![]() ![]() The many characters may feel shallow because none of them have enough time for proper development. The plot may slow to a crawl because it’s juggling too many storylines. That’s because you’ll have to use exposition dump after exposition dump to explain what’s happening, and yet it will still be too much for readers to keep track of.Īn overly complex story will also lower engagement by dividing the story’s time between competing elements. If your story is much too complex for its word count, no amount of skill can save it from being boring and confusing at once. It’s real tough to fit a complex world into a short story, but if you’re a deft hand at showing and telling, you’ll have more wiggle room. Your total idea budget depends on your story’s length and how good you are at information management. Reader comprehension is a limited resource, and when you add ideas to your story, you are spending that resource. One of the most important things a new writer has to learn is that story ideas are not free. Without further ado, let’s go over the first step: simplifying. Because a story’s opening is the most challenging place to manage information, much of my attention is focused there, but the same concepts can be used in other places. This series covers each step, with case studies to give you a better idea of what it means in practice. Doling out information, using exposition to fill in the cracks.Creating scenes that make information easier to convey.Judging what information the readers should have and when.Proactively simplifying the story whenever possible.You can’t simply look at the individual passages of a book you have to think about your information management as a whole. This bigger picture is why getting exposition right is so difficult. But exposition is only a small piece of a much bigger picture. That’s because the primary purpose of exposition is to deliver information. To readers, the most obvious sign of an information problem is when the exposition isn’t right: Either the story contains long and tedious dumps full of unnecessary details, or explanations that are needed don’t appear. Bad information management can ruin a good story. I call this overlooked practice “information management.” When it’s done poorly, the story may be confusing, overwhelming, boring, or simply lacking its emotional power. One of the most important skills for a fiction writer – especially a speculative fiction writer – is communicating what readers need to know, when they need to know it. ![]() This is part 1 in the series: Information Management: The Strategy Behind Exposition ![]()
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