McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Pacing of information in a fictional world
Aludra:
--- Quote from: AsaTJ on June 15, 2010, 05:27:53 PM ---Don't have to involve time-travel or anything. Maybe your low-tech character comes from a primitive planet or has liven in a vault all his life.
--- End quote ---
Or you could kind of work backwards.
Maybe your character could be a bit of a nerd about 'ancient' history.
So you'd write like:
I reflexively use the Driving Guide Attachment on my feet to start up my brand new XXT LasRocket and pull onto the busy Starway. This is the worst galaxy for Starway traffic, and everyone is just using it to get to the next moon's StarCoffee shop because they don't like the one on their own damn moon. I wish I lived in 2020, when there wouldn't be any such traffic! But then I'd be using wheels and pedals instead of the latest bioengineering technology to keep my hands and mind free to contemplate my predicament and facepalm at all the terrible "captains" whizzing about.
^^This is why /I/ don't write. But you get the idea. Nerdy historian main character could work as easily as a Nooby side character.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: aakaakaak on June 15, 2010, 05:31:22 PM ---I already admitted that probably wasn't the best way to explain the principles of a laser. If you'd like to dwell on nit-picking instead of commenting on the actual advice I can simply stop offering it.
--- End quote ---
I'm sorry, that was not intended as hostile; I was just thinking of the coolness inherent in demonstrating how one's world works by having a character offer an explanation which the reader is meant to recognise as completely wrong, and what that might tell the reader about the character,
meh:
--- Quote from: neurovore on June 15, 2010, 05:17:30 PM ---Well, yes, ideally. The problem is that "counterintuitive" is in the eye of the beholder.
--- End quote ---
And the beholder is the FPN, whose intuition is strictly bounded by your characterization.
For my own part, lumping things as post and prior to a great Crash/Cataclysm/MomentOfGreatRevelation helps. Only have the character explain tech and social conventions to that point. Multiple such events, of different significance to cultures within your world? Even better: you can have your FPOV attempt to synchronize them, just as Thucydides had to do for the various calendars of various Greek cities and tribes.
Aakaakaak:
--- Quote from: neurovore on June 15, 2010, 06:29:44 PM ---I'm sorry, that was not intended as hostile; I was just thinking of the coolness inherent in demonstrating how one's world works by having a character offer an explanation which the reader is meant to recognise as completely wrong, and what that might tell the reader about the character,
--- End quote ---
Ah, okay. I couldn't hear the gears turning on the idea. I get it now.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aludra on June 15, 2010, 05:45:27 PM ---I reflexively use the Driving Guide Attachment on my feet to start up my brand new XXT LasRocket and pull onto the busy Starway. This is the worst galaxy for Starway traffic, and everyone is just using it to get to the next moon's StarCoffee shop because they don't like the one on their own damn moon. I wish I lived in 2020, when there wouldn't be any such traffic! But then I'd be using wheels and pedals instead of the latest bioengineering technology to keep my hands and mind free to contemplate my predicament and facepalm at all the terrible "captains" whizzing about.
--- End quote ---
The historian, the primitive from the vault, the person from another setting/culture/context (I think that's at least as old as Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes if you want to count strictly SF) and indeed the child/adolescent protagonist who is in a position in their life to be learning/being taught key bits of How the World Works are established ways of fidning reason to explain things to someone, yes.
I think I am a bit twitchy about this at least in part because it feels like that is something that has been done a thousand times before; every farmboy who grows up to save the world from the Dark Lord somewhere along the way gets taught about who the Dark Lord is and why we are fighting them in the first place. Not that that can't be done well, just that I'm not finding it appealing. Whereas really good complete-immersion-into-alien-world books where you pick it up as you go along seem to me to be few and far between, and when that is done right I both love and admire it; that's a direction to which I am much more drawn.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version