Dangerous Gifts

The solstice is upon us! There's hope that within a few weeks darkness will stop falling at 5 p.m. Happy winter holidays!

It might seem natural that if people with arcane psychic talents existed, they would dominate the ungifted majority, whether officially or not, overtly or subtly, gently or cruelly. They might constitute a ruling class like the laran-wielding aristocrats of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, an order of official problem-solvers like the Heralds of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, or an autocratic clique like the sociopathic tyrants of the STAR TREK episode "Plato's Stepchildren." More often than not, however, far from holding exalted status, fictional possessors of such talents are regarded with ambiguity or hostility by their societies.

For example, the Slans in A. E. Van Vogt's classic 1946 novel face relentless persecution because of their powers. Fictional vampires surely inspire deeper horror than many other imaginary monsters because of the hypnotic mind control that renders their victims helpless and even unwilling to resist. Zenna Henderson's People, refugees from a distant planet living secretly on Earth, although benign, are often confronted with suspicion or fear when ordinary earthlings discover their powers. In the Sime-Gen series by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah, Gens regard the much less numerous Simes with terror not only because they drain life-energy but because they're suspected of occult abilities such as mind-reading.

Historical romance author Mary Jo Putney recently published the first novel in a new series called "Dangerous Gifts." In this book's slightly altered version of Regency England, psychic powers are known to exist but often viewed negatively. The hero lives happily among a circle of people who share similar gifts, and he works for the Home Office using his abilities for the good of his country. As a child, though, he was brutally rejected by his father because of his wild talents. At the beginning of the story, the gifted heroine is being held prisoner by villains who keep her mind clouded as they plot to use her powers for their nefarious goals. Putney has also written a YA series about an alternate-world Britain where magic is considered a lower-class pursuit, a shameful defect if it shows up in a noble family. The magically endowed heroine's upper-class parents send her to an exclusive but very strict academy that exists to train gifted young people to suppress their powers.

In fiction, miracle workers in general often inspire fear and revulsion rather than awe. Consider Mike, the "Martian" in Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE land. In real life, too, such people sometimes meet violent ends.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

6 Tricks of Scene Structure

The "scene" is, once complete and wholly integrated into the story, an invisible unit, with nicely blurred edges. You can't learn scene structure just by reading completed stories, novels or screenplays.

It is especially hard to learn scene structure from very well written stories. The scene "edge" is not always or only where the camera cuts to a different location.

This was brought to my attention recently when I read a very good story that had major scene-structure problems. This novel would be a candidate for mass market paperback distribution if that scene structure problem were solved. As it is, it's winning prizes in self-publishing, indie, and small press venues.

But I don't know what to say to this author. There's so much RIGHT with this novel, but the scenes FAIL.

I've been trying to remember (with little success) when and where I learned scene structure, how to fix a failed scene, how to avoid failing to begin with, and how to teach these skills.

Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT! GOES TO THE MOVIES provide serious clues about "Primal" storytelling and accessibility that would make sense even to a "caveman" (no offense). Follow Blake's blog at http://www.blakesnyder.com/

Here's how I put the whole "what's a scene" problem together after reading Blake's books on screenwriting.

Let's start with an analog of the story constructing process.

The hot desert sun of July edges the distant horizon, rising steadily into a cloudless sky. Night puddles behind bright outlines etched against the desert.

A pile of cinder blocks in an empty lot with a tarp casually thrown over the top grows a long shadow.

An old truck full of workmen with dirty, hard-used tools in the back drifts to a lazy stop before the pile of blocks. One guy gets out and unrolls a huge paper onto the hood of the truck, squints at the blocks, at his paper, and nods.

Then a cement truck pulls up.

Before sundown, low walls have grown up in the desert outlining a building where there had been nothing.

Now, weeks later, there's a whole building with an inside and outside, windows and doors, even a roof. But the cinder block walls are bare, the mortar outlining the cracks, starkly visible.

Go into the living room. Bare cinder block walls, raw cement floor.

It's going to be a place where characters live. But right now you can see every structural element including the plumbing, electric conduits, fiberoptic cables, telephone lines, even rebar hanging out in spots.

It's easy to see what this thing is and how it was created.

Now along comes the plasterer and puts up chicken wire, insulation, then smears gooey stuff all over, then comes the guy with the textured towel and makes ridges and bumps in a low-relief pattern, and then the painter with lovely colors.

Then comes the inhabitants of the house to make it a home, and they add light fixtures, drapes and curtains, pictures, and macrame hangings, carpets and deep chairs, mirrors, TV-game console, magazine rack, umbrella stand.

That completed room is a novel or screenplay. It contains the characters.

You watch the characters go through the antics of their lives, but you aren't aware of the CINDER BLOCKS hidden inside the WALLS.

Without those cinder blocks, there would be no antics.

Those cinder blocks are the SCENES.

A good, well structured scene is held to other scenes by "rebar" -- the metal rods that hold cinder-block construction together (in earthquake prone areas rebar is code because without it the wall will fall down if shaken).

You can hammer away at a well constructed story and never find the scene seams.

To understand how the building that showcases your characters is made, you need to see it "under construction."

And that's why it is so very helpful to read books or manuscripts that just don't quite measure up -- that have something "wrong" with them. You can see the raw construction hanging out.

This is a hard point for many writers to grasp.

Every scene in your novel or screenplay HAS THE SAME IDENTICAL STRUCTURE.

There is a thing called 'THE SCENE' -- and that's all it is, a cinder block.

It's virtue and usefulness lies in the fact that it is identical to all other scenes.

Now, we know how a standard cinder block is constructed, with holes in a nice rectangle. (yes, they come thin, with patterns, and so on, but those are other things made out of the same material, not what you build walls out of).

We also know that from these rectangles, you can build a huge variety of shapes and sizes of buildings or architectural elements like garden walls.

They're all the same, but you can make a thousand different shapes out of them.

That's the quality of a well structured scene.

So what is the standard "scene" shape?

1. Like an entire story, it has a BEGINNING, a MIDDLE, and an END. Each of these points has a clear, defining formula for what it must contain.

2. Like an entire story, it clearly demonstrates the characters ARCing, or changing in a way that can be identified and verbalized. In screenwriting, this is designated by a + or - sign for the increase or decrease in emotional TENSION that the scene produces.

3. Like an entire story, the scene must ADVANCE THE PLOT. At least ONE PLOT MOVING EVENT must transpire. One of the classic 6-things-that-have-to-be-fixed must move toward being fixed.

4. Like an entire story, the scene must ADVANCE THE STORY. Something has to happen (be learned, be said, be extracted from evidence or testified to) that changes what life means to the main character in the scene.

5. Like an entire story, THE ESSENCE OF SCENE IS CONFLICT + RESOLUTION

6. We'll get to this last item at the end because you really won't like it and I want to run for cover before you throw this all back at me.

I've never seen that list anywhere that I can remember. I just made it up from bits and pieces I've learned here and there, so I may have left out something really important.

But for sure, count on it, every item on that list is absolutely essential in order to have a "scene" at all.

When I see a scene that violates one of those essential parameters, I generally don't bother to finish the book (there are exceptions).

In art, there are always exceptions. In highly commercial art exceptions are extremely rare and if successful usually start whole new genres. (Urban Fantasy; Cyberpunk; Acid Rock -- all started as "exceptions." But remember that the BEETLES had a grounding in classical music and that was their key to success.)

Also note that each of these 5 essential elements of a scene is not at all specific to any genre, story format, delivery medium, style, or historical period.

All cinder blocks are identical, and that's the property that makes them useful.

----------------

So to analysis.

Every scene must start with a Narrative Hook (just like any novel must)

The Mid-Point of the scene must (in Blake Snyder's words) RAISE THE STAKES, just as the mid-point of a screenplay or novel must.

The middle point of the scene must be as pivotal as the mid-point of the whole story. The EXACT MIDDLE (by word-count) must be the point where SOMETHING CHANGES.

The END of a Scene must be a cliff-hanger matching the Narrative Hook that started it and planting a set-up or foreshadowing of what will happen at the beginning of the next scene.

MUST-MUST-MUST

Like as if I were artificially forcing this exact and unvarying structure upon all hapless beginners.

No, far from it.

These are not artificial rules imposed on story structure by some all-powerful gatekeeper publisher.

These rules have been discovered by trial and error since the first caveman tried to hold the attention of his terrified kids and tribesmen during a thunder storm. HOLD THE ATTENTION -- that's the key, and it is (as Blake Snyder keeps saying) PRIMAL.

This BEGINNING - MIDDLE - END structure of a scene is like the square corners of building blocks. It has to be that way to be able to join together with the other scenes and hold the whole structure up.

2. ARC -- characters must somehow act, interact with each other or the environment, and react during a scene. The character's attention focus, emotional pitch (from complacency to terror is one example) or maybe relationship to other characters must CHANGE. That change must be CAUSED BY CONFLICT TUMBLING TOWARD A RESOLUTION.

Characters don't just jump up and fulminate for no reason. As in the whole story's structure, characters have internal conflicts that they project into their external environment (just like real people).

3. The plot is the sequence of events that happen in the story. The first event happens. The next thing happens because the first thing happened. And onwards to the last thing that happens, which happens because the first thing happened in an unbroken line of consequences.

In really sophisticated fiction, it can sometimes be hard to see the connecting links between events. The harder it is to see the connections, the smaller the potential audience and the less those people will actually talk about and recommend this story.

Each scene must contain a PLOT EVENT that connects the beginning scene to the ending scene.

It doesn't have to be a straight line, but the straighter the line of cause and effect the bigger the audience.

4. EACH SCENE starts with a narrative hook that pulls the reader/viewer into a CONFLICT, a sub-sub-conflict of the over-arching conflict the story is hurtling on to resolve. WITHIN THE SCENE the conflict of the whole story must advance THROUGH the mini-conflict of this scene.

The END OF the scene resolves the scene's conflict and hands the momentum on to the next scene.

The "cliffhanger" is a good model, though not as widely known as it was in the days when every feature film in a theater was accompanied by two or more "serials" -- Buck Rogers comes to mind. Each serial installment would end with a (sometimes literal) cliff hanger.

The new STAR TREK movie played on that motif graphically with people falling off the edges of things and hanging by one arm for a while.

Living On The Edge might have been the theme of that new STAR TREK MOVIE.

The NEXT SCENE starts with the character inching back up off the edge of the cliff and going on with the story.

It is that gasping TENSION the pure anticipation of disaster, or of the mere fact that SOMETHING must "happen next" that makes the final line or image of a scene.

The END of a scene must IMPLY action, not deliver it.

The Narrative Hook has to promise that something will happen. The Ending has to have it actually happen (fall off the cliff), but promise that SOMETHING ELSE will "happen next" -- i.e. either fall all the way or get pulled back by a friend, or muscle back up, or "with a mighty leap" solve the problem.

When there's nothing that can "happen next" that originated in the beginning of the story -- then you're at the end and you better stop writing scenes.

5. THE ESSENCE OF SCENE IS CONFLICT

That's the biggie and the one that divides the professional from the amateur.

This is where the size of the potential market for a story is determined.

You can "get away with" including whole scenes that do nothing but convey exposition, set the atmosphere, characterize the characters, fill in back story, lend artistic resonance, or describe the location.

But every time you do that, you narrow your potential audience, and you shed readers you did hook because they get bored.

You will be left only with readers who already are interested in your characters, backstory, history, artistic lyricism, gorgeous flowing prose.

If that reader happens to be an editor with money to invest, you could sell this thing. But will the reviewers be able to get through it?

That's not to say that this shapeless fluff of exposition, backstory, character depth, words for the sake of pure art, or location for the sake of strange-places is not the SUM AND SUBSTANCE of what you have to sell.

Atmosphere, style, ambiance, rich detail -- all that is what readers actually read FOR.

But all those nebulous things are the cement and gravel out of which your cinder blocks are made, and sometimes ingredients in the mortar that holds the whole story-structure together.

They are ingredients, shapeless in themselves and useless for story telling until you add that personal element (like water for the cinder blocks) and bake them to structural hardness just like cinder blocks. Mix and pour your ingredients into a mold, bake them good and hard, and you will have a scene.

The 5 item list I've sketched here describe the shape of that mold.

That mold is the same shape for every scene. The ingredients sometimes differ a little, just as some cinder blocks have a higher quality than others, some tend to crumble around the corners, some have a rougher texture than others.

And like cinderblocks, some have a Lacy pattern and are thin, just for decorative purposes (poems, epigraphs, vignettes, episodes, even COMMERCIALS).

Your completed story is like the wall of that room we started with. Once you get done painting the texturized plaster, nobody but another writer will know that the wall stands up so nice and vertical because it's made of many identical blocks.

So, now you're ready to write an actual scene, to practice putting those 5 requirements together all in one scene. You think walking and chewing gum is hard, just wait until you try writing a scene that fits all these requirements. Pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time while skipping rope!

But you're ready to try it now -- so the first thing you will think to ask yourself (if you're a professional writer) is, "Well, how LONG does this have to be?"

So we come to that dreaded #6 on this list of parameters that govern scene structure.

Every fiction market has a specific preferred length for the whole story.

6. Scene Size
That length is governed by the parameters of the marketing process. The length of books is governed by the cost of a signature. A signature is that folded sheaf of papers they glue together at the binding to make a book. If you go ONE WORD over the end of the final signature, it costs the price of an ENTIRE SIGNATURE to include that one word.

Hence writers learn the discipline of "right sizing" their work.

I discussed the practical marketing problems for fiction in several posts including this one:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Words are elastic. You can say the same thing in less space by choosing synonyms that are shorter (Anglo-Saxon origin rather than Latin), by restructuring sentences with fewer modals, and there are myriad tricks for shortening (or lengthening) text to fit the signatures.

Another sizing trick is to choose shorter names for characters you mention a lot -- or nickname them. Saves tons of trees if you're in print media.

E-books don't have that problem, but there is a "handy" number of K's for an e-book that sells better than longer ones or shorter ones.

So if your genre dictates a total, overall length to aim for, what size should your scenes be? All the genres are different lengths, right? So the scenes should be different lengths, too?

Think hard about this.

What is the main purpose of a scene?

I don't mean "to advance the plot" -- though that is a purpose every scene must achieve.

But why must a scene advance the plot? What's the purpose of an ironclad requirement to include a plot-advance in every scene?

A scene does not have to fill backstory, create atmosphere, explain character motives, or lay clues to the mystery. You don't have to include exposition in every scene, explaining the politics the characters are embedded within. But you MAY do any or all of those in any given scene.

What is the purpose of having SCENES? Why not one long flowing narrative?

And what has that purpose to do with figuring out the length a scene has to be, the size of your cinder blocks?

Look at that wall again. Do different walls of different heights and lengths have different size cinder blocks in them? How versatile that one common size structural element, the cinder block!!!

We know the purpose of the cinder block. It's rectangular because that makes it strong. It's actually 2 squares stuck together. It has holes to make it light. The holes are all in the same place in each block so you can thread the blocks onto rebar, then pour cement down and solidify that wall so it won't fall on you if the earth quakes.

The purpose of a cinder block is clear from it's STRUCTURE.

So what's the purpose of breaking your narrative into scenes?

Here's a clue. The purpose of a scene is the same as the purpose of a commercial on TV.

That's right: a) grab attention, b) hold attention, c) deliver a message, d) make the viewer remember that message (only the part you want them to remember).

Look at our list of 5 essential ingredients in a scene again.

Narrative Hook (grabber), Character Arc (holder), Advance Plot and Story (deliver message), cliff hanger ending (seat that message good and hard - make them want the next message).

The purpose of having scenes at all is to a) GRAB ATTENTION and b) HOLD ATTENTION, then TEACH SOMETHING, and MAKE THEM REMEMBER IT AND WANT MORE.

Who is "them?"

Human beings.

So scene length has a purpose founded in the essence of human behavior.

There are parameters that describe the fundamental essence of human attention in terms of the nervous system, and the brain.

If your fiction is to "entertain" (i.e. grab attention of) human beings you must work within the parameters of the human attention span.

And that's pretty elastic, actually. It's different for different people at different ages and from different cultures, or in different nervous states (a person about to get married isn't going to sit still for tedium).

So, since caveman days, we have developed a kind of average or median, an artistic estimation of attention span.

Lately, that has been encoded into some very commercial ventures (Sesame Street comes to mind - founded on the idea that you'll get more information across to children if you use the attention span of the child at the age when they want to learn this particular fact.)

The film industry invests millions upon millions to make a film. Making their money back plus a profit depends on holding audience attention. Major amounts of scientific research (but also mostly trial and error) has gone into determining how long a scene should be in order not to lose the audience's attention.

Lose attention in scene 3 and scene 5 won't impress this audience. Lose my attention in scene 3 and you aren't going to get a review from me. Lose your editor's (or producer's) attention in scene 3 and you did all that work for nothing.

Likewise, way back in the 1940's, as films were really taking off as a preferred entertainment vehicle, WRITERS figured out how to emulate that scene length that is most likely to hold the attention of the most people.

What is that secret scene length?

Oh, you are going to hate me. Boy are you gonna hate me for this one.

You see, all 5 of the ingredients I've mentioned above are actually pretty easy to do -- but they are nigh to impossible to accomplish within this attention-span determined limit.

And since your attention span (being as how you are either a writer or an inveterate and eclectic reader or I would have lost your attention before this) is likely much longer than the average person's, you won't believe me either.

And if it's not true, why do it -- because it's hard.

SCENES MUST BE SHORT DURATION

But how short must a scene be?

This is what I learned directly from A. E. Van Vogt


when I was in (on paper) correspondence with him (and I've since lost those historic letters).

A narrative scene must be NO MORE THAN 750 words.

That's about 3 manuscript pages.

A screenplay scene must be NO MORE THAN 3 pages.

Isn't that an odd coincidence?

The narrative scene is "3 pages" because when you create manuscript for a publisher, the "page" should be set up with margins and line spacing so that it has a 60 character line and 25 lines per page, which gives you a "page" of 250 "words." And it supplies enough room for editing and copyediting and book designing squiggles in the margins and between lines. Your WORDS aren't all that will ultimately be on your "page."

OK, today, with electronic files, it's not quite like that, but that's where the 3-page limit on a scene came FROM.

Also remember that way back, publishing only used the "fixed font" because that's all a typewriter could do - but also because the spaces between the letters has to be FIXED in order for length to be determined by the book designer. (figuring the printed length is called doing a "cast off.")

Screenplays must even today be submitted in COURIER, a fixed-font, for exactly that reason. RUN TIME can be determined as 1 minute per page if the page is in FIXED FONT.

So why 3 pages of narrative = 3 pages of script that is mostly white space?

A "word" in publishing isn't a grammatical unit. The word "a" is a single character plus the space after it (right, spaces count as characters).

But if you have a 100,000 word manuscript, in English, on average your words are "6 characters" -- or a printer's word, not a grammatical unit.

The purpose of all this old typewriter driven calculation is simple.

The editor has to be able to look at the final page number of the manuscript and KNOW instantly what the cover price has to be if they buy this manuscript. Then reading the first page, the middle page, and the final page, the experienced editor can tell whether the company can make a profit selling this book by estimating the size of the book's potential market.

It all has to do with "signatures" as noted above. If the editor knows they are dealing with a seasoned professional writer, and the MS seems too long for current pricing -- they KNOW they can depend on that writer to shrink the manuscript to the "right size" in a jiffy and without argument by subtracting SCENES.

Likewise if the manuscript is too short. A professional writer can "right size" it up without "padding" by adding SCENES.

Because the manuscript was constructed of SCENES, the writer who knows which holes the rebar went through can pull out a scene and move essential information to another scene, or pull out information from a scene and create another scene to convey that information.

An amateur writing on pure inspiration would be stumped by this rewrite order and it would take more than a weekend to achieve the adjustment. And then the result would introduce incoherencies into the story line.

Your reputation and your next contract depend on being able to do these things FAST.

You achieve that by making your original construction out of well constructed scenes.

So why do 3 pages of narrative = 3 pages of script?

TIME.

That's what they have in common.

An average reader will cover about 250 words a minute (1 page) overall when fully engaged.

Fast readers can top 800, and slow ones might be more like 100 words a minute. But a real person reading VARIES speed according to the kind of material -- so on average over a 450 page novel, it'll come out to about 250 words a minute (maybe including interruptions like phone calls and the baby crying).

A good director will bring in a film at about 3 minutes per scene -- some a little longer to fondle a beautiful moment, some a little shorter to "get on with it." But about 1 minute per manuscript page is the average over a 110 page screenplay.

Commercials have shrunk to 15 seconds. Twitter is 140 characters (which most readers can grab without actually "reading" each word).

Multi-tasking is the core training of our 3 year olds.

ATTENTION SPAN IS SHRINKING IN THIS CULTURE.

If your writing can hold attention for 3 whole minutes to convey a scene, you are really REALLY good!

So now I'll duck and run for cover. 5 elements in 3 minutes -- that's miraculous! But you gotta do it.

I will post this lesson on http://editingcircle.blogspot.com in a couple of weeks and you can post your scene attempts as comments and get commentary.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Source of the Expository Lump

I was recently asked to evaluate the first 2 chapters of a novel which I have watched this author develop. It's main target is to become a TV Series -- and I believe the premise has the potential to draw in Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica (2) fans.

The premise is rich, deep and broad, the worldbuilding meticulous, the scope nearly infinite. It could be a huge story writ on a galactic canvas (like The Lensman Series) or more like Dallas, mostly set in one place (this solar system) but about the people and inter-related families.

The concept is dazzling, the flexibility of the material designed to allow many authors to contribute. I've seen some of the outline and "bible" material, and I'm entranced.

So I was delighted to get electronic copy of the first 2 chapters in novel style that I could read on my Palm.

Right off, I fell into Writing Teacher mode, being more "critical" than I would be if I were reading this for review. And you all know how picky I am about books I review! Can you imagine being the target of my "find something wrong" mode of reading? Ouch.

Still, because I love the premise as much as this author does, I avidly devoured the first 2 chapters. It helped that I was sitting in a) a dentist waiting room, and then b) a car repair shop waiting room. When I finished, I stared at the wall a while before I decided what exactly I was noticing in this first draft manuscript.

A final draft should read in such a way that the Writing Teacher mode never notices anything.

The story should unfold beat by beat, each beat where it belongs but the content leaping with flames of delight. The author should be invisible; the story vivid.

One doesn't expect that in first draft. First drafts are for debugging. So I read looking for bugs.

The sentence, paragraph and word-choice work in this first draft is top drawer professional. The visual descriptions will make any producer salivate. As I said before, the worldbuilding is superb. The characters are likewise, vivid and well rounded, deep and fundamentally interesting. What is presented in the first 2 chapters is intriguing.

So what's WRONG? Why is this text dragging? Why don't the characters leap off the page? Why won't it translate in my mind into a script? What rules is it violating?

OK, as I was reading, I mentally marked out paragraphs for deletion because they were EXPOSITORY LUMPS. But this is first draft material. Any writer, however experienced, passes some Lumps when drafting an opening. You just delete them, or shred them and sprinkle throughout the rest of the story, and what's left is usually a fantastic opening.

Rewriting is no big deal. You expect to do that, and it's largely a mechanical exercise when it comes to curing the lumpiness of a piece of goods. In fact, the classic cure is to move the opening scene to a later point in the story, skipping over the throat-clearing and pencil sharpening.

But this particular 2 chapter opening is "right" for the story this author is telling. Two conflicting elements smash together explosively kicking off a huge Interplanetary War Story.

But the whole thing just does not WORK. Why?

Well, when you delete ALL the Expository Lumps in this 2 chapter opening, you haven't got anything left that's 2 chapters long. Nothing happens. It's all "about to happen" -- not happened and creating consequences. There's no because-line; no plot line.

The author has told me how much FUN it is to be writing this story at last. It's exciting and fulfilling and very real. The characters are jumping up and down to get their story told.

Well. That is the problem, you see. The author has held back on writing the story while the background develops, fleshes out, becomes dimensional. The characters have lives and histories, and backstory-gallore. The politics, history, technological advances (this is set in a near future century when humans have colonized the solar system) and elaborate backstory on the colonization and its politics.

The source of the expository lump is the author's own familiarity with the material.
The author knows too much. The author started to write the story too late in the creation process. Screenwriting books warn over and over about starting to write too early in the creation process. These 2 chapters are an example of what happens when you start too late.

Both too soon and too early result in just about the same kind of unusable text, delineated with TELL rather than SHOW. Both result in a text sequence that weights every detail with the same importance, instead of prioritizing.

If the writer doesn't yet know the world, the writing process turns into worldbuilding block by block of impenetrable prose about the background instead of storytelling. If the writer knows the world too well, the writer is afraid the reader won't understand the story without all that the writer knows, so writing turns into an info-dump instead of storytelling.

And that, in essence, is what an Expository Lump is -- some rich-delicious detail that the writer wants the reader to know all about IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND the emotional, strategic, and political import of the events in the character's life.

The reason these events are important is TOLD rather than SHOWN (or dramatized).

Exposition is "about" the facts, an explanation of the facts. It is what the writer thinks the reader needs to know before starting the story or getting on with the events that form the because-line of the plot.

Exposition is the data that goes into the equation, not the equation itself (the plot and story are two variables in the equation that is a work of fiction). The equation is the problem the reader is working in his mind while the writer feeds in the data. Exposition doesn't register with a reader as data and isn't put into the equation.

Exposition is rhetoric laced with opinion, slant, and possibly the omniscient point of view. It is everything the character already knows before the reader arrives.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/exposition gives a more dictionary sort of definition. Exposition is the writer's effort to make the reader understand "things" the exact same way the writer does.

The writer wants very much to share this vision, this story, this imagined world with the reader.

The writer wants to draw the reader in to the dreamscape using photographic reality. And the writer desperately wants the reader to enter into the exact dreamscape the writer is in. It has to be THE SAME DREAMSCAPE, so therefore everything (absolutely everything) has to be described in detail and explained back to twenty years before the story starts (or twenty centuries).

But in order to gain entree into the dreamscape, the reader needs a Japanese Brush Painting of the "reality" the writer has created -- not a digital photograph with sharp detail.

New writers (and experienced, published writers just starting a new project) can't do this -- simply CAN not do brush-painting style evocation.

Why?

Because without all the relevant details, the reader MIGHT NOT GET IT.

The reader might make other assumptions, mistake the hero for the villain, or think the main character is behaving without sufficient motivation.

Motivations have to be explained -- in exposition. Because otherwise, the reader might guess wrong!

Exposition says, "This is MY story and you have to understand it MY WAY - or otherwise don't read my story."

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me to understand that expository lumps come from the writer standing in the "wrong place" to tell the story. She called this kind of overly detailed storytelling "self-indulgent." The writer is standing in a self-indulgent psychological space -- demanding the reader enter into the writer's own story, and no other.

Being jarred out of that "place" is what makes a talented amateur into a seasoned professional writer.

There is a knack, and a talent, and also a learned skill to handling expository lumps.

You can never avoid depositing them on your page. You must learn to handle them.

The skill part is learning to dissect a lump into its component parts, preferably even before you've finished inputting the entire lump in words.

Recognizing you are passing a lump is just a matter of practice. The more diligently you rewrite, the more your subconscious will learn to recognize something "wrong" before you finish entering it. But sometimes you have to finish writing the lump before you know what to do with it.

Lumps consist of "important" and even "vital" information the reader actually wants all twined around stuff the reader isn't (yet) ready for.

There can be elements of the characters' backstory -- who the father was, when the mother died and of what University they all went to -- things about the character's backstory that are characterization, motivation, color, and even worldbuilding (such as this alien species marries and raises children before going to grammar school).

There can be elements of politics, office or national level, perhaps what political party the character is registered in, or how the career was blunted because of supporting the wrong person for promotion.

There can be elements of description -- how the room is furnished, floor plan of the apartment, what's visible out the window, what people are wearing (which can also be worldbuilding), what type of computer or handheld device, how clean or dirty things are, what kind of music is playing.

There can be the reasons why things are the way they are in this scene -- and those reasons can involve other characters, other places, decisions made and executed long ago or recently. Lumps usually refer to things, issues, and situations that are "offstage" -- thus theoretical and abstract to the reader who hasn't yet been "backstage" of this story.

Those categories of expository lump material are not the only categories. And a clever writer can disguise all that in a nicely flowing narrative that is interesting and engaging. So how do you test your own words to see if you've committed a Lump?

A) identify WHY you wrote that particular information in exactly this particular place. If it is because YOU want the reader to know it; delete it.

B) identify WHY you think the reader is dying to know this information. Find where you've created suspense on this issue prior to this point.

C) consider if there is any other way to convey this information to the reader. What would it take to convert that ONE PARAGRAPH into "show" rather than "tell?" A whole chapter maybe? Another whole character with speaking part?

D) delete the Lump and reread the whole story again a few days later. If you can't retype the Lump into the story without looking at what you deleted, then it shouldn't be added back.

The first mistake new writers make is to misplace information. The expository lump in Chapter One may in fact contain vital information to make Chapter 10 work, but that doesn't mean it belongs in Chapter One. There is a "rule" for conveying information to a reader without causing the reader boredom, impatience, or pain.

The rule in information feed is FIRST MAKE THE READER CURIOUS. Then make the reader even more curious. Ratchet up the suspense.

If there's something you, the writer, desperately need the reader to know, DON'T TELL IT.

Withhold that information until you feel the suspense in your own gut. Use characters and events, deeds and decoration, red herrings, but mostly foreshadowing to create suspense. Set up a question the answer to which lies in the information, but don't answer the question until the right moment.

Read up on writing craft techniques for creating suspense. Draw the suspense TIGHT, and then tighter, until when you break the suspense by presenting the tidbit of information, the reader is so relieved to find out that it's pleasure not pain to learn it.

Remember, people come to read fiction for pleasure. Don't make them work at it. Make it fun!

Play the game with the reader. You've read a good book or two; you know what that game is.

It's FUN!

So the process of breaking up a lump requires you to tease it apart until all the facts you've included stand separately. (some people would write down a list) Identify why you think the reader is dying to know each item on the list -- and most importantly, why you want the reader to know, and know it right now -- or maybe later will do.

Consider what the reader might imagine if you don't give the information.

Try leaving the information out. That will leave space for the reader to fill in the color, the backstory, the characterization, the details and make the world their own. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch some TV shows that have reams of fan fiction posted about them -- then go read the fan fiction that fills in the gaps from the televised show.

That's what readers pay writers for -- to unleash their own imagination, not to demonstrate the writers'imagination.

Marion Zimmer Bradley often repeated the quote, "The story the reader reads is not the story the writer wrote." I don't have the original attribution handy, but it was an important point she made often.

The grim reality is that readers don't want to read YOUR story.

Readers want to experience their own story their own way. You, as writer, are there only to provide the template for the entertainment -- you are the band playing the dance music, not the dance instructor leading everyone's moves on the dance floor. So don't provide too much detail and discipline -- open up the vision with a few brief, artistically chosen details so that the reader fills in the rest and makes your story their own.

In my Tuesday Aug. 19, 2008 post

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/wrting-as-artform-performing-art.html

I talked at length about how writing is a performing art. When you commit an Expository Lump, you are not performing, you're listening to the prompter (your own imagination) whisper your lines then repeating them in a dull monotone.

When it comes to backstory, you have many tools beyond exposition.

You have dialogue, sparse brush painting style description, actions (actors call it business) that speak louder than words, and narrative. Don't forget flashback, but that's a real tricky technique. Even though you move back in time, you must keep the story moving forward.

Marion Zimmer Bradley often described exposition as the writer popping up out of the paper to stand on the page, blow a whistle, and call TIME OUT while the writer explains the story to the reader, thus blowing the reader's suspension of disbelief, destroying the dreamy mood, peeling the readers' feet out of the characters' moccasins, and basically ruining the whole thing. The writer's "style" pre-empts the reader's imagination. So now the story is no longer fun to read.

So after deleting everything you possibly can from your Lump (keep the trimmings aside in a note file because you probably will need to put it in later; just because you're deleting it doesn't mean you're scrapping it), convert the rest of the Lump that really has to go here to Show rather than Tell.

Yes, this will take many more words and make the story longer, may require another character, or even a sub-plot and additional chapters. So you must choose with your artistic senses what to discard and what to show. Show only those things that really ADVANCE THE PLOT forward.

The key to choosing which details to expound upon and which to delete (even though in your mind's eye, you see the deleted ones -- the reader gets to choose their own details) is your THEME.

Any detail from your Lump which illustrates the theme can stay if you really need it to advance the plot. Any detail which does not illustrate or explicate the theme has to go no matter what else you have to change. Everything in the composition must explicate the theme(s) of this particular piece. Otherwise, what you've produced isn't art, nevermind performing art.

So now we see that Expository Lumps destroy the reader's enjoyment because they force the reader to see it your way while what the reader is paying you for is to stoke up their own imagination so they can see it their own way.

But the reader is also paying for a rip-roaring good story, and that means a story that moves, a plot that rocks!

How do you achieve that with all this background to stuff into the reader's head?

Keep in mind one of my simple definitions I've repeated many times here.

Action = Rate Of Change of Situation. Or PACING = Rate of Change of Situation.

Hollywood has set the standard for pacing in all genres. Novels now are hitting this standard, too. I review, remember. I read lots of books. Change has happened.

The Situation must change materially every 3 pages of script (according to several courses I've taken recently) -- or in a book every 3 pages of manuscript (or about every 750 words which is a rule I learned from A. E. Van Vogt in the 1950's and it has become the rule today.)

With a discipline like that, you won't produce any expository lumps because during a Lump the Situation can't change.

In fact, that's a good definition of Lump. It's a lump because it stops the flow of the story, the changes that generate the plot. Events don't "happen" inside a Lump. A Lump tells you about events that aren't happening right now or to these people.

And that's a good test to see if a paragraph is an Expository Lump or not. If the Situation of the plot has changed during that paragraph (not the reader's understanding of the Situation, but the actual Situation as the main character sees it) then it's not a Lump.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.slantedconcept.com/

http://www.simegen.com/jl/