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About forty-five seconds ago at the time of writing the words 'About forty-five seconds ago', I was reading ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ursulav's latest blog post, a rather good little essay about weirdness in fantasy. Interestingly enough, this post is not inspired by that essay, but by telophase's comment on it; specifically, the line, "I think writers and filmmakers spend too long justifying things", and some of the conversation following it.
telophase is right. I'll be the first to admit there are exceptions, but I'm not thinking about those right now. Instead, I am thinking about two novels I read awhile ago, The Devil and Deep Space and Angel of Destruction by someone named Susan Matthews. Devil and Deep Space is the second in the series, but both drop the reader into the world of the story without the slightest cusioning. And both make it work.
This is a cool thing for writers to do. Liketelophase, ursulav, and limyaael, and many others have said, it's boring when you spend so much time describing exactly how so-and-so works. Not only that, why? Sure, there's a place for just telling your readers what's happening, but please! Most readers are smart people! As long as you know how it works, it'll work!
Of course, that's a blatant lie. But if Susan Matthews got away with as little exposition as she did writing realistic science fiction, you can at least try to. All speculative fiction could benefit from this idea, which isn't mine, and which I didn't have. So please – if you write sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, anything, try not explaining everything.
P.S. Originally, the title of this post was going to be "Please don't remind me I'm supposed to be doing homework". Then it was going to be "It's pointless, but since the point of this blog was to get me writing anyway..." Then I remembered that I liked the title to actually relate to the subject of the post. After all, the title line is labeled "Subject" in the little Livejournal field, and we all know that we should obey the labels.
Of course, the post field is labeled "Entry", so long, irrelevant footnotes are perfectly fine.
ursulav's latest blog post, a rather good little essay about weirdness in fantasy. Interestingly enough, this post is not inspired by that essay, but by telophase's comment on it; specifically, the line, "I think writers and filmmakers spend too long justifying things", and some of the conversation following it.telophase is right. I'll be the first to admit there are exceptions, but I'm not thinking about those right now. Instead, I am thinking about two novels I read awhile ago, The Devil and Deep Space and Angel of Destruction by someone named Susan Matthews. Devil and Deep Space is the second in the series, but both drop the reader into the world of the story without the slightest cusioning. And both make it work.This is a cool thing for writers to do. Like
telophase, ursulav, and limyaael, and many others have said, it's boring when you spend so much time describing exactly how so-and-so works. Not only that, why? Sure, there's a place for just telling your readers what's happening, but please! Most readers are smart people! As long as you know how it works, it'll work!Of course, that's a blatant lie. But if Susan Matthews got away with as little exposition as she did writing realistic science fiction, you can at least try to. All speculative fiction could benefit from this idea, which isn't mine, and which I didn't have. So please – if you write sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, anything, try not explaining everything.
P.S. Originally, the title of this post was going to be "Please don't remind me I'm supposed to be doing homework". Then it was going to be "It's pointless, but since the point of this blog was to get me writing anyway..." Then I remembered that I liked the title to actually relate to the subject of the post. After all, the title line is labeled "Subject" in the little Livejournal field, and we all know that we should obey the labels.
Of course, the post field is labeled "Entry", so long, irrelevant footnotes are perfectly fine.
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