpose here. (You know siblings. Always assuming the worst.)
Little edits after the first draft can help a lot in subtly pointing things out to the reader. For example, I first had "his father" then changed it to "their father" so that the reader wouldn't wonder, if only for a moment, if they had different fathers.
There are no rules here, but good writers can adroitly manipulate narrative and dialogue to convey what they want to convey. But the speaker and POV character's motivations in imparting this info are key to doing this effectively. The reader doesn't have to know every bit of backstory, but she needs to know what information is important right now to the story and characters. However, in the deeper forms of narrative POV, it's essential to impart info subtly enough that it seems to be coming out authentically from the characters' speech, thought, action, and reaction, rather than from an imposing author.
It helps me to read the scenes of authors who do this well and see how they do it. Any suggestions for subtle authors and scenes?
Alicia
Paula said, "As you know, Alphonse, Murray is our own sainted father, and you and I lost him twenty years ago in a tragic windmill accident, right in front of your very eyes. And ever since, you have been deathly afraid of windmills, so much so that when you won a trip to Holland, you gave the ticket to me, your sister."
What's the problem? Well, of course Alphonse already knows his father's name and that Paula is his sister, and surely knows he himself is afraid of windmills. It sounds artificial, and it is, because of course Paula would never really say it that way. She'd never recite a bunch of info that her conversation partner already knows. It's a clumsy way to avoid putting exposition in the narrative (where it belongs-- that's one of the purposes of the non-dialogue parts).
Of course, we can do exposition (information conveyance) clumsily in narrative too. But while it might be clumsy, it won't be too inauthentic if it's not in the mouth of someone who would never say it.
How then can we convey to the reader the reason for Alphonse's terror of windmills? Or whatever the important info is there? The ticket to Holland? The name of their father? One question is, of course, what does the reader NEED to know to understand this scene and to build suspense or interest for what's to come? One problem I see a lot in exposition passages (in or out of dialogue) is that the information is thrust out indiscriminately, without consideration for what is the important piece of information, and without consideration of if this is the best time to tell it, or if maybe it should be presented only partially (to build suspense). Another aspect which is important especially in dialogue but also for character point of view is the character's motivation for telling/thinking this bit of info.
Let's start at the top. What's the important info here we want the reader to know? Maybe it's that ticket to Holland. (Don't ask me what the plot is where that's most important. This is just an example!) In that case, maybe all that other stuff isn't necessary right here. Maybe it is, but notice-- all that is ALPHONSE'S motivation, not Paula's. Paula didn't see the windmill accident and suffer lifelong trauma. What's Paula's motivation here? What does she want? Why is she bringing up this no-doubt painful subject? Once we know that, we can decide what about that paragraph of info is really necessary, and we can decide how best to convey it.
I generally use a mix of dialogue and narrative, in the point of view of one character. That is, the speaker says something, and the POV character (the speaker or listener) reacts mentally, maybe filling in some important bit of information, maybe translating the information (rightly or wrongly). And the dialogue doesn't have to say much-- just enough that the listener and speaker both have enough to know what this is about, and the reader gets some idea too. (It's important to cut the speech off -after- the speaker has said enough that the reader has at least some notion of what this is about.)
For example, let's say the whole point of this, Paula's motivation, is that she wants Alphonse to accept a gift of money that he needs but is too proud to accept. So she wants to remind him that she owes him because he gave her that trip to Holland. See how immediately this will transform that exposition? Now there's a reason for it to be there-- her desire to give back. Let's see:
Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't--" Too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed Alphonse had been last year, confessing to his secret fear of windmills. She tried to cover up her lapse. "I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."
Let's say you want to convey a bit more, maybe that Alphonse is her brother, which isn't apparent there (and presumably wasn't established before-- if it was, don't worry about it now). Well, in narrative, a bit of explication isn't all that noticeable, so you could amend a bit:
Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't--" Too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed her brother had been last year, confessing to his secret fear of windmills. She tried to cover up her lapse. "I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."
It's one of those narrative conventions that a name can be replaced in dialogue with either the pronoun (he) or a simple descriptor that the character might actually use. We do think of our siblings as "my brother" or "my sister," so that wouldn't strike the reader as odd.
Notice that the exposition there is confined to just his fear, but notice that the addition of "secret" helps make this seem more important. No, I didn't talk about the tragic windmill accident... but now the reader is alerted to something about windmills. Suspense is all about making the reader anticipate something bad-- in this case, some secret event involving windmills that terrified Alphonse. Later maybe one or the other could mention or think about dear old Dad's tragic end.
Now what if I want to be in her POV, but convey that Alphonse is still reactive to this subject? Add her perception of his body language, like:
Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't--" She saw her brother tense up, and too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed he had been last year, confessing to his secret fear of windmills. She tried to cover up her lapse. "I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."
One thing to keep in mind is that the POV character is the one that tells us what's going on (for example, she sees the body language of her brother). The POV character doesn't have to interpret this correctly (Alphonse could be tensing up because he heard a car door slam outside and thinks it's the police), but how she interprets it can be a way to slide in more information gracefully (that he'd confessed a fear of windmills).
Now watch how different it can be in Alphonse's POV. Why? Because then we know his motivation at this moment, and also we can see him interpret (or misinterpret) Paula's purpose here. (You know siblings. Always assuming the worst.)
Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't-- I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."
Alphonse studied his sister coldly. Of course she'd take advantage of his financial problems to remind him of his humiliating fear of windmills. Hell, maybe she was even trying to tell him how much she blamed him because, long ago, as a child, he wasn't able to keep their father from climbing that windmill. It would be just like her, pretending to be all generous and giving, then sticking in the icepick of memory and twisting it in his guts.
Little edits after the first draft can help a lot in subtly pointing things out to the reader. For example, I first had "his father" then changed it to "their father" so that the reader wouldn't wonder, if only for a moment, if they had different fathers.
There are no rules here, but good writers can adroitly manipulate narrative and dialogue to convey what they want to convey. But the speaker and POV character's motivations in imparting this info are key to doing this effectively. The reader doesn't have to know every bit of backstory, but she needs to know what information is important right now to the story and characters. However, in the deeper forms of narrative POV, it's essential to impart info subtly enough that it seems to be coming out authentically from the characters' speech, thought, action, and reaction, rather than from an imposing author.
It helps me to read the scenes of authors who do this well and see how they do it. Any suggestions for subtle authors and scenes?
Alicia
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Question About New Scene Transitions
In the comments, Michelle asks,
Great post! I have a question, though. It doesn't really relate to your topic, but the topic reminded me of this.
What do you do when you have long passages of time you're skipping over? Do you summarize it? Make a note that so much time has passed? Or do you just jump right into the action and slip clues into the text that tell the reader time has passed?
Actually, Michelle, this is on topic if we define our current topic as, "Theresa rambles about exposition, etc." The start of scenes is a common place to rely on exposition to transition a reader to a new time and space. This can be done with a subheader at the top of the scene, such as--
January, Okanagan Lake
This tends to work best when it's already been established that the protagonist will be located at this spot for some reason. Maybe he's searching for Ogopogo, the famous sea monster of Okanagan Lake, so the reader has been prepared for him to reach the shores. This kind of quick, non-narrative transition allows the text to zoom forward without a lot of set-up at the start of the scene.
There are other times this type of transition will work. Maybe you have a multi-thread plot and keep shifting the reader between the pieces. Then the subheaders can help the reader track which plot thread is which. The current scene is Larry searching for Ogopogo on Okanagan Lake, and the next scene is Jessica searching for Nessie at Loch Ness, and the next scene is Bonita in a secret science lab trying to hatch a lake monster egg. The three of them are racing to produce a live lake monster, and the plot shifts freely between the three threads, and the subheaders help the reader track it all.
In any case, some authors avoid these kinds of headings because they don't want to clutter the page, and there might be some good arguments against using these kinds of subheaders. Much like chapter headings and title/author headings, these pieces contain words that help identify something in the story but are not really part of the story. So they might serve as a distraction to the reader. If you think this isn't an issue, consider the reason we put last name/page number headings on the upper RIGHT corner of a manuscript. This keeps us from turning the sheet and processing the heading as the first line of text on a new page, which can break the flow of the narrative. Scene headers are not quite as disruptive, given that they're inserted in breaks in the story action, but they are still external intrusions of a sort.
So that takes us to narrative transitions at the start of new scenes. How much is too much? Can you ever skip it all together? I have a rule of thumb for this, but it's one of those things that can be hard to apply. But here's the basic idea. At several points over the course of most manuscripts, we will have to effectively press a reset button for the reader. The protagonist or another character will have changed enough, or the plot or setting will have changed enough, that we will need to create something like a touchstone for the arc within the text. Those touchstones can serve like transitions in to the next big piece of the plot. The bigger the changes, the greater the need to press the reset button. The greater the need, the more text you might need to re-orient the reader. But that's by no means hard and fast. Sometimes it's possible to re-orient the reader with a very quick transition. That's why I say this general rule of thumb is hard to apply. It can be difficult to gauge just how large a touchstone you need to create.
But as with all exposition, you will usually be better off minimizing the length as much as possible. Let's say, for example, that our monster-hunting friend Larry has been searching for Nessie for years and only just learned about the existence of Ogopogo. His goal has always been to find Nessie, so traveling to Canada would be a big change that might not support his original goal. Why would he do it, then?
Maybe there are scenes in Scotland with his band of Nessie hunters in which they debate the matter. Maybe Larry is opposed to going, but the group votes that one of them must go. Maybe he wants to go, but the group scorns him and tries to prevent his departure. In any case, the moment when Larry arrives on the shores of Okanagan Lake will be the moment when his quest has changed. Depending on what came before and what follows, you might need a small touchstone or a large touchstone. But, unless the change has been adequately prepped in preceding scenes, you will probably need a touchstone. (This is also partly dependent on how much has happened since the last touchstone. As I said, this analysis is very book-specific.)
But let's say you're not worried about pressing the reset button and reorienting the reader. Let's say everybody already knows why Larry abandoned Nessie for Ogopogo. In that case, a simple clause indicating time and space might be all you need.
Larry shielded his eyes against the bright spring sunshine glinting off the surface of Okanagan Lake.
Boom. One sentence, all action, no exposition, and yet we know the time and place after reading it. Or maybe you're a traditionalist and prefer an adverb clause.
When Larry reached the daffodil-covered shores of Okanagan Lake, ...
This is an expositional transition, and it's brief enough that it won't drag on the pacing. In ten words, we get the new time and space. It might be enough information.
What you probably want to avoid, unless it's strictly necessary for reader comprehension, is a long run of exposition like this.
Okanagan Lake was a deep lake with two islands. Because of the temperate but rainy climate, Larry knew he would need a different equipment and clothing. He shopped for two days to gather waterproof fleece pullovers and windbreakers, new rubber boots, waterproof matches, and a supply of his favorite Scottish tea, which he was pretty sure would be rare in rural British Columbia. The hardest part was deciding which camera equipment to pack. He only wanted to have one suitcase and one carry-on, but the equipment took a lot of space. But he would only be there a few days. He did pack some extra socks in case it rained on the boat and tossed in his favorite copy of a Douglas Adams book to read on the plane. Maybe this trip would be a complete waste of time, but at least he arrived in Vernon with everything he needed.
These kinds of blocks at the beginnings of scenes are almost always worth cutting or trimming. Notice how much of the text summarizes things that happen in the moments between the last scene's ending and this scene's beginning. Shopping and packing are usually dull events, so we wouldn't want to convert this passage into actual scenes if nothing dramatic happens. But if they're dull, guess what's also going to be dull? This info dump of a transition. If for some reason we need to plant the notion that Larry packed specially for this trip and bought new gear, we can reference it in an adverb clause transition.
After two days of shopping and packing, Larry arrived at Okanagan Lake with more than he probably needed.
And then, if the extra pair of socks is necessary to the action of a future scene, you can probably just have him change his socks then and there without a lot of explanation. If it's relevant to character or theme, maybe you would have Larry think about the cautious packing when he changes his socks.
He stripped off his sodden footwear with silent gratitude that he had remembered to pack extra socks.
But this depends on whether the detail is the kind of detail that needs to be set up in advance. Packing extra socks for outdoor adventures in a wet climate is probably not remarkable enough to require set-up. But again, this is one of those things that is highly book-specific.
So, to answer your question: Depends on the book, depends on the scene, and depends on the author's goals. But it's usually best to keep start-of-scene transitions brief.
Theresa
Great post! I have a question, though. It doesn't really relate to your topic, but the topic reminded me of this.
What do you do when you have long passages of time you're skipping over? Do you summarize it? Make a note that so much time has passed? Or do you just jump right into the action and slip clues into the text that tell the reader time has passed?
Actually, Michelle, this is on topic if we define our current topic as, "Theresa rambles about exposition, etc." The start of scenes is a common place to rely on exposition to transition a reader to a new time and space. This can be done with a subheader at the top of the scene, such as--
January, Okanagan Lake
This tends to work best when it's already been established that the protagonist will be located at this spot for some reason. Maybe he's searching for Ogopogo, the famous sea monster of Okanagan Lake, so the reader has been prepared for him to reach the shores. This kind of quick, non-narrative transition allows the text to zoom forward without a lot of set-up at the start of the scene.
There are other times this type of transition will work. Maybe you have a multi-thread plot and keep shifting the reader between the pieces. Then the subheaders can help the reader track which plot thread is which. The current scene is Larry searching for Ogopogo on Okanagan Lake, and the next scene is Jessica searching for Nessie at Loch Ness, and the next scene is Bonita in a secret science lab trying to hatch a lake monster egg. The three of them are racing to produce a live lake monster, and the plot shifts freely between the three threads, and the subheaders help the reader track it all.
In any case, some authors avoid these kinds of headings because they don't want to clutter the page, and there might be some good arguments against using these kinds of subheaders. Much like chapter headings and title/author headings, these pieces contain words that help identify something in the story but are not really part of the story. So they might serve as a distraction to the reader. If you think this isn't an issue, consider the reason we put last name/page number headings on the upper RIGHT corner of a manuscript. This keeps us from turning the sheet and processing the heading as the first line of text on a new page, which can break the flow of the narrative. Scene headers are not quite as disruptive, given that they're inserted in breaks in the story action, but they are still external intrusions of a sort.
So that takes us to narrative transitions at the start of new scenes. How much is too much? Can you ever skip it all together? I have a rule of thumb for this, but it's one of those things that can be hard to apply. But here's the basic idea. At several points over the course of most manuscripts, we will have to effectively press a reset button for the reader. The protagonist or another character will have changed enough, or the plot or setting will have changed enough, that we will need to create something like a touchstone for the arc within the text. Those touchstones can serve like transitions in to the next big piece of the plot. The bigger the changes, the greater the need to press the reset button. The greater the need, the more text you might need to re-orient the reader. But that's by no means hard and fast. Sometimes it's possible to re-orient the reader with a very quick transition. That's why I say this general rule of thumb is hard to apply. It can be difficult to gauge just how large a touchstone you need to create.
But as with all exposition, you will usually be better off minimizing the length as much as possible. Let's say, for example, that our monster-hunting friend Larry has been searching for Nessie for years and only just learned about the existence of Ogopogo. His goal has always been to find Nessie, so traveling to Canada would be a big change that might not support his original goal. Why would he do it, then?
Maybe there are scenes in Scotland with his band of Nessie hunters in which they debate the matter. Maybe Larry is opposed to going, but the group votes that one of them must go. Maybe he wants to go, but the group scorns him and tries to prevent his departure. In any case, the moment when Larry arrives on the shores of Okanagan Lake will be the moment when his quest has changed. Depending on what came before and what follows, you might need a small touchstone or a large touchstone. But, unless the change has been adequately prepped in preceding scenes, you will probably need a touchstone. (This is also partly dependent on how much has happened since the last touchstone. As I said, this analysis is very book-specific.)
But let's say you're not worried about pressing the reset button and reorienting the reader. Let's say everybody already knows why Larry abandoned Nessie for Ogopogo. In that case, a simple clause indicating time and space might be all you need.
Larry shielded his eyes against the bright spring sunshine glinting off the surface of Okanagan Lake.
Boom. One sentence, all action, no exposition, and yet we know the time and place after reading it. Or maybe you're a traditionalist and prefer an adverb clause.
When Larry reached the daffodil-covered shores of Okanagan Lake, ...
This is an expositional transition, and it's brief enough that it won't drag on the pacing. In ten words, we get the new time and space. It might be enough information.
What you probably want to avoid, unless it's strictly necessary for reader comprehension, is a long run of exposition like this.
Okanagan Lake was a deep lake with two islands. Because of the temperate but rainy climate, Larry knew he would need a different equipment and clothing. He shopped for two days to gather waterproof fleece pullovers and windbreakers, new rubber boots, waterproof matches, and a supply of his favorite Scottish tea, which he was pretty sure would be rare in rural British Columbia. The hardest part was deciding which camera equipment to pack. He only wanted to have one suitcase and one carry-on, but the equipment took a lot of space. But he would only be there a few days. He did pack some extra socks in case it rained on the boat and tossed in his favorite copy of a Douglas Adams book to read on the plane. Maybe this trip would be a complete waste of time, but at least he arrived in Vernon with everything he needed.
These kinds of blocks at the beginnings of scenes are almost always worth cutting or trimming. Notice how much of the text summarizes things that happen in the moments between the last scene's ending and this scene's beginning. Shopping and packing are usually dull events, so we wouldn't want to convert this passage into actual scenes if nothing dramatic happens. But if they're dull, guess what's also going to be dull? This info dump of a transition. If for some reason we need to plant the notion that Larry packed specially for this trip and bought new gear, we can reference it in an adverb clause transition.
After two days of shopping and packing, Larry arrived at Okanagan Lake with more than he probably needed.
And then, if the extra pair of socks is necessary to the action of a future scene, you can probably just have him change his socks then and there without a lot of explanation. If it's relevant to character or theme, maybe you would have Larry think about the cautious packing when he changes his socks.
He stripped off his sodden footwear with silent gratitude that he had remembered to pack extra socks.
But this depends on whether the detail is the kind of detail that needs to be set up in advance. Packing extra socks for outdoor adventures in a wet climate is probably not remarkable enough to require set-up. But again, this is one of those things that is highly book-specific.
So, to answer your question: Depends on the book, depends on the scene, and depends on the author's goals. But it's usually best to keep start-of-scene transitions brief.
Theresa
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Exposition, Not Dialogue
Yesterday, among other things, we looked at a sample passage of description and discussed why it was description and not exposition. Today, I want to show you a paragraph in which dialogue is replaced with exposition in the form of narrative summary. This is from a story called "Gryphon" by Charles Baxter that has to do in part with a substitute teacher talking to students.
She talked for forty minutes straight. There seemed to be less connection between her ideas, but the ideas themselves were, as the dictionary would say, fabulous. She said she had heard of a huge jewel, in what she called the Antipodes, that was so brilliant that when the light shone into it at a certain angle, it would blind whoever was looking at its center. She said that the biggest diamond in the world was cursed and had killed everyone who owned it, and that by a trick of fate it was called the Hope diamond. Diamonds are magic, she said, and this is why women wear them on their fingers, as a sign of the magic of womanhood. Men have strength, Miss Ferenczi said, but no true magic. That is why men fall in love with women but women do not fall in love with men: they just love being loved. George Washington had died because of a mistake he made about a diamond. Washington was not the first true President, but she did say who was. In some places in the world, she said, men and women still live in the trees and eat monkeys for breakfast. Their doctors are magicians. At the bottom of the sea are creatures thin as pancakes which have never been studied by scientists because when you take them up to the air, the fish explode.
You might think this is dialogue, but it's not. It's a condensed, representative version of a 40-minute ramble from a substitute teacher. It might or might not contain exact quotes from her speech -- we can't be sure which sentences might have fallen as-is from her lips and which are the schoolboy's representation of the teacher's words. Because really, even if some of these words are verbatim, they're all part of the schoolboy's rendering of the speech.
This works as a technique for the purposes of this story because nobody wants to read a verbatim record of the entire 40-minute speech. So instead, Baxter chose to use narrative summary, which takes events on the story's true timeline and compresses them in to a smaller space. This way, we don't have tons of page space being consumed by a rambling monologue, but we still get the full flavor in this "highlight reel" type of compressed version. This is a rather long patch of narrative summary, so Baxter leads us into it carefully with some explanatory notes at the beginning (also exposition). And he peppers the passage with "she said" and other reminders that this is not the actual speech, but the boy's recollection of it.
If it had been written as actual dialogue, not only would it be substantially longer, but it would be in quotation marks to indicate that these are the true words spoken aloud by the character. It might look, in part, like this:
"I've heard of a huge jewel in the Antipodes," the teacher said, "that is so brilliant that when the light shines into it at a certain angle, it will blind whoever is looking at its center. The biggest diamond in the world is cursed and has killed everyone who owned it. By a trick of fate it is called the Hope diamond. Diamonds are magic, and this is why women wear them on their fingers, as a sign of the magic of womanhood. Men have strength, but no true magic. That is why men fall in love with women but women do not fall in love with men: they just love being loved."
This still feels like a bit of a ramble, but we lose the sense of time unfolding slowly as these stories about diamonds are told to the children. But doing it as Baxter did serves two goals: it enhances the sense of time passing, and it avoids weighting down the pace with a long but accurate representation of the actual dialogue.
So, here's the thing. The same basic story elements are being conveyed in the original and in my partial modification. A teacher is talking about diamonds, sharing legends and fables about diamonds in either case. The difference is not in the story content but in the narrative element being used to present the story. This is the cool thing about narrative. It's very flexible in how it can convey story.
The trick is learning how to manipulate those elements in a way that has the best impact on the reader. Ordinarily, we would urge you to avoid long runs of exposition. But here, in this case, compressing the dialogue into exposition was a good choice. So I wanted to share this for two reasons, first to give you practice in seeing the difference between exposition and dialogue, and second, to show you one place where the general guideline was rightly ignored.
Theresa
She talked for forty minutes straight. There seemed to be less connection between her ideas, but the ideas themselves were, as the dictionary would say, fabulous. She said she had heard of a huge jewel, in what she called the Antipodes, that was so brilliant that when the light shone into it at a certain angle, it would blind whoever was looking at its center. She said that the biggest diamond in the world was cursed and had killed everyone who owned it, and that by a trick of fate it was called the Hope diamond. Diamonds are magic, she said, and this is why women wear them on their fingers, as a sign of the magic of womanhood. Men have strength, Miss Ferenczi said, but no true magic. That is why men fall in love with women but women do not fall in love with men: they just love being loved. George Washington had died because of a mistake he made about a diamond. Washington was not the first true President, but she did say who was. In some places in the world, she said, men and women still live in the trees and eat monkeys for breakfast. Their doctors are magicians. At the bottom of the sea are creatures thin as pancakes which have never been studied by scientists because when you take them up to the air, the fish explode.
You might think this is dialogue, but it's not. It's a condensed, representative version of a 40-minute ramble from a substitute teacher. It might or might not contain exact quotes from her speech -- we can't be sure which sentences might have fallen as-is from her lips and which are the schoolboy's representation of the teacher's words. Because really, even if some of these words are verbatim, they're all part of the schoolboy's rendering of the speech.
This works as a technique for the purposes of this story because nobody wants to read a verbatim record of the entire 40-minute speech. So instead, Baxter chose to use narrative summary, which takes events on the story's true timeline and compresses them in to a smaller space. This way, we don't have tons of page space being consumed by a rambling monologue, but we still get the full flavor in this "highlight reel" type of compressed version. This is a rather long patch of narrative summary, so Baxter leads us into it carefully with some explanatory notes at the beginning (also exposition). And he peppers the passage with "she said" and other reminders that this is not the actual speech, but the boy's recollection of it.
If it had been written as actual dialogue, not only would it be substantially longer, but it would be in quotation marks to indicate that these are the true words spoken aloud by the character. It might look, in part, like this:
"I've heard of a huge jewel in the Antipodes," the teacher said, "that is so brilliant that when the light shines into it at a certain angle, it will blind whoever is looking at its center. The biggest diamond in the world is cursed and has killed everyone who owned it. By a trick of fate it is called the Hope diamond. Diamonds are magic, and this is why women wear them on their fingers, as a sign of the magic of womanhood. Men have strength, but no true magic. That is why men fall in love with women but women do not fall in love with men: they just love being loved."
This still feels like a bit of a ramble, but we lose the sense of time unfolding slowly as these stories about diamonds are told to the children. But doing it as Baxter did serves two goals: it enhances the sense of time passing, and it avoids weighting down the pace with a long but accurate representation of the actual dialogue.
So, here's the thing. The same basic story elements are being conveyed in the original and in my partial modification. A teacher is talking about diamonds, sharing legends and fables about diamonds in either case. The difference is not in the story content but in the narrative element being used to present the story. This is the cool thing about narrative. It's very flexible in how it can convey story.
The trick is learning how to manipulate those elements in a way that has the best impact on the reader. Ordinarily, we would urge you to avoid long runs of exposition. But here, in this case, compressing the dialogue into exposition was a good choice. So I wanted to share this for two reasons, first to give you practice in seeing the difference between exposition and dialogue, and second, to show you one place where the general guideline was rightly ignored.
Theresa
Monday, January 23, 2012
Question from the Comments
This is a really good question from Chemist Ken. It was posed on one of Alicia's posts, but I'm going to take it because this is a pet topic of mine.
I have a question about the sample text you wrote:
The grotto was ancient and long-forgotten, the mossy ground soft and rotting underfoot. The tiny pond was filmed with algae, and the air stank with the smell of the stagnant water. Even the rustle of the wind over the water was hushed and abashed.
Would that sentence or series of sentences be considered telling? I'm still confused by the concept.
You're not alone in this confusion, Ken. The rule sometimes referred to as "Show, Don't Tell" is a shorthand way of advising against the use of exposition. Exposition is a narrative element, a way to categorize the words on the page, which basically refers to text that compresses, summarizes, explains, or otherwise reduces story material into condensed passages. We all learn expository writing in school, so for even the best fiction writers, we sometimes lapse into exposition almost as a default style in places.
Some exposition is necessary in every text. Micro-exposition (things like dialogue tags, thought tags, transitions, and other tiny bits of exposition) are key ingredients in good writing. The trick is not whether you have exposition, but how you use it. Here are some general rules of thumb for exposition.
But Alicia's sample is not exposition. It's description. Description is not "telling" in the same way exposition is, but description does contain its own set of pitfalls. For one, it can be static. If you look at Alicia's example, all three of her sentences contain a verb of being, "was," in some form or other. This is a static word -- not to be confused with passive voice, no matter how many times good-intentioned people insist that verbs of being are passive voice. The confusion on that point stems from this: Static verbs are the opposite of active verbs, and passive voice is the opposite of active voice. "Active" is used to name both things, so people sometimes think "passive voice" refers both to the type of verb and to the type of sentence structure. It does not.
In any case, although we generally say that active verbs are better than static verbs, this is anything but a hard and fast rule. Sometimes we want the emphasis in a sentence to be on something other than the verb, so a quiet little verb of being or appearance can help you accomplish that. Sometimes an active verb is so overused that it becomes worthless -- reach, pull, push, move, look, gaze, stare, and many more besides these, although active, have become associated with weak writing merely because they are repeated so frequently.
So, in Alicia's example, where she was trying to convey a still, dead, stagnant wilderness area, the description relied on static verbs. This makes sense. But if she'd been trying to describe a school playground at recess, more active verbs might have worked better.
I know I'm throwing a lot of concepts into a single post, and I hope it's not confusing. But I thought it would be better to do a comprehensive, if short, answer.
Theresa
I have a question about the sample text you wrote:
The grotto was ancient and long-forgotten, the mossy ground soft and rotting underfoot. The tiny pond was filmed with algae, and the air stank with the smell of the stagnant water. Even the rustle of the wind over the water was hushed and abashed.
Would that sentence or series of sentences be considered telling? I'm still confused by the concept.
You're not alone in this confusion, Ken. The rule sometimes referred to as "Show, Don't Tell" is a shorthand way of advising against the use of exposition. Exposition is a narrative element, a way to categorize the words on the page, which basically refers to text that compresses, summarizes, explains, or otherwise reduces story material into condensed passages. We all learn expository writing in school, so for even the best fiction writers, we sometimes lapse into exposition almost as a default style in places.
Some exposition is necessary in every text. Micro-exposition (things like dialogue tags, thought tags, transitions, and other tiny bits of exposition) are key ingredients in good writing. The trick is not whether you have exposition, but how you use it. Here are some general rules of thumb for exposition.
- Avoid long runs of exposition.
- Avoid using exposition in place of action, dialogue, or description.
- Make sure the interior monologue is actually interior monologue and not exposition.
- Make sure the opening of your novel is as exposition-free as possible. (By "opening," I mean the chunk of text from page one until the start of the rising action, usually a few scenes, a few chapters, maybe 10-25% ish of the text, depending on story)
- When you have to use exposition, keep it as brief as possible.
- Exposition in the form of narrative summary (compressed events within the story's real time line) is useful for shorthanding trivial or repetitive action. But it should be kept as brief as possible.
- Use action beats in place of expository dialogue tags.
- If you're writing in a subjective point of view, eliminate expository thought tags.
But Alicia's sample is not exposition. It's description. Description is not "telling" in the same way exposition is, but description does contain its own set of pitfalls. For one, it can be static. If you look at Alicia's example, all three of her sentences contain a verb of being, "was," in some form or other. This is a static word -- not to be confused with passive voice, no matter how many times good-intentioned people insist that verbs of being are passive voice. The confusion on that point stems from this: Static verbs are the opposite of active verbs, and passive voice is the opposite of active voice. "Active" is used to name both things, so people sometimes think "passive voice" refers both to the type of verb and to the type of sentence structure. It does not.
In any case, although we generally say that active verbs are better than static verbs, this is anything but a hard and fast rule. Sometimes we want the emphasis in a sentence to be on something other than the verb, so a quiet little verb of being or appearance can help you accomplish that. Sometimes an active verb is so overused that it becomes worthless -- reach, pull, push, move, look, gaze, stare, and many more besides these, although active, have become associated with weak writing merely because they are repeated so frequently.
So, in Alicia's example, where she was trying to convey a still, dead, stagnant wilderness area, the description relied on static verbs. This makes sense. But if she'd been trying to describe a school playground at recess, more active verbs might have worked better.
I know I'm throwing a lot of concepts into a single post, and I hope it's not confusing. But I thought it would be better to do a comprehensive, if short, answer.
Theresa
Monday, February 16, 2009
Narrative Summary
And so, the door at Walker and Daughter was open a little bit late and eventually a little bit later than that. Soon enough, at the end of the long workweek, a few regular customers took to popping in with their knitting -- sweaters and scarves and cell-phone socks -- and asking questions about all the mistakes they'd made while commuting on the subway.
"I just can't get the buttonhole right!"
"Why do I keep dropping stitches?"
"Do you think I can finish it by Christmas?"
Without ever putting up one sign or announcing the creation of a knitting club, these women began regularly appearing in the evenings and, well, loitering. Chatting with one another, talking to Anita, gathering around the large round table in the center of the room, picking up where they had left things the week before. And then, one Friday last fall, it became official. Well, sort of.
~~ The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
If you've ever wondered what good narrative summary looks like, that's it right there, baby. Narrative summary (sometimes also called narrative compression, condensed narrative, summation, transition, etc., etc.) is a variety of exposition that takes events occurring within the story's real time and condenses them into a tight, focused summary.
The events are not narrated in real time. There is no scene in the sense of a singular event presented moment by moment in the order of occurrence. There are characters, but who are they? There is dialogue, but who speaks it? There is a point of view, but no viewpoint character allowing us to experience the events through her perspective.
Instead, a mash of Fridays after work are presented as a circumstance -- not an event -- giving rise to a conclusion. After many (indistinguishable, lumped-together) Fridays at the knitting shop, a club of knitters was created. Not scene and sequel, but situation and result.
A friend gave me this book to read because she was taken by the unusual narrative style and wanted me to see it. (Hi, A! *waves*) I can see why she had the reaction she did. Almost the entire book is presented in some form of exposition, and we just don't see that much these days. Beautifully written, engaging, entertaining exposition. Just when you thought it was buried forever next to the dinosaurs, here it comes back, full of life and breathing fire.
Even though we've been clinging to deep, intimate points of view for a while -- and by "we," I mean readers and authors and industry folk alike -- there have been signs that objectivity was making a comeback. If you've been listening, you've heard those signs right along with me. A reviewer complaining about being bored with first person stories. Two friends at the bookstore, picking up and dropping title after title before agreeing that they all "sound" the same. A book lover raving about a romance, and then adding almost wistfully, "But I kind of wish we'd known more about the parson's wife," or some other character who played a pivotal non-pov role.
Prose has been cozy and intimate for so long that objectivity feels like something totally new. Remember Sherry Thomas's first book, Private Arrangements? Remember how it started with that almost Victorian passage about the definition of a good marriage? Talk about deft writing. That book came out just shortly after Friday Night Knitting Club. And I'm sure if you think about it, you'll quickly identify other stories, or other places in stories, where the viewpoint character isn't immediately identifiable. Or maybe there was a viewpoint from outside the story, as in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, or The Crimson Petal and the White, two stories on the more literary end of the spectrum that created narrative distance not through pure objectivity, but through the eyes of a disinterested external narrator.
I'm only on page 80 or so of Friday Night Knitting Club, so it's far too soon to draw any conclusions about the text as a whole. But the text up until this point has been heavy on narrative summary, light on intimacy. There are bits which are firmly rooted in the pov of this or that character, and given the popularity of this book, it seems as though readers are having no trouble connecting to the characters. I am certainly engaged by the text.
Does that seem like an oxymoron? Have we spent so many years flogging the deep pov/show don't tell horse that we've forgotten about other methods to become transported into the narrative?
Don't get me wrong. A solidly crafted limited-subjective third person pov is always going to be an important tool in the writer's kit. It might even be in the top five. But narrative trends come and go, and if the trend is moving toward broader perspectives, then expository writing might just find itself becoming a more important tool.
Theresa
"I just can't get the buttonhole right!"
"Why do I keep dropping stitches?"
"Do you think I can finish it by Christmas?"
Without ever putting up one sign or announcing the creation of a knitting club, these women began regularly appearing in the evenings and, well, loitering. Chatting with one another, talking to Anita, gathering around the large round table in the center of the room, picking up where they had left things the week before. And then, one Friday last fall, it became official. Well, sort of.
~~ The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
If you've ever wondered what good narrative summary looks like, that's it right there, baby. Narrative summary (sometimes also called narrative compression, condensed narrative, summation, transition, etc., etc.) is a variety of exposition that takes events occurring within the story's real time and condenses them into a tight, focused summary.
The events are not narrated in real time. There is no scene in the sense of a singular event presented moment by moment in the order of occurrence. There are characters, but who are they? There is dialogue, but who speaks it? There is a point of view, but no viewpoint character allowing us to experience the events through her perspective.
Instead, a mash of Fridays after work are presented as a circumstance -- not an event -- giving rise to a conclusion. After many (indistinguishable, lumped-together) Fridays at the knitting shop, a club of knitters was created. Not scene and sequel, but situation and result.
A friend gave me this book to read because she was taken by the unusual narrative style and wanted me to see it. (Hi, A! *waves*) I can see why she had the reaction she did. Almost the entire book is presented in some form of exposition, and we just don't see that much these days. Beautifully written, engaging, entertaining exposition. Just when you thought it was buried forever next to the dinosaurs, here it comes back, full of life and breathing fire.
Even though we've been clinging to deep, intimate points of view for a while -- and by "we," I mean readers and authors and industry folk alike -- there have been signs that objectivity was making a comeback. If you've been listening, you've heard those signs right along with me. A reviewer complaining about being bored with first person stories. Two friends at the bookstore, picking up and dropping title after title before agreeing that they all "sound" the same. A book lover raving about a romance, and then adding almost wistfully, "But I kind of wish we'd known more about the parson's wife," or some other character who played a pivotal non-pov role.
Prose has been cozy and intimate for so long that objectivity feels like something totally new. Remember Sherry Thomas's first book, Private Arrangements? Remember how it started with that almost Victorian passage about the definition of a good marriage? Talk about deft writing. That book came out just shortly after Friday Night Knitting Club. And I'm sure if you think about it, you'll quickly identify other stories, or other places in stories, where the viewpoint character isn't immediately identifiable. Or maybe there was a viewpoint from outside the story, as in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, or The Crimson Petal and the White, two stories on the more literary end of the spectrum that created narrative distance not through pure objectivity, but through the eyes of a disinterested external narrator.
I'm only on page 80 or so of Friday Night Knitting Club, so it's far too soon to draw any conclusions about the text as a whole. But the text up until this point has been heavy on narrative summary, light on intimacy. There are bits which are firmly rooted in the pov of this or that character, and given the popularity of this book, it seems as though readers are having no trouble connecting to the characters. I am certainly engaged by the text.
Does that seem like an oxymoron? Have we spent so many years flogging the deep pov/show don't tell horse that we've forgotten about other methods to become transported into the narrative?
Don't get me wrong. A solidly crafted limited-subjective third person pov is always going to be an important tool in the writer's kit. It might even be in the top five. But narrative trends come and go, and if the trend is moving toward broader perspectives, then expository writing might just find itself becoming a more important tool.
Theresa
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Emotional exposition
Film-going adventures... Saw Australia, which was created, conceived, cast, portrayed, written, etc., all by Aussies, and so why does it seem so utterly like a not-great but very expensive 60s-era Western? I mean, really, if it weren't for the accents and the Japanese bombers arriving at the end, I would have thought I was not in the Outback in 1941, but rather in the desert sets of outer Hollywood pretending to be 1890 Arizona. :) Every cliche we love in Westerns is right there, including a totally Eastwoodlike intro of the hero by narrowed eyes (though Hugh Jackman shows far more beefcake than Clint ever did, but then, whoa, seriously better beefcake—is that a body double, or has Wolverine been working out?) devolving into a barroom brawl that spills out into the unpaved street. (Now to be fair, some of these scenes are fun, and there's a beautiful child in a major role, and Bryan Brown! Back again! He was the most fun actor in Thorn Birds, pace all Richard Chamberlain fans. And so cool here! But it was in a Lee Marvin role—just can't get away from the Western influences. :)
Oh, yeah, the "noble savage" in this film is Aboriginal, not Native American, but he still imparts the nobly (not savage) wise Big Emotional Revelation to the clueless (but very buff) hero. What's the revelation? Oh, I forget. It was something about how Hugh was a coward, because he'd been hurt before and was now afraid to love. I think we've heard that before. In fact, we probably SAID that before. The Aboriginal friend pronounces this wisdom in a nobly pontifical way, and Hugh immediately accepts the wisdom and runs off back to his true love (abandoning, apparently, the wise best friend).
This "emotional exposition" scene shows a lack of confidence in the story! And this is something to watch out for in our own books. If we've done our job setting up and developing the character journey, and if we've created scenes that show the emotion, no one should ever have to state out loud the emotional revelation. The character should figure it out for himself because of the events of the story, and especially the event right before realization. (Realization... not revelation, see!) If you're near the end of the book, and you have so little confidence in your emotional arc and character journey and character that you think you need to bring in someone else to lecture out the big truth, then instead of writing that scene, you should be revising your macro-structure. Something's gone wrong in the big story elements, and it can't be fixed by a lecture, however wise. (Australia didn't need this, btw. All it needed was some catalytic event to make Hugh choose to go back to Nicole and the adorable child. That's why I said that it shows a lack of confidence.)
In fact, I tell romance writers—if in the last scene, the romantic couple have to SAY "I love you," you've failed. The reader should know this from how they've changed, how they've grown, and how they've sacrificed for each other. (The characters of course can speak their love – people do, after all—but I'd say first write the scene without those words, as if those words aren't in the language, as if love can only be shown and described without love words. THEN you'll have a great emotionally resonant resolution scene, and you can put in the Three Little Words afterwards. :)
So... no emotional exposition lectures, okay? Make your story do the work. And then if you want the words spoken out, well... try something more fun than a Noble Oppressed Minority wiseguy intoning the wisdom. For example:
1) Put the revelation in the mouth of a discredited character. Hey, if it's the truth, it's the truth, right? Play with that by using the least credible character as the transmitter of wisdom. (I'm envisioning Steve Buschemi or Rob Schneider here.) It will be unexpected, and also force the main character to evaluate the merits of the revelation rather than just to accept Received Wisdom from a beloved and all-knowing thus perfectly credible character.
2) Try a character who is saying this not from some benevolent motive but to further her own agenda. Again, this will add a layer of uncertainty and conflict, making the protagonist have to work at it. Think of Ilsa in Casablanca: "You're a coward, Rick!" She's trying to get the letters of transit from him, not further his emotional journey. Her own motive is suspect—and both of them know it.
3) Something else the World's Greatest Script (Casablanca, I mean) does right is that Ilsa says this but immediately takes it back. This accomplishes a lot—it gets the Revelation spoken, it shows that Ilsa is scared of her own insight, it shows that she's not so stupid that she continues alienating the guy with the letters of transit, and most importantly, it forces Rick to act not with anger but with compassion... where if what she said stood, he'd be defensive and unmoving. Oh, it also shows something about her character, that she really does still love him.
But see, all of the above are making the Revelation not a resolution but a conflict. Should I believe Rob Schneider? Is Ilsa just trying to shame me into giving her what she wants? Do I love her more than my pride? Can I risk loving her especially now I know how far she'll go to protect her husband? All these will lead not to a static scene where something is imparted from on high, but an active scene where the character has to do more than accept the obvious—he has to create his own realization, take his own next step on the journey.
You know, it always comes down to Show, Don't Tell, doesn't it?
That is, if you've got a message to impart, write a bumper sticker. If you're going to create a story, make something happen and cause something else to happen, and let your characters' changes play out in the scenes.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Leave the Gun. Take the Cannolli.
I just finished reading The Godfather by Mario Puzo. I adore the movies and can practically recite them, but this is my first time with the book. I read it in the hope that it would explain Michael's relationship with Kay a little better -- to me, that has always been the weak spot in the first movie, and the book did clarify what happened there.
But what stood out for me most was how much the style of commercial fiction has evolved since this book first came out almost 40 years ago. Check this out:
Fanucci was impressed. "You're a good fellow," he said. He took Vito's hand and clasped it in both of his hairy ones. "You have respect," he said. "A fine thing in the young. Next time speak to me first, eh? Perhaps I can help you in your plans."
In later years Vito Corleone understood that what had made him act in such a perfect, tactical way with Fanucci was the death of his own hot-tempered father who had been killed by the Mafia in Sicily. But at that time all he felt was an icy rage that this man planned to rob him of the money he had risked his life and freedom to earn. He had not been afraid. Indeed he thought, at that moment, that Fanucci was a crazy fool. From what he had seen of Clemenza, that burly Sicilian would sooner give up his life than a penny of his loot. After all, Clemenza had been ready to kill a policeman merely to steal a rug. And the slender Tessio had the deadly air of a viper.
Look at that. Look at how the first paragraph is pure scene, and the second paragraph shifts into something else altogether. The whole thing is written in this combination of scene and an almost high-journalism-omniscient summary. The quest for objectivity dominates the narrative style.
It's not that we're blocked out of the character's internal worlds. We get all the insight we need fully to comprehend the characters. But that information is presented in this very intriguing, distant way, with frequent skips in time, frequent references to other events and people, frequent blending of details that might today be sequestered into scenes.
In the second paragraph alone, we jump in time from the present to
-- the future thoughts of Vito Corleone
-- the murder of his father many years earlier
-- then to the present again
-- then to the recent past when Clemenza stole the rug
Seven sentences. Four time periods.
Not to mention the way the narrative character is referred to by his full name here. Vito Corleone. As if there were another Vito involved, and we had to keep all the Vitos straight somehow. No -- in truth, this is another distancing move. And Puzo uses it very skillfully, this and similar tactics, to pull the reader back from the anti-heroes during their most criminal and dangerous moments.
Some might be tempted to call these "sequel" moments, these places where the narrative lapses into this omniscient exposition. I think that would be wrong. I think Puzo is actually deliberately playing with the point-of-view telescope, pulling the reader in and then zooming them back out again. He could get away with this because he was writing at a time when omniscient viewpoints were far more common in pop fiction. It wouldn't be quite so jarring to the reader then as it might be today.
This is the kind of masterful technique that makes me a very happy reader. Would it translate to a contemporary project? Hmm. Possibly. If you're dealing with anti-heroes, you might want to play with this and see what kind of effects you can create. But use a light touch. Today's readers do crave that bond with the character, and it's harder to get there with a lot of exposition or an omniscient narrator.
But what stood out for me most was how much the style of commercial fiction has evolved since this book first came out almost 40 years ago. Check this out:
Fanucci was impressed. "You're a good fellow," he said. He took Vito's hand and clasped it in both of his hairy ones. "You have respect," he said. "A fine thing in the young. Next time speak to me first, eh? Perhaps I can help you in your plans."
In later years Vito Corleone understood that what had made him act in such a perfect, tactical way with Fanucci was the death of his own hot-tempered father who had been killed by the Mafia in Sicily. But at that time all he felt was an icy rage that this man planned to rob him of the money he had risked his life and freedom to earn. He had not been afraid. Indeed he thought, at that moment, that Fanucci was a crazy fool. From what he had seen of Clemenza, that burly Sicilian would sooner give up his life than a penny of his loot. After all, Clemenza had been ready to kill a policeman merely to steal a rug. And the slender Tessio had the deadly air of a viper.
Look at that. Look at how the first paragraph is pure scene, and the second paragraph shifts into something else altogether. The whole thing is written in this combination of scene and an almost high-journalism-omniscient summary. The quest for objectivity dominates the narrative style.
It's not that we're blocked out of the character's internal worlds. We get all the insight we need fully to comprehend the characters. But that information is presented in this very intriguing, distant way, with frequent skips in time, frequent references to other events and people, frequent blending of details that might today be sequestered into scenes.
In the second paragraph alone, we jump in time from the present to
-- the future thoughts of Vito Corleone
-- the murder of his father many years earlier
-- then to the present again
-- then to the recent past when Clemenza stole the rug
Seven sentences. Four time periods.
Not to mention the way the narrative character is referred to by his full name here. Vito Corleone. As if there were another Vito involved, and we had to keep all the Vitos straight somehow. No -- in truth, this is another distancing move. And Puzo uses it very skillfully, this and similar tactics, to pull the reader back from the anti-heroes during their most criminal and dangerous moments.
Some might be tempted to call these "sequel" moments, these places where the narrative lapses into this omniscient exposition. I think that would be wrong. I think Puzo is actually deliberately playing with the point-of-view telescope, pulling the reader in and then zooming them back out again. He could get away with this because he was writing at a time when omniscient viewpoints were far more common in pop fiction. It wouldn't be quite so jarring to the reader then as it might be today.
This is the kind of masterful technique that makes me a very happy reader. Would it translate to a contemporary project? Hmm. Possibly. If you're dealing with anti-heroes, you might want to play with this and see what kind of effects you can create. But use a light touch. Today's readers do crave that bond with the character, and it's harder to get there with a lot of exposition or an omniscient narrator.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Topical Paragraphing in Action Paragraphs
Yesterday, we looked at the use of a lead-in "topic sentence" in paragraphs of description. This same technique for paragraph shaping also can be used in action sentences.
Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake. She began to cry a little, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out the candle, which her husband had left burning, she slipped her bare feet into a pair of satin mules at the foot of the bed and went out on the porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair and began to rock gently to and fro.
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
In fact, if you want to see lots of really great examples of topical paragraphing, read The Awakening. It's loaded with them.
This particular paragraph comes at the end of a series of paragraphs in which Mr. Pontellier has arrived home late at night after his entire family has gone to sleep. He tries to rouse them in succession, but they resist him. It's inconsiderate, selfish behavior, and it culminates in him essentially browbeating his wife into getting up to check on their son.
So the lead-in topical sentence,
Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake.
reads like description but is actually delivering her final reaction to her husband's actions. And what follows in the paragraph is a series of actions she takes that elaborate on the notion of her being "thoroughly awake" -- an active state, in this context.
She began to cry alittle, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out the candle, which her husband had left burning, she slipped her bare feet into a pair of satin mules at the foot of the bed and went out on the porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair and began to rock gently to and fro.
We had said yesterday that these types of paragraphs often end with transitions into the next paragraph. I suspect, however, that particular aspect of topical paragraphing doesn't always translate to fiction. If the scene is set and events are unfolding naturally, we don't need as many transitions.
In this particular excerpted paragraph, though, we do have a transition. When Edna goes onto the porch and starts rocking, this is a transition from one series of events (her husband's disruptive behavior, all with the goal of waking her up) to the next sequence (her contemplative crying bout in the rocking chair, which sets the stage for her later affair).
Here's another example from the same text.
The children were sent to bed. Some went submissively; others with shrieks and protests as they were dragged away. They had been permitted to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of human indulgence.
That one doesn't conclude with a transition, though look at the next paragraph to see the way she links ideas from one paragraph to the next.
The ice-cream was passed around with cake--gold and silver cake arranged on platters in alternate slices; it had been made and frozen during theafternoon back of the kitchen by two black women, under the supervisionof Victor. It was pronounced a great success--excellent if it had only contained a little less vanilla or a little more sugar, if it had been frozen a degree harder, and if the salt might have been kept out of portions of it. Victor was proud of his achievement, and went about recommending it and urging every one to partake of it to excess.
So the ice cream is the notion that moves us from the children to the cake. Notice, too, how the first independent clause (The ice-cream was passed around with cake) serves as a topical sentence for the paragraph. The remainder of the paragraph is about serving the cake.
There's one pitfall in topical paragraphing for action. Have you noticed anything else about the children and cake paragraphs? I'll give you a hint. Consider the chronology of the actions. Go back and look at the paragraphs again and think it through.
This isn't straightforward action narration. She starts with a topic sentence which reads almost like a bullet point summary of the action that follows. This means that the action following the topic sentence is cast into something closer to exposition than true action. She's summarizing the events rather than narrating the action.
In fact, that's probably the third good way to use topical paragraphing: in exposition, to quickly summarize and compress events which are too relevant to skip and too irrelevant to narrate. That makes three ways to use topical paragraphing, then: for description, for action, and for exposition.
Can anyone think of other ways this might be a handy technique? We're going to look at other paragraphing techniques, too, but I want to finish this idea before we move on.
Theresa
Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake. She began to cry a little, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out the candle, which her husband had left burning, she slipped her bare feet into a pair of satin mules at the foot of the bed and went out on the porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair and began to rock gently to and fro.
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
In fact, if you want to see lots of really great examples of topical paragraphing, read The Awakening. It's loaded with them.
This particular paragraph comes at the end of a series of paragraphs in which Mr. Pontellier has arrived home late at night after his entire family has gone to sleep. He tries to rouse them in succession, but they resist him. It's inconsiderate, selfish behavior, and it culminates in him essentially browbeating his wife into getting up to check on their son.
So the lead-in topical sentence,
Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake.
reads like description but is actually delivering her final reaction to her husband's actions. And what follows in the paragraph is a series of actions she takes that elaborate on the notion of her being "thoroughly awake" -- an active state, in this context.
She began to cry alittle, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out the candle, which her husband had left burning, she slipped her bare feet into a pair of satin mules at the foot of the bed and went out on the porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair and began to rock gently to and fro.
We had said yesterday that these types of paragraphs often end with transitions into the next paragraph. I suspect, however, that particular aspect of topical paragraphing doesn't always translate to fiction. If the scene is set and events are unfolding naturally, we don't need as many transitions.
In this particular excerpted paragraph, though, we do have a transition. When Edna goes onto the porch and starts rocking, this is a transition from one series of events (her husband's disruptive behavior, all with the goal of waking her up) to the next sequence (her contemplative crying bout in the rocking chair, which sets the stage for her later affair).
Here's another example from the same text.
The children were sent to bed. Some went submissively; others with shrieks and protests as they were dragged away. They had been permitted to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of human indulgence.
That one doesn't conclude with a transition, though look at the next paragraph to see the way she links ideas from one paragraph to the next.
The ice-cream was passed around with cake--gold and silver cake arranged on platters in alternate slices; it had been made and frozen during theafternoon back of the kitchen by two black women, under the supervisionof Victor. It was pronounced a great success--excellent if it had only contained a little less vanilla or a little more sugar, if it had been frozen a degree harder, and if the salt might have been kept out of portions of it. Victor was proud of his achievement, and went about recommending it and urging every one to partake of it to excess.
So the ice cream is the notion that moves us from the children to the cake. Notice, too, how the first independent clause (The ice-cream was passed around with cake) serves as a topical sentence for the paragraph. The remainder of the paragraph is about serving the cake.
There's one pitfall in topical paragraphing for action. Have you noticed anything else about the children and cake paragraphs? I'll give you a hint. Consider the chronology of the actions. Go back and look at the paragraphs again and think it through.
This isn't straightforward action narration. She starts with a topic sentence which reads almost like a bullet point summary of the action that follows. This means that the action following the topic sentence is cast into something closer to exposition than true action. She's summarizing the events rather than narrating the action.
In fact, that's probably the third good way to use topical paragraphing: in exposition, to quickly summarize and compress events which are too relevant to skip and too irrelevant to narrate. That makes three ways to use topical paragraphing, then: for description, for action, and for exposition.
Can anyone think of other ways this might be a handy technique? We're going to look at other paragraphing techniques, too, but I want to finish this idea before we move on.
Theresa
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Redlines Four: Avoiding the Need for "Sequels"
Last month, we structured some interior monologue (IM) so that action framed the IM and oriented the reader. That technique is effective in “sequels” -- narrative bits in which we pause for reflection, planning, and the like. IMand its weaker cousin, exposition, can also be used in scenes. This month, we’ll braid interpetive bits into a scene where plot information is conveyed through dialogue.
One of the primary differences between a scene and a sequel is the narrative emphasis. In a scene, the narrative focuses on events -- action or dialogue moving the plot forward. Anything that detracts from the events will slow the pacing of the scene.
By contrast, a sequel focuses on the internal reaction of the point of view character to a prior scene or scene sequence. The character will literally be exploring thoughts and feelings, which means that sequels are generally heavy in exposition.
Some writing teachers advocate a one-to-one ratio of scenes and sequels. But even where a lot of internal landscaping is necessary -- as in romance -- following every scene with a sequel can slow the pace and create a mechanical narrative. This is true even when the sequels are shorter than the scenes.
One alternative is to weave small pieces of IM and/or exposition into scenes. For this to work, the IM/expo and the scene action must remain in balance. Knowing how to balance these elements requires analysis and judgment, because the balance will vary depending on the plot and characters.
Think, for example, of a dialogue scene in which Tex tells Kate that his mother doesn’t like her. If this is a major plot element -- if, for example, Tex will lose his inheritance if his mother does not approve of his bride -- then the reader might need Kate’s emotional reactions in the scene, plus a sequel. Balance is the key. Big movements in plot action require bigger amounts of character reaction.
In that case, the sequence might look like this:
“My mother doesn’t like you,” Tex said.
*Kate has an internal reaction.*
*Kate responds to Tex directly.*
*The scene concludes.*
*IM-heavy sequel where Kate reflects and decides how to proceed.*
But maybe Tex’s mother’s feelings are not outcome-determinative. The reader will still want Kate’s reaction. The question becomes, how much information is needed for Kate’s reaction to make sense? If a lot of information is necessary -- for example, backstory about Kate’s dealings with the mother, things that happened outside the narrative timeline -- then the scene may need to be briefly interrupted to convey that information.
Then the sequence might look like this:
“My mother doesn’t like you,” Tex said.
*Kate starts to react, but pauses.*
*Exposition: Kate reflects on backstory that explains her reaction.*
*Kate returns to her reaction and more dialogue ensues.*
*The scene concludes.*
In that case, no sequel would be needed. Here’s another option:
“My mother doesn’t like you,” Tex said.
“But we’ve sat on committees together, and she’s never acted like she hates me,” Kate said. (introduce backstory)
*Conclude scene quickly.*
*Sequel to fully develop backstory and Kate’s IM.*
But maybe Tex’s revelation is not outcome-determinative and any backstory has already been revealed. In that case, you can avoid interrupting the scene and/or providing a sequel. In order for this to work, the bits of reaction must be succinct and understandable.
One way to do this requires dialogue beats. Beats are little drops of action that fall outside the quotation marks and let the reader know who is speaking and what they are doing. For example:
“My mother doesn’t like you.” Tex folded his arms across his broad chest.
The beat is the second sentence. It replaces the dialogue tag (Tex said) with a stage gesture that provides insight into Tex’s internal dynamics. It’s not true IM because we’re not in Tex’s point of view, but it is a clue into what his IM might be, and provides something more for Kate to react to.
Now let’s add Kate’s reaction:
“My mother doesn’t like you.” Tex folded his arms across his broad chest.
His gesture was at odds with his casual tone. All right, then, he didn’t want her to take it too hard, even though he clearly felt a need to brace himself for her response. But Kate was not about to let his mother stand between them.
“She’ll change her mind once she knows me better.” Kate spread her hands wide, a gesture of openness, and was relieved to see that he dropped his arms to his sides.
“If anyone can win her over, it’s you.”
The IM comes through in Kate’s analysis of his gesture, her planned responsive gesture, and her relief when he relaxes. If we map it, it looks something like this:
*dialogue* *beat*
*her IM in three sentences*
*dialogue*
*she mirrors his gesture* *his new gesture*
*dialogue*
The dialogue acts like touchstones, framing the gestures and bridging his changing responses. The IM acts like a fulcrum, balancing Tex’s first action with his changed reaction.
Now we don’t need a sequel that explains Kate’s or Tex’s state of mind, because it should be clear from the scene. The reader not only sees the characters’ gestures, but why the gestures are important. But it takes a lot of narrative to load the gestures with meaning -- three sentences in Kate’s IM to qualify what they’re doing with their arms. This goes beyond the scope of a typical beat in a dialogue exchange, which is usually much shorter.
And that’s the danger in weaving IM or exposition into an active scene. Dialogue is fast-paced, but exposition in particular feels slow. The key, again, is balance. If the dialogue is important, more qualifying details can be braided in without grinding the pace down too much. But if the dialogue is relatively unimportant, the interpretive details should be confined to pieces no longer than typical beats -- or even eliminated altogether.
--------------
This is the third in the series of my dusty old Redlines column.
Redlines One (on paragraph logic faults) can be found here.
Redlines Two (on dialoge sequencing) can be found here.
Redlines Three (on using frames within scenes) can be found here.
Theresa
One of the primary differences between a scene and a sequel is the narrative emphasis. In a scene, the narrative focuses on events -- action or dialogue moving the plot forward. Anything that detracts from the events will slow the pacing of the scene.
By contrast, a sequel focuses on the internal reaction of the point of view character to a prior scene or scene sequence. The character will literally be exploring thoughts and feelings, which means that sequels are generally heavy in exposition.
Some writing teachers advocate a one-to-one ratio of scenes and sequels. But even where a lot of internal landscaping is necessary -- as in romance -- following every scene with a sequel can slow the pace and create a mechanical narrative. This is true even when the sequels are shorter than the scenes.
One alternative is to weave small pieces of IM and/or exposition into scenes. For this to work, the IM/expo and the scene action must remain in balance. Knowing how to balance these elements requires analysis and judgment, because the balance will vary depending on the plot and characters.
Think, for example, of a dialogue scene in which Tex tells Kate that his mother doesn’t like her. If this is a major plot element -- if, for example, Tex will lose his inheritance if his mother does not approve of his bride -- then the reader might need Kate’s emotional reactions in the scene, plus a sequel. Balance is the key. Big movements in plot action require bigger amounts of character reaction.
In that case, the sequence might look like this:
“My mother doesn’t like you,” Tex said.
*Kate has an internal reaction.*
*Kate responds to Tex directly.*
*The scene concludes.*
*IM-heavy sequel where Kate reflects and decides how to proceed.*
But maybe Tex’s mother’s feelings are not outcome-determinative. The reader will still want Kate’s reaction. The question becomes, how much information is needed for Kate’s reaction to make sense? If a lot of information is necessary -- for example, backstory about Kate’s dealings with the mother, things that happened outside the narrative timeline -- then the scene may need to be briefly interrupted to convey that information.
Then the sequence might look like this:
“My mother doesn’t like you,” Tex said.
*Kate starts to react, but pauses.*
*Exposition: Kate reflects on backstory that explains her reaction.*
*Kate returns to her reaction and more dialogue ensues.*
*The scene concludes.*
In that case, no sequel would be needed. Here’s another option:
“My mother doesn’t like you,” Tex said.
“But we’ve sat on committees together, and she’s never acted like she hates me,” Kate said. (introduce backstory)
*Conclude scene quickly.*
*Sequel to fully develop backstory and Kate’s IM.*
But maybe Tex’s revelation is not outcome-determinative and any backstory has already been revealed. In that case, you can avoid interrupting the scene and/or providing a sequel. In order for this to work, the bits of reaction must be succinct and understandable.
One way to do this requires dialogue beats. Beats are little drops of action that fall outside the quotation marks and let the reader know who is speaking and what they are doing. For example:
“My mother doesn’t like you.” Tex folded his arms across his broad chest.
The beat is the second sentence. It replaces the dialogue tag (Tex said) with a stage gesture that provides insight into Tex’s internal dynamics. It’s not true IM because we’re not in Tex’s point of view, but it is a clue into what his IM might be, and provides something more for Kate to react to.
Now let’s add Kate’s reaction:
“My mother doesn’t like you.” Tex folded his arms across his broad chest.
His gesture was at odds with his casual tone. All right, then, he didn’t want her to take it too hard, even though he clearly felt a need to brace himself for her response. But Kate was not about to let his mother stand between them.
“She’ll change her mind once she knows me better.” Kate spread her hands wide, a gesture of openness, and was relieved to see that he dropped his arms to his sides.
“If anyone can win her over, it’s you.”
The IM comes through in Kate’s analysis of his gesture, her planned responsive gesture, and her relief when he relaxes. If we map it, it looks something like this:
*dialogue* *beat*
*her IM in three sentences*
*dialogue*
*she mirrors his gesture* *his new gesture*
*dialogue*
The dialogue acts like touchstones, framing the gestures and bridging his changing responses. The IM acts like a fulcrum, balancing Tex’s first action with his changed reaction.
Now we don’t need a sequel that explains Kate’s or Tex’s state of mind, because it should be clear from the scene. The reader not only sees the characters’ gestures, but why the gestures are important. But it takes a lot of narrative to load the gestures with meaning -- three sentences in Kate’s IM to qualify what they’re doing with their arms. This goes beyond the scope of a typical beat in a dialogue exchange, which is usually much shorter.
And that’s the danger in weaving IM or exposition into an active scene. Dialogue is fast-paced, but exposition in particular feels slow. The key, again, is balance. If the dialogue is important, more qualifying details can be braided in without grinding the pace down too much. But if the dialogue is relatively unimportant, the interpretive details should be confined to pieces no longer than typical beats -- or even eliminated altogether.
--------------
This is the third in the series of my dusty old Redlines column.
Redlines One (on paragraph logic faults) can be found here.
Redlines Two (on dialoge sequencing) can be found here.
Redlines Three (on using frames within scenes) can be found here.
Theresa
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
"Telling" As a Warning Sign
The other day, I posted the second in an old column series of mine called Redlines. The series starts by examining the way prose can be rearranged for greater impact and fluidity. To prove a point, the before and after examples use identical sentences, and we do nothing more than change the order of presentation. The lesson: Sequencing counts.
After the second article was posted the other day, a wonderful thing happened in the comments. The commenters homed in on the final two sentences in the "after" example and rightly criticized these sentences for "telling" instead of "showing."
Rube could always be counted on to know exactly what the week’s schedule was. He was a good worker and a good friend.
Consider the Source
If sentences like those are firmly embedded in one character's perceptions, they would be considered interior monologue and might be left alone. As interior monologue, thoughts like these are a natural part of the mental chat reel, the constrant stream of the character's consciousness. We pass judgments and reach conclusions about the people around us almost constantly, even when we don't voice those thoughts. Deft writers can use this type of interior monologue to lead the reader to reach the same conclusions the character has reached: in other words, the character informs the reader's opinions of other characters through the interior monologue.
But there's a difference between one character thinking conclusory thoughts and a narrator presenting those same thoughts as exposition outside of any character's frame of reference. In other words, there's a difference between Tex silently opining, Good man, that Rube, and the narrator stating as empirical fact that Rube is a good man.
Good Transitions
It's important to be alert to these kinds of empirical narrative statements for two reasons. First, they interrupt the flow of the narrative and are, as Susan commented, "Gah. Yuck." (Exactly! Great eye, Susan!)
But second, these kinds of empiricisms often are a warning sign that the prose is out of control. As readers and writers, we understand that narrative compression (a different form of exposition in which events are compressed into exposition) is a useful way to create shorthand transitions between key events.
For example, let's say we have Maria, a devoted wife whose husband has just called to inform her that he won a lottery jackpot. Thrilled, Maria takes the rest of the afternoon off and plans a celebration surprise dinner, unaware that her husband has other, less loving things in store. But the writer doesn't want to follow Maria up and down the grocery store aisles or through every beat of her whisk in the kitchen, so instead we read,
Six hours later, after a whirlwind of shopping, cooking and primping, the lasagna was stone cold, the cherry pie was picked clean of half its crust, and Maria's two coats of Great Lash painted trails down her cheeks.
This is an acceptable format for a transition. We get a time frame, a list of events that have happened in that time, and a description of the current state of things. We don't see Maria cry, but we see the tear tracks on her cheeks after her crying is done. It's compressed rather than beat-by-beat. So even thought this is exposition, it's the good kind. Not all "telling" is bad.
And maybe it won't be a temporal transition. Maybe it will be some other kind of exposition that shifts us from one scene to the next.
Mack might have been a lottery winner, but it turned out he was also a rat bastard with a cliche of a blonde, teenaged mistress. They were going to backpack through Peru, Mack had told Maria as if he actually knew where Peru was.
(Assume the writer has a good reason for presenting this information in summary rather than in scene.)
Is Mack actually, empirically a rat bastard? Who is proclaiming his rat-bastardy here? Wait. Don't assume too quickly. See if you can follow that transition with interior monologue in Maria's point of view. Then try doing the same from Mack's point of view. Want to go for a mistress next? You can play that game all day because exposition is omniscient and we can move almost anywhere from there.
Bad Transitions
But now let's say we're not at the top of a scene. We're within the scene with events already in progress. And we're out of control, with events skipping around and characters doubling back to open doors after they've already walked through them. We know we need to fix things, so we reach again for summary -- a statement about Rube's character followed by a statement of Tex's emotional state.
“Tuesday. Wednesday, if it rains.”
Rube could always be counted on to know exactly what the week’s schedule was. He was a good worker and a good friend. Tex was glad that Rube had apologized for talking about Jane that way. “She’s a lady, not a horse.” Tex knew he was pushing his point, but wanted to make sure Rube got it.
Because we understand that we can't logically move from a weather report to a defense of Jane, we put some crappy (Gah. Yuck.) transition there to create a bridge between these two events. This exposition might mimic a good transition in some ways, but it's actually pretty darn bad. As we've already seen, the real fix is to put the events in their proper order in the first place and avoid the need for bad transitions at all.
Which is to say -- commenters, you may rewrite those sentences if you'd like, but if this were a real manuscript, we'd probably just cut them and move forward. And good on ya for catching the weak exposition there. :)
Theresa
After the second article was posted the other day, a wonderful thing happened in the comments. The commenters homed in on the final two sentences in the "after" example and rightly criticized these sentences for "telling" instead of "showing."
Rube could always be counted on to know exactly what the week’s schedule was. He was a good worker and a good friend.
Consider the Source
If sentences like those are firmly embedded in one character's perceptions, they would be considered interior monologue and might be left alone. As interior monologue, thoughts like these are a natural part of the mental chat reel, the constrant stream of the character's consciousness. We pass judgments and reach conclusions about the people around us almost constantly, even when we don't voice those thoughts. Deft writers can use this type of interior monologue to lead the reader to reach the same conclusions the character has reached: in other words, the character informs the reader's opinions of other characters through the interior monologue.
But there's a difference between one character thinking conclusory thoughts and a narrator presenting those same thoughts as exposition outside of any character's frame of reference. In other words, there's a difference between Tex silently opining, Good man, that Rube, and the narrator stating as empirical fact that Rube is a good man.
Good Transitions
It's important to be alert to these kinds of empirical narrative statements for two reasons. First, they interrupt the flow of the narrative and are, as Susan commented, "Gah. Yuck." (Exactly! Great eye, Susan!)
But second, these kinds of empiricisms often are a warning sign that the prose is out of control. As readers and writers, we understand that narrative compression (a different form of exposition in which events are compressed into exposition) is a useful way to create shorthand transitions between key events.
For example, let's say we have Maria, a devoted wife whose husband has just called to inform her that he won a lottery jackpot. Thrilled, Maria takes the rest of the afternoon off and plans a celebration surprise dinner, unaware that her husband has other, less loving things in store. But the writer doesn't want to follow Maria up and down the grocery store aisles or through every beat of her whisk in the kitchen, so instead we read,
Six hours later, after a whirlwind of shopping, cooking and primping, the lasagna was stone cold, the cherry pie was picked clean of half its crust, and Maria's two coats of Great Lash painted trails down her cheeks.
This is an acceptable format for a transition. We get a time frame, a list of events that have happened in that time, and a description of the current state of things. We don't see Maria cry, but we see the tear tracks on her cheeks after her crying is done. It's compressed rather than beat-by-beat. So even thought this is exposition, it's the good kind. Not all "telling" is bad.
And maybe it won't be a temporal transition. Maybe it will be some other kind of exposition that shifts us from one scene to the next.
Mack might have been a lottery winner, but it turned out he was also a rat bastard with a cliche of a blonde, teenaged mistress. They were going to backpack through Peru, Mack had told Maria as if he actually knew where Peru was.
(Assume the writer has a good reason for presenting this information in summary rather than in scene.)
Is Mack actually, empirically a rat bastard? Who is proclaiming his rat-bastardy here? Wait. Don't assume too quickly. See if you can follow that transition with interior monologue in Maria's point of view. Then try doing the same from Mack's point of view. Want to go for a mistress next? You can play that game all day because exposition is omniscient and we can move almost anywhere from there.
Bad Transitions
But now let's say we're not at the top of a scene. We're within the scene with events already in progress. And we're out of control, with events skipping around and characters doubling back to open doors after they've already walked through them. We know we need to fix things, so we reach again for summary -- a statement about Rube's character followed by a statement of Tex's emotional state.
“Tuesday. Wednesday, if it rains.”
Rube could always be counted on to know exactly what the week’s schedule was. He was a good worker and a good friend. Tex was glad that Rube had apologized for talking about Jane that way. “She’s a lady, not a horse.” Tex knew he was pushing his point, but wanted to make sure Rube got it.
Because we understand that we can't logically move from a weather report to a defense of Jane, we put some crappy (Gah. Yuck.) transition there to create a bridge between these two events. This exposition might mimic a good transition in some ways, but it's actually pretty darn bad. As we've already seen, the real fix is to put the events in their proper order in the first place and avoid the need for bad transitions at all.
Which is to say -- commenters, you may rewrite those sentences if you'd like, but if this were a real manuscript, we'd probably just cut them and move forward. And good on ya for catching the weak exposition there. :)
Theresa
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Avoiding info dump
Alicia says--
There's an art to introducing information into the narrative without being too obvious.
Let me give you a bad example first. In this kind of case, the "info dump" always feels like an intrusion. It's usually a break in POV, and sounds clumsy besides, drawing attention to the impartation of information as if it's coming from outside the story-- reminding the reader that this is a story, that is, Not True. So here is ... bad example, which is actually based on something I read recently:
Sandy was their sister-in-law, as she was married to Tom's brother. She had been educated at Harvard and knew the silver market better than anyone in Providence, the largest city in the state, where she had lived since taking a job with Beckett-Turner, the largest fund manager in Rhode Island.
This sort of "info dump" breaks the continuity of the narrative and takes the viewpoint away from the characters and gives it to... I don't know. Some outsider, the author maybe. But let's say we need to know some of this information. After all, if all we have is, "Sandy walked in, and Tom said, "There you are," well, the reader is going to wonder who Sandy is-- more important, the reader will wonder, "Did I miss something? Was Sandy identified earlier?"
So how to impart this info subtly, without taking the emphasis away from the action and the characters?
First, I'd suggest deciding which of those factoids are necessary. Yes, that she's married to their brother (but if you have that, her being their sister-in-law is redundant). No, that Providence is the largest city in the state. (That is, don't bother to insert little bits that declare, "I did some research!" but have no other relevance to this story.) When you revise, decide what the reader actually needs to know, and note those down.
Then try writing the action of the scene, the dialogue, the introspection, without putting in any of the info bits. That way you'll get the important scene stuff in, and on this, you can hang the info on framework you've established.
Now about the info-hanging. No matter how essential that information is, keep in mind that it is LESS important than the action of the scene. So the way to introduce information subtly is to imbed it in existing sentences. The main clause of the sentence should usually carry the main action in the sentence, whether that is actual action, or dialogue, or character emotion or thought. Other elements-- intro phrases, dependent clauses, relative clauses-- are good places to imbed information, as they are, by definition, subordinate, and the reader will read them that way.
For example:
Tom shoved the secret file under his blotter as his sister-in-law Sandy strode into the office.
The reader will register who Sandy is, but know what is most important is that "secret file" revelation.
Now I'm sure you're thinking, "That's not deep POV! Tom knows who Sandy is! So he wouldn't think about her as his sister-in-law!"
Well, POV doesn't have to be deep all the time, or any of the time. Most books are NOT in deep POV, partly because it's more difficult to convey such information when you're confined to the deep perspective of the POV character. In a slightly more distant third-person POV, the reader will have no trouble accepting little bits of explanation like "his sister-in-law". That's just conventional narration, and as long as you keep it short and unobtrusive, the reader will absorb the info and move on.
However, in deep POV, you might need to imbed the information more deeply. So how would you do it? Let's try it:
Tom shoved the secret file under his blotter as Sandy strode into the office. Wouldn't be safe to let his sister-in-law know about the case.
The omission of the subject in the second sentence gives that "deep POV" feel, and separating the "sister-in-law" from the name might make the information seem more like it might have come from his own thoughts. But, as I said, it's especially hard to imbed information in deep POV, because we don't "think aloud" what we already know.
Another way to imbed is in dialogue, but be careful here. The reader is, like all of us, an expert in conversation-- we've all heard it all our life, after all. So we're quick to identify clunky, unrealistic dialogue. My friend Lynn Kerstan warns against what she calls "As you know, Alfonse," dialogue, where characters lecture each other about what they both know. So you wouldn't want this:
"Sandy!" Tom cried. "As my sister-in-law, you know about the family fortune and the difficulties we've had with our hedge fund the last year."
Clunk. So what would work? Think about what he might actually say. What's his motivation here? What is his goal? What's he trying to reveal? What's he trying to conceal? How can we fit that bit of info into what he'd say anyway? Go back to what you wrote of the scene without the info, and think about how you can modify it to add the info.
For example, maybe Tom wants to cozen Sandy to distract her from that secret file.
"Hey!" Tom got up and crossed the room to hug Sandy, blocking her view of his desk and the secret file. He let her go and said heartily, "So how's my favorite sister-in-law?"
The "heartily" is a sign that he's trying, that he's not being completely upfront here. And precisely because of that, the reader might accept a bit of clumsiness, because most of us are a bit clumsy when we're trying to deceive or conceal. It'll sound authentic-- authentically inauthentic. :)
Okay, so what other techniques have you all found to sneak in necessary but obtrusive information?
Alicia
There's an art to introducing information into the narrative without being too obvious.
Let me give you a bad example first. In this kind of case, the "info dump" always feels like an intrusion. It's usually a break in POV, and sounds clumsy besides, drawing attention to the impartation of information as if it's coming from outside the story-- reminding the reader that this is a story, that is, Not True. So here is ... bad example, which is actually based on something I read recently:
Sandy was their sister-in-law, as she was married to Tom's brother. She had been educated at Harvard and knew the silver market better than anyone in Providence, the largest city in the state, where she had lived since taking a job with Beckett-Turner, the largest fund manager in Rhode Island.
This sort of "info dump" breaks the continuity of the narrative and takes the viewpoint away from the characters and gives it to... I don't know. Some outsider, the author maybe. But let's say we need to know some of this information. After all, if all we have is, "Sandy walked in, and Tom said, "There you are," well, the reader is going to wonder who Sandy is-- more important, the reader will wonder, "Did I miss something? Was Sandy identified earlier?"
So how to impart this info subtly, without taking the emphasis away from the action and the characters?
First, I'd suggest deciding which of those factoids are necessary. Yes, that she's married to their brother (but if you have that, her being their sister-in-law is redundant). No, that Providence is the largest city in the state. (That is, don't bother to insert little bits that declare, "I did some research!" but have no other relevance to this story.) When you revise, decide what the reader actually needs to know, and note those down.
Then try writing the action of the scene, the dialogue, the introspection, without putting in any of the info bits. That way you'll get the important scene stuff in, and on this, you can hang the info on framework you've established.
Now about the info-hanging. No matter how essential that information is, keep in mind that it is LESS important than the action of the scene. So the way to introduce information subtly is to imbed it in existing sentences. The main clause of the sentence should usually carry the main action in the sentence, whether that is actual action, or dialogue, or character emotion or thought. Other elements-- intro phrases, dependent clauses, relative clauses-- are good places to imbed information, as they are, by definition, subordinate, and the reader will read them that way.
For example:
Tom shoved the secret file under his blotter as his sister-in-law Sandy strode into the office.
The reader will register who Sandy is, but know what is most important is that "secret file" revelation.
Now I'm sure you're thinking, "That's not deep POV! Tom knows who Sandy is! So he wouldn't think about her as his sister-in-law!"
Well, POV doesn't have to be deep all the time, or any of the time. Most books are NOT in deep POV, partly because it's more difficult to convey such information when you're confined to the deep perspective of the POV character. In a slightly more distant third-person POV, the reader will have no trouble accepting little bits of explanation like "his sister-in-law". That's just conventional narration, and as long as you keep it short and unobtrusive, the reader will absorb the info and move on.
However, in deep POV, you might need to imbed the information more deeply. So how would you do it? Let's try it:
Tom shoved the secret file under his blotter as Sandy strode into the office. Wouldn't be safe to let his sister-in-law know about the case.
The omission of the subject in the second sentence gives that "deep POV" feel, and separating the "sister-in-law" from the name might make the information seem more like it might have come from his own thoughts. But, as I said, it's especially hard to imbed information in deep POV, because we don't "think aloud" what we already know.
Another way to imbed is in dialogue, but be careful here. The reader is, like all of us, an expert in conversation-- we've all heard it all our life, after all. So we're quick to identify clunky, unrealistic dialogue. My friend Lynn Kerstan warns against what she calls "As you know, Alfonse," dialogue, where characters lecture each other about what they both know. So you wouldn't want this:
"Sandy!" Tom cried. "As my sister-in-law, you know about the family fortune and the difficulties we've had with our hedge fund the last year."
Clunk. So what would work? Think about what he might actually say. What's his motivation here? What is his goal? What's he trying to reveal? What's he trying to conceal? How can we fit that bit of info into what he'd say anyway? Go back to what you wrote of the scene without the info, and think about how you can modify it to add the info.
For example, maybe Tom wants to cozen Sandy to distract her from that secret file.
"Hey!" Tom got up and crossed the room to hug Sandy, blocking her view of his desk and the secret file. He let her go and said heartily, "So how's my favorite sister-in-law?"
The "heartily" is a sign that he's trying, that he's not being completely upfront here. And precisely because of that, the reader might accept a bit of clumsiness, because most of us are a bit clumsy when we're trying to deceive or conceal. It'll sound authentic-- authentically inauthentic. :)
Okay, so what other techniques have you all found to sneak in necessary but obtrusive information?
Alicia
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