Tag Archives: writing advice

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Thinking about the information dump (#3)

This is the last of my thoughts on the information dump, at least for a while. There is a third kind of info dump that you can land yourself in, again not bad or wrong, but it can be difficult to manage properly. This example tends to be strongly associated with fantasy, and has prevented me from being able to really get into a number of different books. Some of which came to me highly recommended and are, in fact, quite good. As a reader though, I just couldn’t get past the issue.

What I’m talking about I’ll call the ‘family’ info dump. There’s more to it than that, but that seems to be a common way you see the problem. What I’m talking about is in the beginning of a story, right off the bat, the author introduces half a dozen characters and tries to explain how their all related or not. There’s one example spinning through my head, but I can’t seem to dig up the reference, so instead I pulled a book off the shelf. Lo-and-behold, it’s got an example of what I’m talking about. Once again, I want to point out that having an information dump isn’t a deal killer, it can be done well, but it can also be done horribly. The sample I pulled is from a book called The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay. I never made it past the first chapter. As a reader, I actually need to be hooked by a main character in addition to the conflict, it’s just a quirk of mine, so books that start out with an ensemble generally don’t hold my interest long enough to get past the first chapter or two. That said, I have it on good authority this is an excellent book. My example starts on page 9 of the paperback copy I have, here is a quote:

“Dave Martyniuk stood like a tall tree in the midst of the crowd that was swirling like leaves through the lobby. He was looking for his brother, and he was increasingly uncomfortable. It didn’t make him feel any better when he saw the stylish figure of Kevin Laine coming through the door with Paul Schafer and two women. Dave was in the process of turning away- he didn’t feel like being patronized just then- when he realized that Laine had seen him.
“Martyniuk! What are you doing here?”
“Hello Laine. My brother’s on the panel.”
“Vince Martyniuk. Of course,” Kevin said. “He’s a bright man.”
“One in every family,” Dave cracked, somewhat sourly. He saw Paul Schaefer give a crooked grin.
Kevin Laine laughed. “At least one. But I’m being rude. You know Paul. This is Jennifer Lowell, and Kim Ford, my favorite doctor.”

The first thing I want to say about this is that it’s well written, packed with examples of good approaches to stuff, and if you must do an info-dump like this, it’s a good example of how to do it pretty well. That said, Guy Gavriel Kay is an excellent writer, and for folks like me, who are still trying to become excellent writers, introducing six characters in the span of less than 150 words is probably not going to go well. In the interest of full disclosure, I did have a difficult time with this.
First off, we’re introduced to Dave Martyniuk, which is a difficult name to pronounce in my head. I am stumbling on it right now. This made it hard for me to follow to begin with. Then we’re immediately introduced to Kevin Laine, interchangeably called Kevin, Kevin Laine, and Laine. That may be a neat trick in helping the reader to remember Kevin Laine, but it’s a lot of information when taken in context. So, I’ve been introduced to six characters and I’ve already forgotten three of them. When I get on to the next few pages, I’m not going to remember which one of the women are doctors, and whether or not it was Laine or Paul who had the crooked smile. So, if I’m not going to remember it all, then why give it all at once?
For me, personally, I approach my stories in such a way as to avoid the hell out of stuff like this. Maybe someday when my writing is a tight as this author’s, I might try to pull off an ensemble from the beginning of chapter one. For now, I pretend the reader is like Beorn in the Hobbit. I try to introduce no more than 1 or 2 characters at a time. In a single scene, this might get me up to six, but it’s spread across a chapter to give the reader time to digest the introduction. Ironically, in the Hobbit, Tolkien introduces thirteen characters all at once. Same end result though, you never get to know most of those Dwarves.

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Thinking about dialogue

On Friday evening, my wife suggested the children pick out a movie to watch before bed. We could have a little family time, eat some popcorn and hang out. Something that has been shockingly hard to accomplish since she started back at work this past summer. The children wanted to see the Star Trek about the whales (Star Trek IV – the Voyage home). We fired up the ol’ Netflix streaming, and got it rolling. As usual, I had a notepad and paper and was busily nerd-crafting away in my own little world when a bit of dialogue caught my attention. Now, before I start in, I want to be clear. I love Star Trek, I do NOT think the screen-writers are idiots. I do, however, think the bit of dialogue in question is cringe-worthy, partly because it mucks-up details of the plot while actually trying to address them. Now, in analyzing the bit of dialogue, I fully understand why this was written as it was. That said, as an aspiring writer I would say the following exchange should be held up as a shining example of how not to get information across to your reader. Also, I apologize if the quote isn’t 100% accurate, my transcription skills aren’t awesome.

“Kirk: Spock?”

“Spock: As suspected. The probe’s transmissions are the songs sung by whales.”

“Kirk: Whales…”

“Spock: Specifically, humpback whales.”

“Bones: That’s crazy, who would send a probe hundreds of light years to talk to whales?”
“Kirk: It’s possible. Whales have been on earth for longer than that.”
“Spock: Ten million years earlier. Humpback whales were heavily hunted by men. They’ve been extinct since the twenty-first century. It is possible that an alien intelligence sent the probe to determine why they lost contact.

“Bones: My god”

This is a very short exchange to reveal a lot of details, some of which are lost on the viewer, or at least horribly muddied because of the execution. First off, we have the obvious message that people hunted these animals to extinction sometime in the 21st century. The way this comes off is too heavy-handed. Instead of being a throw away comment, as it would be if it were true. It’s too direct for anything that would happen in casual conversation. If Spock were giving a paper in a research symposium, this might be the appropriate phrasing, but he’s not, and so it wouldn’t, even for a half-Vulcan. Second, we have an alien intelligence that has sent a probe to make contact with a species it would have lost contact with hundreds of years prior. Between 200 and 280 years based on the information we have. In order for this to work out, the communication would have had to be near instantaneous because the implication is that the probe traveled at speeds slower than warp, but near light speed. Though, none of that’s really clear at any point, and the more I think about it, the bigger the inconsistency seems. I’m going to ignore that though because it could be dealt with easily enough, and it’s actually not super-relevant. Another problem is that Kirk adds information about how long whales have been on Earth. It’s really just irrelevant or, at best, supports a dodgy explanation about the whale’s communication with this alien intelligence, and how long it took the probe to get there. In any event, as executed, this bit of dialogue is supposed to carry the justification for a big part of the plot and, in my opinion, it seems to muddy more than clarify. A better exchange might look like the following (read these in the voice of each character, I’m also trying to stick as closely as I can to their voices and character):

“Kirk: Spock, are you going to tell us what’s on your mind?”

“Spock: Yes. I believe the probe’s transmissions are the songs sung by whales.”

“Bones: That’s crazy. Who would send a probe hundreds of light years to talk to an extinct species?”

“Kirk: It’s true. They were hunted to extinction almost three hundred years ago.”

“Spock: If the whales were in contact with a distant alien intelligence, it is possible they described the relentless hunting of their species by men. ”

“Kirk: Do you think the probe was sent as retribution for the killing of the whales?

“Spock: Yes, I do.”

“Bones: My god.”

The first thing I’m going to say about my revision is that it is still not awesome, but I like it better. It fixes a few problems I have always had with the plot of the movie in general, or at least that I didn’t understand until really looking at this little bit of dialogue. First off, it recognizes the fact that all three men would know about the extinction of Humpback Whales (the disappearance of such a large charismatic species would be remembered even 300 years in the future), they should talk about it like they do. Then, my revision goes a step further and gives a reason for the attack on earth, which had been implied by the plot, but the characters seem oblivious, which they wouldn’t be because, again, they are all smart guys. This bit still gets across the main points, without silly monologue. Of course, there are other possible scenarios that the writers had in mind, rendering my revision invalid.

I feel like writing dialogue can seem daunting to an aspiring writer because if you screw it up, your reader will not forgive you. Not only that, it’s tough to know how much detail you can strip out before you start to lose context. I usually start with a lot of very specific information in all exchanges, and then remove during revision, relying on context to fill in the blanks, or sometimes a physical tell, like a tightening of a jaw muscle or something. Perhaps my point in this post is to say, if your characters would reasonably know a bit of information, let them know it or at least have a reason why they shouldn’t. Show them catching on, when something is being explained. Your characters are supposed to be people, and like people they will figure stuff out and say things like “oh, now I get it…” Not only that, you can get it to your reader just as effectively through dialogue even if everyone knows the same information.

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Bad advice

Bad advice is one of those topics that comes mind whenever I discover a problem somewhere in my work, and realize I actually understand what that problem means. Sometimes, it’s just that I didn’t realize what exactly the problem was, even after being told about it.

One good example of bad advice comes with technical problems. You know: spelling, grammar, punctuation and so on. I see those sorts of things as mistakes more than actual writing problems. Yes, those are elementary parts of the craft and I shouldn’t be making those sorts of mistakes if I consider myself even somewhat serious. My least favorite is “perhaps you should get a grammar book.” My position is that this is bad advice. It’s simply not helpful for someone who doesn’t necessarily know what the problems are. Not only that, people make mistakes. One of the things I’ve learned, working where I do, is the faster you work, the more mistakes you make. It doesn’t matter how good you are, these happen. So, in your story, or novel or whatever, even re-reading often doesn’t catch these kinds of problems. Why? Well, because, you’re probably working with 50-80K (or more!) words. On top of that, you’re one person who is also intimately familiar with the work and like it or not, you are probably skimming over large portions of text. If, indeed, someone has a truly heinous grammar, the surest way to prevent them from addressing it is to tell them their grammar looks as though a 6-year old wrote it. A better solution, if possible, is to offer to mark up a few pages to point out the mistakes they’re making and perhaps even an explanation as to why it’s wrong. One of my most egregious transgressions are run-on sentences. When I was first told this my reaction was: What the hell does one of those look like? Well, I can identify them now, still make the mistake though.

Another example is something like: “Your characters are flat.” or “The characters don’t really have their own voice.” Again, when I first started, I got this a lot (still get it actually, but I’ve got better ideas on how to fix the problems, and what it means to the story if I don’t) The only thing this advice did was make me ask: In what way? How? The main reason I think this bad advice is because it’s really only unhelpful criticism. For writers who are likely to argue back about any particular suggestion (Don’t pretend you’ve never done this, if you’re trying to be a writer or are, you have.), this sort of advice is going to be summarily dismissed. I can’t say what the correct advice might be for any given situation, except to say that it should be a full-on discussion, pointing out why you think this might be a problem, and a couple of suggestions as to how it could be remedied. Whatever you suggest is almost certain to be shot down in the end, but an alternative solution the writer dreams up is far more likely. For me, this approach helps to illustrate the problem and gives me a sense of what might work for remedies. This sort of feedback usually goads me into some sort of revision, which, inevitably, is better.

The worst advice ever, however, is the writer who refuses, point blank, to take it. Sometimes that’s the right decision, but unless the explanation to yourself is super-clear and actually works to make the story better in some fashion, it’s not. Every writer hands out his or her work to be reviewed and commented upon. A lot of the time all we get back are cliched and unhelpful remarks that don’t actually get at the heart of the problem. If your reviewer has pointed something out, even if it is unhelpful, odds are quite high that an actual problem exists, and you should get a second opinion. When you do get some good quality advice it is essential to consider it. When a reader tells you something that boils down to: ‘your first chapter seems to be building up too much with no pay-off’ (I got advice very much like this and the advice was satisfyingly specific, with suggestions.) you have to listen. Perhaps the best thing to do is set it aside and think about it, but the bottom line is: If you really want to make the best story possible, you have to take advice.

I could totally go on about this topic forever, but I think I’m done with my rant for now. Moral of the story: Advice should be specific and focus on remedies, Advice should be seriously considered. I’ll probably complain more about it at a later date.