Word of the Week #403:
There are so many things that I struggled to figure out as a writer that are now so much clearer to me having worked as an editor for so many years and having editing perhaps a couple hundred books by now.
One of those things is just the answer to this question: How much of your setting do you need to explain to the reader, and how can you do it effectively?
While this is most relevant in sci-fi and fantasy books, it is a factor in most fiction and narrative non-fiction.
For instance, if a guy from the Florida Keys writes an autobiography, he might want to tell the reader a little about life around the swamps. He might also want to tell the reader why “Keys” are named that. What he tells you is directly dependent on what he thinks is relevant.
But what is relevant? That’s easy to judge when you’re writing your own life story. Whatever you think isn’t relevant probably wasn’t, and all else is.
In a fantasy story, though? Difficult to tell, at time. In a sci-fi story? All the more difficult.
I have worked on so many stories where the writer is trying too hard to explain the sci-fi things happening in their worlds, but for most normal people, science is not that easy to understand. Not everyone is Isaac Asimov, and that’s okay. Don’t try to create the fundamentals of robotics. Focus on what you bring to the story and what makes it yours.
Fun Fact: Asimov coined the term “robotics”. Legend.
One way I like to think of it is this. Think about the Fast & Furious movies. They’re all about cars, right? Well, okay, cars and family, but let’s focus on the cars, for now. In any of those movies, did they explain how an internal combustion engine works?
That’s actually not a rhetorical question. I’m really asking. I haven’t watched the movies.
However, I’m going to make a reasonable guess and say that they haven’t, right? Nor would they explain how a differential drive works, right? They take the assumption that you know what a car is, and they then talk about any modifications or specialisations that you need to know.
The same principle applies in most situations. Focus on what is relevant. Make some reasonable assumptions and use them as a foundation.
The biggest mistake most writers—especially the young and the inexperienced ones—make is that they start telling the reader everything that the reader doesn’t already know. That is generally a bad idea, and for more reasons than one.
First and most important, the narrative style suffers a lot when you do that. The only time this is acceptable is if you’re writing a bedtime story for someone 6 or younger. Beyond that, remember, show, not tell.
Secondly, that is the perfect recipe for a snoozefest. Nothing slows down storytelling quite as much as a few consecutive paragraphs of poorly written theory. I’ve read chemistry textbooks that were more engaging.
And lastly, if the story is set in the year 2200, why is the writer addressing you, the reader, who has (presumable, but we never know) been dead for decades already? That’s unrealistic, right? If you were writing about your life today, would you address it to kids who died during World War 1 and explain to them how a plasma TV works?
The easiest way to introduce the reader to your world is to introduce a character to that world. This character should generally have very little understanding of what is going on in the world. When Harry Potter enters the wizarding world, he has no understanding of anything. The characters around him help him enter the world, and by extension us. The Twilight books start with the protagonist just moving to a new place, where the locals introduce her to the mythos of the area.
This is a pretty common trope, overall, and it might explain why most long stories tend to have at least one character who is always clueless about everything. The “new kid in town” style is pretty easy to use.
And of course, a good alternative is to have multiple characters, each of whom is clueless about something. That has the benefit of introducing the reader to a broader cast of diverse characters, which is always fun, right?
But, as I mentioned, if you’re writing a book set in 2200, how do you set up the story? How do you bring the reader into your world? Well, there are a bunch of ways.
You could just have the young protagonist be sitting in a history class, with the teacher explaining what went down in a particular era that created the reality of 2200.
You could have the protagonist find something closer to the reader’s era, perhaps some of their ancestors’ possessions, which sparks a conversation about how much the world has changed since then.
You could also use an epistolary narrative style, using letters or news reports, things like that.
As long as it is relevant and interesting and effective, it can be done in really any way you like.
Writing is so much fun, isn’t it?
