Weaving in Context

Graphic by Peg Ihinger

Even in a novel that has a prologue, the writer will, at some point, need to get more context into the story somehow. (Most novels don’t need a prologue–see last week’s post–and those that do, don’t need the twenty-plus pages that would give the reader everything they might possibly need to know.) “Somehow,” in this case, means working it into the story as it goes along.

“Working the context in” varies, depending on the sort of story, viewpoint, etc. In mimetic fiction—that is, fiction that is supposed to mimic real life—this usually means dropping details in a bit at a time, as they become relevant to the characters, because this is how people find out about context in real life. Some context also develops in front of the reader as the story progresses, which shouldn’t need any more emphasis or explanation.

In a first-person or omniscient viewpoint, the narrator can just tell the reader the context. “Everybody knows a seventh son is lucky.” “Cinderella’s father was a wealthy merchant.” “New folks started coming in from the East, hoping to get land.” “The king decided to hold a ball so that the prince could choose a bride.” In first person, the writer has to consider what the narrator knows, and when and how they learned it—a first-person narrator who lives in a medieval culture may have known all their lives that dragons have shown up in great numbers every so often, but they may not know that their appearance is tied to the lava from an irregular volcanic eruption that hatches a bunch of dragon eggs all at once, leading to overpopulation that drives them to spread out from their normal habitat. If the volcano is on the far side of the world, this narrator definitely isn’t going to know that the volcano is erupting right now.

Tight third-person viewpoint has all of the limitations of first-person narration (i.e., what, when, and how the viewpoint character knows the context), but it adds limitations on how the writer conveys what the narrator knows to the reader. A tight-third narrator isn’t telling a story, the way a first-person narrator is, so they can’t just tell the reader what’s going on. They have to see it or experience it themselves, on stage, or something has to remind them of it naturally, or it has to come up in conversation.

Those three techniques—experiencing current story context on stage, remembering a key point for story-related reasons, and bringing information up in conversation—work in any viewpoint, as long as the primary focus remains on the story (and not on the context). In other words, these techniques need to be inconspicuous and natural, rather than lumps of data that have been shoehorned into the work. Weaving strands together, a bit here and a bit there, can also make information more accessible and easier for readers to remember, especially if it’s information that’s related to what’s going on in a scene.

Many writers find this difficult to do…or at least, they find it difficult to resist the temptation to put too much information in one place. In dialog, this often results in “as you know, Bob…” lectures, in which one character tells another something that both of them already know, so that the reader can overhear and be informed. When it’s the narrator’s internal dialog (i.e., memories), this issue manifests as large lumps of info-dumpy “thinking” or “memories” that have the same effect—this is not the way this character, or any normal person, would think; it’s just here to inform the reader. And when the writer is consciously “showing” context, it can lead to scenes that have little or nothing to do with the actual story, because the scenes are only there to provide context. (This is particularly true when the context in question has to do with cultural assumptions that the narrator—and everyone else—takes for granted, and therefore doesn’t talk or think about.)

The easiest way for most writers to convey context—cultural, historical, political, and sometimes even personal—is to have a character who clearly does not already know any of this stuff, and who therefore has to have it all explained to them. (Basically, someone who needs an “As you know, Bob…” lecture, because they are not Bob, and do not know.) However, direct explanations still need to be kept interesting and short, if you want readers to understand and remember key points instead of skimming.

Revealing context in the viewpoint character’s memory or internal dialog works much the same way as conversation between characters, except that instead of a character who needs to be brought up to speed, you use something that triggers the POV character to think about something (bonus points if it is something they don’t want to think about). This is a bit more limited than dialog, because you can only use it for past events that the viewpoint character knows about. On the other hand, the way in which the character thinks about what happened (or didn’t)–whether they are nostalgic or resentful–provides characterization as well as context, so it’s a two-fer.

Context can also show up in description. We expect different things from a character who lives in a cheap, run-down studio apartment than from a character who lives in a glittering castle (or even a run-down castle). But if the studio apartment has, in one very-safe corner of the stained kitchen countertop, one delicate china teacup, that single detail says that there is more to know about this character. If the glittering castle has, tucked into a corner of the giant closet in the master bedroom, a pair of sturdy shoes and some worn work gloves with a hole in one fingertip, it tells readers that there is context they don’t yet know.

However you choose to convey key background information, it is worth keeping in mind that readers tend to have the easiest time remembering facts that are given in the first sentence of a paragraph and the last sentence. Also, the longer the paragraph is, the harder it is for people to retain information that shows up in the middle. This means that if you want readers to remember something, it’s best to paragraph right before or right after you give it. If you want readers to miss a key clue on the first read-through, mentioning it in the middle of a paragraph makes it more likely that this will happen naturally.