Explain the Game

The sibling genres of Fantasy and Science Fiction feature unknown worlds, unusual inhabitants, and extraordinary adventures. They carry readers into lands of enchantment or embed them into a matrix of the fantastic.

Although this holds tremendous appeal and draws readers like bees to honey, it presents writers with the challenge of how to make the unknown knowable without getting in the story’s way.

After all, description and exposition are the two slowest-paced modes of discourse in writing. If allowed to continue too long, they bog down the story or stop it altogether. Traditional fantasy is especially prone to the awful explanatory info-dump at a story’s opening, where the hapless but eager writer shoves page after page after page after page of background, mythology, history, and foretellings of the as-yet-unborn protagonist’s destiny at readers.

Writers can’t toss aside description altogether. That leaves readers disoriented, with next-to-no way of imagining the settings or characters.

Background–if pertinent–can’t be dodged either. There’s so much to learn if readers are to understand what’s happening and why.

Fortunately, there are solutions. Here are a few:

Take your time. You don’t have to explain everything in a single, twenty-page passage. Inject a paragraph here and there as you go, supplying the bare minimum of information to help readers understand ramifications or context of what’s happening in the story action.Explain immediately before or after an exciting scene. This will help position your characters for an upcoming conflict or, immediately following a scene, it will help your viewpoint character–and readers–process what just happened.Avoid long explanations during slow spots in your story. Are you becoming bogged down in the middle of your story, where your characters are slogging along on their quest to the fabled caverns of Mitharia and have nothing to do except choke on road dust and explain to each other why it’s so important to go there, defeat the demons now guarding the ancient treasure, and solve the riddles an oracle will ask before letting them inside? You might suppose, given that no action is happening, that this would be the perfect place to inject lots and lots of background information. WRONG! Do not place slow informational passages in a plot’s slowest spots. (Use Suggestion #2.)Dialogue of information is bad. No one is forbidding your characters from discussing their situation. Dialogue of information, however, is where two characters who already fully know and understand a story problem are discussing it solely to inform readers. It comes across as hokey and stilted and artificial.Let your characters USE their props and gadgets instead of marveling at them. No matter how fantastic such items might be to readers, the characters should treat them as part of everyday life without pausing the story for descriptive admiration. After all, do you admire the sleekness of your iPhone each time you pick it up to check your inbox, Instagram feed, or weather report? (Only if you just bought a new phone, perhaps.)Make description as vivid and specific as possible. This will not only strengthen your writing, but it will help you keep necessary description short and effective. Consider the following: The dagger was ornate and shiny. It was long with a curved point. It had obviously been designed for use in ceremonies since it was too fancy for any common purpose. The hilt seemed heavy, but that’s because it was ornamented with many jewels and probably made of solid gold. Now compare it with this: Johan picked up the heavy ceremonial dagger, glittering from its jeweled hilt down to the wickedly sharp point of its curved silver blade. “How many sacrificial throats have you sliced, my beauty?” he murmured.Improve your verbs. Avoiding the flabby weakness of to-be verbs not only strengthens writing but also serves a descriptive purpose. For example: The door dilated open. That conveys an immediate image in a reader’s mind of a round orifice spiraling open. It also shows readers a glimpse of the setting’s unique architecture.Put nomenclature to work. All of the places, plants, animals, geographical features, cities, etc. that writers invent will require names. While it’s fun to generate exotic ones, make them descriptive to help readers comprehend the object quickly. For example: stingfly instead of jornak.