I read part of a book last year that started well. The characters were young and humorous. The story promised to be imaginative, but after the main conflict was declared and things began to roll, it all slowed back down when the characters essentially went to school. Not literally. They went to a research library, which is close, but the plot at that point became “Our heroes research the threat and consult experts.”
Close to the same thing happened in another book I picked up last year, except instead of going to school, wise characters with extensive knowledge of the backstory took the young heroes aside to explain many, many things. As I understand it, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones suffered from the same problem.
But doesn’t a story need some explanation? If you’re working on something you want to resonate, something that captures timeless truths, don’t you want to spell a few things out? Sure you do, but you need to tell your story beyond the point where your readers are asking the questions you answer with your exposition.
Writers throw this gutterball for different reasons. In their story, they are actively creating a world. Their characters are talking about things that need development, so if they can just step into their creation to explain parts of it, they can join the fun. They think readers won’t be able to see how amazing this futuristic city sidewalk looks in their minds if it isn’t described. That’s true, but do readers need to see it? Does it serve the story?
Another reason writers may spend excessive time in exposition is to fantasize about being the smartest person in the room, an imaginative track many people take. We love the feeling of saying just the right thing or giving the best answer. We want to tell a great story as well as enthuse over how great our story is at the same time. Or perhaps we simply don’t trust our readers, so we take time to explain everything as a way of asking them whether they’re keeping up with our brilliance.
Good exposition will flow with the action. It will set up tension by explaining some of what’s to come, set up tension by explaining things incorrectly and thereby mislead characters and readers, or provide resolution of some of the established tension. It will not bring the story to a grinding halt. That’s why I stopped reading that first book. Sure the characters could go to the library, but something should have run them out of there or a crisis should have called them away. The research could have happened off-page and summarized after the tension had built up.
Do you see what I mean? I’ve been talking too long. I need to go do something now.
I read through your blog twice carefully. There is a cultural phenomena going on right now that has been gathering momentum over the past ten to fifteen years that is changing and influencing the literary period we find ourselves living in. In short, it is the alternative virtual literary universe called generically Fanfiction. The largest and most comprehensive fanfiction website is, unsurprisingly, called fanfiction.net, but there are many other smaller fanfiction websites that cater to readers of selected literary tastes. Using fanfiction.net as an example, there is a lengthy listing of old and more recent titles of books and films. The Star Wars films and the Harry Potter books are a few of the more popular listings. You pick a book or film title and then you are linked into a growing archive of stories that are continuously being written and updated, a chapter at a time, by independent authors, that are a take off and variation of the original book or film story. After you register yourself (for no charge), as a reader you can subscribe (follow) a particular story and the website will email and link you into the next released chapter. Some of these authors have written and are still writing multiple stories, and you can choose them as a favorite author and you will be emailed and linked into any story they write. There is also a link to the author’s bio page, which also lists everything they have written and is archived and available to be read. You can post your personal review after each chapter or whenever you want. There is also a private message link to the author. There are over one hundred thousand stories archived and being written and updated on fanfiction.net. It staggers the mind. The author will have hundreds or thousands of readers following one or more stories. The authors form their own literary circle with their own readers with no money involved. It is just a hobby for them. This is creating a mosaic of literary styles and subcultures that are evolving outside of the conventional publishing universe. In recent years I have been reading less fiction, but now that has changed. I am a subscriber to fanfiction.net, which offers something suitable for every readers favorite fiction genre. I have one separate email account devoted primarily for receiving email links to the stories and authors I am following outside of the conventional literary publishing universe.
The quality of fanfiction stories varies widely. There are no literary boundaries, apart from obsessive abuse and violence and pornography, that can be explored. 99% of my chosen genre I ignore. Out of ten stories I do follow (from the 1%) I discard two or three stories after I read a few chapters when they fail my expectations. The stories I do follow have better developed characters and more interesting plot and subplot lines than the original story they were taken from.
That’s interesting, Brad. You seem to be commenting on this post, https://brandywinebooks.net/?p=7333, rather than the one above, but a good summary nonetheless.
No, I am commenting directly from the above blog. My level of awareness has risen from fanfiction and how it is evolving different literary styles (of various quality) and subcultures apart from the conventional literary publishing universe. Most of the time it takes crude pulp fiction to concentrations of widespread readership that would not work or be acceptable in the literary publishing universe. The fanfiction author and his subscribing readers form a literary subculture that reinforces their literary styles and tastes, and is being done collectively on a massive scale over the fanfiction websites. It is inevitable that these literary subcultures will influence in some way the modern authors and titles within the ebook publishing world. The fanfiction stories that I read are more sophisticated. At least, that is how I like to think about them. They are deeply and profoundly psychological. They remind me in some ways of the stream of consciousness style that some of the great 19th century novelists introduced into the literary publishing world. They take two dimensional characters and develop them into three dimensional characters. They take two dimensional plot and subplot lines and develop them into three dimensional plot and subplot lines. That is as close as I can explain it. I am very hooked into this particular literary subculture.