When
I did my first snapshots post (reviewing a small number of SFF samples) one thing that struck me
was the varying approach taken by the authors when it comes to the
problem of informing the reader about necessary backstory, without
splurging information in a wall of text (info-dumping).
The background is, as the name suggests, just there as a backdrop for
the action, it shouldn’t be the mainstay of the story. There’s
only so much information people can, or want to, take on board at
once. If you throw constant references to past events and new
character names, keeping track becomes difficult. And reading for
relaxation shouldn’t be about trying to remember a splurge of
information.
There’s also a trade-off with pace. Beginnings can work whether
fast or slow, but the more backstory you include the slower the pace.
If you have a dramatic fight scene right at the start, and keep
banging on about the past events of the protagonist, you slow down
the action and rob it of urgency, making something that should be
fast into something turgid.
Fantasy and sci-fi often have a lot of backstory and putting it into
context (after all, there’s usually a whole new world to try and
get across to the reader, although this should be done where it
informs the story not to flood them with irrelevant information)
without erecting a wall of info-dumping can be tricky. Character
interaction can help. As well as fleshing out individuals, if
someone’s mocked for a certain accent, you introduce [without it
being clunky] the differing nations. Instead of writing ‘she was a
man-hater’ you could have a woman mock a chap as a
‘fallopian-deprived ape’. If someone has long sleeves, they can
dip in a drink or the sauce/gravy of their meal.
In short: show don’t tell, where possible.
That’s easier said than done, of course. [I’ll be doing more
snapshot reviews in the future. At the moment, I’ve got books to
read, so it’ll be a little while].
Thaddeus
No comments:
Post a Comment