Fiction is a model of human behavior (among many other things, but this is where I’m going today). This means that no matter how a writer tries, real life and real people are always more complicated than whatever is in the model. Nevertheless, we do everything we can to make stories as “real” as we possibly can.
That leaves writers in a cleft stick. There’s only so much room in any given story (even in one of those 200,000-plus word things), and showing complexities, whether they’re complexities of situation or of character, takes a lot of space. Often, this means that the story in the writer’s head has to flatten out a bit in order to fit…and the writer doesn’t always notice. After all, we already know all sorts of things that never make it onto the page. The question is what to leave out.
Most writers, especially early in their careers, choose what to leave out by instinct. Usually, that works fairly well – most writers have read enough fiction that they’ve developed a reasonably decent eye for what does and doesn’t have to be in a story.
Sometimes, though, working by instinct alone causes difficulties, and when it does, it’s usually due to one of four things: either the writer leaves out really important things because they are so obvious to the writer that he/she forgets that they won’t be nearly as obvious to the reader, or else the left-our bits are what I call “word-processing errors” (things that happen because word-processors make it so easy to snip a bit here and a bit there, without ever realizing that the snipped bit was the only mention of a particularly critical piece of information), or else the writer is strongly plot- or character-centered, and tends to leave out important parts of whichever one they’re not centered on, or else the writer has overestimated just how common some critical piece of information is, or how good his/her readers will be at picking up on assorted hints.
About the only thing one can do to avoid the first two problems – leaving out things because they are so obvious to the writer that they seem not to need mentioning, or snipping something critical and not realizing it – is to have a bunch of first readers who are not afraid to say “I have no idea where the hero got hold of that sword he’s suddenly using in Chapter 6” so that the writer can look and realize that he never mentioned the hero picking it up during his visit with his uncle in Chapter 4. Once the writer’s attention has been called to something like this, she/he can make a conscious decision how much of a mention to add.
First readers also help with the third sort of problem – being so strongly plot- or character-centered that important bits get left out because they’re not plot- or character-related. So does experience of the sort that leads to self-knowledge. Writers who know going into a manuscript that they’re plot-centered (or character-centered) can often make conscious adjustments, reminding themselves during the first draft that they need to put in more plot, or making an extra revision pass specifically to add some of the missing character or plot bits.
And then there’s that last one: overestimating the breadth of knowledge available to one’s readers, or the sort of hints they’re likely to pick up. The thing about this is that unlike the other three, it’s not necessarily a writing problem. It’s not really about the story, or the clarity of the writing; it’s about the readers themselves.
Writers control their words, not their readers. Some stories need to be told by implication; sometimes the most effective approach is the indirect one. When this happens, the writer simply has to accept the fact that a choice must be made: either the writer tries to be clear and obvious for the maximum number of readers, regardless of what that does to the story, or else the writer tells the story as it needs to be told, and accepts the fact that not all readers will appreciate it or get it.
Of course, if the writer simply has a horror of being too obvious, then being aware of this and trying to push one’s limits a bit can prevent a story from sinking in clouds of needless obscurity. I feel, however, that it is generally better to overestimate one’s readers a little bit than to underestimate them. A writer whose work gives people the impression that he/she thinks all readers are more than a little dim is unlikely to be terribly popular.
A look at the bestseller shelves, including some items I’ve had recommended to me by people about as far from ‘dim’ as one can get, suggests that particular approach is a perfectly viable strategy, and at least as compatible with wild success as the other.
On the other hand, I write the sort of books I wish other people would write for me; and since I enjoy Dan-Brownism in the same way as I enjoy eating bread-and-dripping or bread-and-bicycle-grease, this would be a bit of a pointless exercise.
On the third hand – because this is fantasy, and there totally is a third hand – I’m one of those who needs first readers to warn me when I’m sliding from the slightly elliptical to the frankly obscure. I can adjust that somewhat by myself, but only if I happen to catch it in revision. Also, I suspect that transparency of telling may be itself a tone control, that can be varied throughout the story to good effect. (Here this, and – this?, and… this, and a rich maze of hints and allusions and implications; but there THAT and THAT and THAT, and no more room for doubt or diversion, until the dealing’s done.)
One of the problems is the deliberately withholding evidence from the reader problem. I know I’m guilty of this a lot, but it’s hard to fix. If you want the reader to know that ‘something’ mysterious is going on, but not be totally overt about what it is quite yet, it’s really difficult to not come off like a tease.
Gray – Clarity and obviousness in plotting is not, to my way of thinking, quite the same thing as having outright contempt for the brains of one’s audience. Which is, I admit, considerably stronger than the way I put it originally, but I WAS trying to be polite. A taste for the more difficult and elliptical books is just that: a matter of personal taste…but authors who have this particular bent need to recognize that it is perhaps shared by a smaller percentage of the available audience, and therefore that if they choose to go this route, they really ought not to be surprised if their sales do not reach blockbuster levels (I don’t say they shouldn’t complain, of course; being under-appreciated, especially when one is pulling off amazing feats if innuendo and implication, is cause for complaint. But really, it shouldn’t be a big surprise).
I do like the idea of varying the degree of transparency; that has lots of possibilities for enriching the layers and re-read-ability of a story, which I think would be all to the good.
Cara – Pacing the revelations can be difficult, but I find that it goes better if the author doesn’t cheat – that is, if the main character finds out something important in Chapter 2, then the reader shouldn’t have to wait until Chapter 10 to discover it (ESPECIALLY if the character who finds out X is a viewpoint character). If letting the reader know things at the same point that the characters learn them causes the plot to be too obvioius…well, the solution is to complicate the plot, rather than try to create pseudo-tension by withholding evidence. Of course, if a close-mouthed non-viewpoint character is the one who just found something out, and none of the other characters know, you can get away with leaving the reader in the dark, too…but sometimes you get a better subplot out of letting the reader know, but keeping the characters in the dark. The trick there is to make sure your characters don’t look stupid, but if you can pull that off, it can be very effective indeed, because most readers like feeling smart. Of course, it really depends on the story.
Pat – I certainly don’t think that clarity and obviousness in plotting represent contempt for the audience either: rather, that they define some very powerful modes of storytelling which are not at all easy to do well. But there’s such a thing as an excess of either. There’s clarity of vision, and there’s shining high-powered fog-lights into clear air; there’s obviousness of plot, and then there’s Captain Obvious explaining the obvious ‘shock twist’ to an audience who obviously can’t be trusted to follow what’s happening. I assumed that sort of thing was what you meant to bar in your conclusion – and it still seems, to me, utterly compatible with commercial success. Not only with people who in any way need to be rescued by Captain Obvious, either.
To people like me, whom it irritates quite a bit, the danger this creates is chiefly one of excessive horror. Then one may veer instinctively away from the great big yappy monster of treating the reader like a dull character in one’s own idiot plot, only to sink without trace in a vortex of obscurity that only a telepath or insanely devoted fan could hope to penetrate.
The most embarrassing way for this to happen is when I do it to myself in a long telling, creating some clever allusion in the first draft which sounds mighty well and was clearly intended to set something up, but which several months later is precisely as penetrable as set concrete. “Ow!” sez I – banging my head on it, and deserving to.
I don’t think you can start the process of _deciding_ what to put in without understanding what there is that you *could* put in.
I also find that my needs have changed – I used to be quite happy to read books that were all about the internalisation with very few events; but I no longer find them satisfactory, even when the voice is an interesting one – I, too, want to observe things happening so I can draw my own conclusions.
I think that to a great degree showing both setting and events clearly can prevent the need (or perceived need) to explain them to the reader.
Gray – Yes, that overreaction to clarity is exactly the sort of thing I meant by writers having “a horror of being obvious.” At least you can recognize it on a later reread; it is a much more serious problem when the writer makes a clever, obscure allusion that the writer still gets, months later, but nobody else ever does.
I suspect that what we’re really disagreeing about when it comes to the commercial success part is just how obvious Captain Obvious is being in his “obvious mistrust” of the audience. I don’t think there are very many people who actually like being looked down upon, or who will willingly read something that does such a thing…but I do think that the degree of sensitivity to authorial contempt varies, and it’s quite possible that some reader don’t even notice the jet noise as it flies over their heads.
Also, there is a class of readers who don’t want to have to work hard at their “light” reading – they want everything spelled out so that they can enjoy the story while still giving their brains a rest. Some of the commercially successful books may fall into the category of writers who play to that market.
Green_knight – Well, yes – most people do have to start by knowing what can go in before they can make conscious decisions about what to leave out. I think you had considerably more trouble with the putting-in part than most people, though, which makes it perfectly reasonable that you’d be a bit wary of moving on to the leaving-out part too soon.
And really, it is largely a matter of taste whether one prefers the clear or the obscure. However, if one can manage to do both – perhaps in different levels of the story? or in different subplots? – one might manage to snag both sets of readers with the same novel. 🙂
My first readers have made me tape a sign to the top of my monitor that says, in big block letters, “It’s not (that) obvious.” And they have promised to tell me when I get into blatant statement-of-plot. (It hasn’t happened yet.)
However, it is heartening to know that I am not alone in having this problem.
I think you had considerably more trouble with the putting-in part than most people, though, which makes it perfectly reasonable that you’d be a bit wary of moving on to the leaving-out part too soon.
I’m starting to realise that a lot of the difficulties I have – most of the difficulties, in fact – stem from needing a more abstract overview. I haven’t paid too much attention to this question – in fact, next to none – because I’ve been insanely busy figuting out other things like description/externalisation (I need to have a good concept of the scene, and the kind of scene, and the function of the setting in the narrative before I can start to look for things-to-describe) and I’ve grokked the whole ‘in-the-moment’ thing. But if I were to tackle ‘how much do you need’ I’d look to work out what you *can* put into a scene – what are the tools I have to play with – before I could judge how much of it my book really needs.
I’ currently of the conviction that if you can put definite events and evidence on the screen for the reader to draw conclusions from, you will need a lot less explanations and narrative signposts, so that’s just ‘show, don’t tell’ all over again: once you start explaining to the reader what is happening, you need to keep doing it, otherwise they will be lost.
Green knight – When you say “what you can put into a scene,” are you speaking in particular (this scene takes place indoors, so I can put in furniture and carpets, but not apple trees or magpies; it has these two people in it and nobody else, so I can put in their clothes and expressions, but nobody else’s [unless it’s dialog and they’re talking about someone else]; it’s a pre-gunpowder setting, so I can put in swords but not guns), or are you talking more in the abstract about the sorts of things that go into scenes (actions, dialog, physical description, thoughts, setting, etc.)?
You certainly can switch back and forth between explanation/summary and dramatization/details, but you need some kind of transition (explicit or implied, doesn’t matter which) to get from one to the other, so that it doesn’t jar the reader. A lot of it is just figuring out where and how to make the switch. Like the steps in a complicated dance; if you know the figure, you move in and out between the other dancers with no problem, but if you don’t, you end up on the floor in a tangle.
About the cliffhangers & pacing, character realization & reader realization-
I was reading a book by a well-known author the other day. Her MC was attending a meeting and she keeps getting clues to something (a wrong something, not a good something). At the end of the scene she suddenly sees what has caused all of the clues. She is horrified and experiences a revelation about… well, we don’t know yet, because the author has not told us! So while the reader is impatient and eager to see what this mysterious something is, the author brings in a very important character who we have previously not met and throws in a revelation-filled, significant conversation. *Then* she tells us what the mysterious something is.
I really disliked this part. I had to read it over again and get the gist of the important conversation before I continued on the book. Why, when your readers are impatient for information, put in vital parts before telling them? I read it really fast and didn’t pay attention to all that I should have because that cliffhanger was tugging on me. So, here’s a long example of how cliffhangers can actually work against your story. Phew! 🙂
I used to worry about being too obvious. I’d try so hard not to beat the reader over the head with what was really going on that the clues I planted didn’t just fly under the radar–they did it in a stealth jet. This was doubly true if I was trying to hint at a mystery that was to be revealed over the course of the story.
I think I’m starting to understand that “subtle” and “vague” don’t equal “mysterious.” I’m trying to figure out how to use specifics and a tight viewpoint to create mystery by being straightforward about what’s going on without stopping to explain it. I want people to ask, “Ooo, what does that mean?” and want to turn the page to find out, instead of just scratching their heads and saying, “Er . . . huh?”
Pat,
the key piece to the puzzle was understanding the ways in which setting contributes to a scene, and that’s the bit that eluded me for so long, because in order to understand it I had to gain a better understanding of the role of the scene in the narrative.
That is, obviously, the short form, but I would pick different descriptive detail if the character was trying to solve a mystery than when she’s wrestling with a decision or gearing up to a fight – even if she’s sitting at the same desk for all of three.
Mary – I’d call that more a problem with structure and timing than one of leaving things out…but it’s definitely a problem, and it’s definitely one that I dislike as much as you do. Some writers do this to keep the reader reading, without considering the downside in terms of comprehension!
Cindy – In order for something to be mysterious, the reader has to know enough about it to know that there are more things that she doesn’t know yet. A character who is strictly business doesn’t have a mysterious past; he’s just focused or maybe obsessive. A character who avoids talking about his past by constantly switching the conversation to the business at hand…well, obviously, there’s something more to know.
Green Knight – You know, you’re right; I just don’t think I ever thought about it that way. Also, if you’re in first-person or a highly filtered tight-third person…well, the POV character will likely notice different things, depending on her state of mind. When I’m focused on writing, I don’t notice the litter of used tea mugs and water glasses on my desktop, but I do notice the handwarmers and the notepad. When I’m whizzing through the office in cleanup mode, the dirty drinkwear stands out like a sore thumb, but the handwarmers might as well be invisible. Like that.
Pat,
part of the problem is that I’m non-visual, so if I go the ‘what the character notices’ room I first need to construct a set and then think what the character would notice in a particular mood – but doing this is hard work and tends to lead to uninspired settings, and it tends to lead to static settings – because *I* need to stop and look around, so that’s what I describe.
It’s been a major shift for me, but I’m much happier with the results. One exercise that helped me tremendously was to write out – with abstraction – all the different ways in which you could describe the same setting along a number of axes – movement (character stands and looks vs. character moves through room), etc etc. As I said – ‘understanding what’s possible’ which makes it easier to make actual decisions.
Green_knight – That’s fascinating. Do you have a list of the different things you tried? Because I bet that would be really useful to anyone who operates the same way you do…and quite possibly to those of us who normally don’t, as well.
I’m working on writing up the list properly etc – I’ll be more than happy to let you have a look when I’m done.
Once I understood what I needed to know in order *to* find the description I was surprised how obvious it seemed. Definitely a ‘try smarter, not hader’ moment for me.