McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Pacing of information in a fictional world
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Gruud on June 16, 2010, 05:22:15 PM ---Taking A, B and C in your example, give each their own box in the flow chart (without any accompanying explanation) and then see what minimums you need to logically get from one to the other.
In this case the flow chart is really just a mechanism to try and isolate the event flow from the rest of the story stuff swirling around in your head, forcing them to stand on their own, logic-wise.
--- End quote ---
I have done something like this. And thus far I still find myself thinking things like "now, from X's POV A leads perfectly logically to B because X did her PhD about this particular alien civilisation and knows a fair bit about how they think. But the reader won't. How can I get enough stuff about the aliens in to make this work ?"
Aludra:
Maybe put some of her research paper titles into a convo at some point like.
"Wow, it's nice to meet you Dr. Spoopenstein, I really was impressed by your paper, "Blue aliens like Green tea."
meg_evonne:
Interesting thread flow. The first two pages reminded me of trying to pin a live butterfly onto a display board with only two fingers of one hand..nigh impossible.
--- Quote from: neurovore on June 16, 2010, 06:05:14 PM ---I have done something like this. And thus far I still find myself thinking things like "now, from X's POV A leads perfectly logically to B because X did her PhD about this particular alien civilisation and knows a fair bit about how they think. But the reader won't. How can I get enough stuff about the aliens in to make this work ?"
--- End quote ---
The obvious answer might be an encounter... right up front.
My pref is world building shown through dialog and action only, and any info dumps are limited to two paragraphs only. At that point it must be broken up with dialog or action again. Yep, YA convention. Purely my rules and that style will not fit your style.
All I can encourage you to do is to 'trust your readers' and let them participate in the world building. Their own imaginations will carry them a long way as you slowly release this fictional world on them. Choose your action scenes carefully so they reveal the most possible about the world organically and the same for the dialog.
You can tell my age here-- I see your style being more similar to a 'social-science' perspective of a Ringworld or Mote in God's Eye. I'd re-read those to see how they managed such technically complicated but highly successful sci fi books. Perhaps you can incorporate and apply some of their techniques into your own work.
The other major world builder is Dune, of course, but it takes an entirely different approach to presenting the world. Again highly different world that has been popular.
Softer yet would be Heinlein, Bradbury, and Norton, but I think you're aiming for something between the Niven/Pourelle and Herbert type style?
Keep us posted and best wishes!
edit...chose? sheez... can you tell client came in and pushed send? :-)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on June 16, 2010, 06:12:42 PM ---Interesting thread flow. The first two pages reminded me of trying to pin a live butterfly onto a display board with only two fingers of one hand..nigh impossible.
--- End quote ---
That's pretty much how I've been feeling about this project for the last little bit, yes.
Still, if it were easy, it would have been done before.
--- Quote ---The obvious answer might be an encounter... right up front.
--- End quote ---
I think there will be, and more than one; am now kicking over how much I can get away with POV character briefing other characters in advance, and how much of that I need so that the alien encounter actually makes sense.
--- Quote ---All I can encourage you to do is to 'trust your readers' and let them participate in the world building. Their own imaginations will carry them a long way as you slowly release this fictional world on them. Chose your action scenes carefully so they reveal the most possible about the world organically and the same for the dialog.
--- End quote ---
Very much aiming to get the clues in in advance so they hold together, yes.
--- Quote ---You can tell my age here-- I see your style being more similar to a 'social-science' perspective of a Ringworld or Mote in God's Eye. I'd re-read those to see how they managed such technically complicated but highly successful sci fi books. Perhaps you can incorporate and apply some of their techniques into your own work.
The other major world builder is Dune, of course, but it takes an entirely different approach to presenting the world. Again highly different world that has been popular.
Softer yet would be Heinlein, Bradbury, and Norton, but I think you're aiming for something between the Niven/Pourelle and Herbert type style?
Keep us posted and best wishes!
--- End quote ---
I have read pretty much all of the above. I would certainly say, informed by how some of those have worked; and also by more recent authors like Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod; am hoping that I have learned enough to get some of the same technical tricks in without coming too close to the acutal voice of authors I like and sounding like stealing from them.
belial.1980:
Have you considered using epigraphs? Maybe you could try mixing and matching famous historical quotes, imaginary song lyrics, wedding (or whatever they call polygamous mating) invitations, exerpts from childrens' journals, tech manuscripts featuring hypothetical improvements to existing technology, religious doctrine, etc.
You could even expand them from simple epigraphs to slightly longer interludes of mixed media. Thinking something along the lines of the interludes in Watchmen. Using a method like this might help immerse the readers and give them (hopefully) well-camoflouged info dumps that will lead them to infer certains things about the world you've created.
I dunno if that works for you at all, but I figured I'd toss it out there.
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