how much is too much (or too little)

[kaigou]

Let's set aside the fact that I really want to kill my team-at-work right now, and think about more cheerful things! ...which means setting aside the fact that killing my team would make me VERY cheerful. OMG it's only the second day of the year and already I'm pondering bloodshed.

Well. Anyway.

I remember reading Hunt for Red October back in college or whenever, and what seemed like so many intricate details. I do recall that this added to the veracity or the realism of the story, but I don't recall if the details really ever became pertinent. I mean, some of them did, like how radar worked (and why the Red October could slip past), and how nuclear subs worked (thus helping to explain why the sub could/would be evacuated). Not sure about the rest, or maybe those other details were meant as red herrings: talk about keeping the resolution a surprise. If you're drowning in red herrings, how the hell do you know which is gonna matter?

As relates to me, specifically, I've been reading all kinds of awesome stuff over the past few months. Much of it would never show up in a story, or at least no more than in passing: who really cares about the monetary systems and coin debasement and other economic missteps, let alone what/how centralized banking works and why it's so important in the development of modern capitalism -- but omg this stuff is just so fascinating.

In case you missed the tumblr reblog, yes, I'm a dork.

This is just mostly the craft question, where when I come across in-depth details about something (regardless of the story or genre) I find myself stepping back. Not in a bad way, but in a "I need to back up to see the whole picture here" way, and I mean that in a craft sense, not a reader-can't-cope sense. I like looking at how someone else tackled that all-important issue of the infodump, especially when I know (or can trust) that this info is still very, very important.

I really feel like that's an art, in its own right.

Comments

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Red October is an interesting example, and also something of a special case. A lot of the details never do become pertinent in the ways that the conventional storytelling rules of our present moment demand that details be pertinent -- that is, they're there for their own sake, not do be a Chekovian gun on the mantlepiece.

But they're not extraneous, either. They're doing heavy worldbuilding work, in that (like sf and fantasy narratives) they take place in a world that the average reader will find unfamiliar, but that the reader needs to understand at least sufficiently for the action to feel like it makes sense. Beyond that, though, there's a level on which Red October was really all about the worldbuilding: the plot was there in service of the author's desire to tell us all about the technology, and a lot of the pleasure of the book came out of the gee-whiz fascination Clancy managed to communicate for it.

I suspect that a lot of the more general question comes down to what any story is really about, in the author's heart of hearts. If it's about how the presence of dragons affected the history of banking and commerce in AU post-Roman Europe, both you and your readers are going to want as much stuff about monetary policy and theory as you can cram in. If it's about your characters' adventures at the courts of AU Florence and London, and the dragons are decoration, odds are good you don't want anything more than an oblique line of dialogue or two in the text itself, because as long as it feels plausible in-world to have the dragons there, who cares?

The remarkable thing, to me at least, is that there's an audience for the first kind of story at all. But sometimes there is, and sometimes its size surprises you.

[kaigou]

It does remind me of Del Toro's talk (in his commentary for Pacific Rim) about how the real worldbuilding isn't in big details, but the little ones, especially the ones that are kind of worn around the edges. That kind of set-dressing, though, is getting more common as we get more movies that are all about the grit. That doesn't reduce the impact when it's done right, and I think the key is in this: a lot of the pleasure of the book came out of the gee-whiz fascination Clancy managed to communicate. It's the gee-whiz fascination that really makes Red October such a joy to read, and why I suspect I never felt bogged down in the details. Same way I recall feeling about Gibson's early work, or Stephenson's, before either of them became entrenched in their world-views and/or felt like they had to bring it, over and over, to match their early, gee-whiz inspired visions.

You're right about the purpose of the details. I mean, ultimately, world-building, like anything else, must serve the story. But it also does a lot of the evoking, too, and when we're talking major technical gadgetry and gee-whizadry, that bit of authorial love goes a long way towards making the tech go down smoother.

[nagasvoice]

I agree it's quite an art form. There's the whole pacing issue with how you place the infodumps and how big a roadblock they may be. Infodumps slow things down and make people think about other things besides the driving pace in an action-oriented central plot. It can be like lovely charming meanders or maddening. As with cover art for books, you have technical demands on how much world-building detail you can get away with including. There's two axes of difficulty there, too. There's how much space you eat up with explanations (Clancy's hugely lengthy for a Twitter age) but also how difficult is it? For example, at what level of scientific knowledge do you pitch your explanations? You can be extremely concise if you use more technical language, and sometimes that works better to blind 'em with science. In some of the fantasy stuff you evoke the same effect because you're just handwaving with fancy phrases. "Okay, I'm convinced, I'll take your word for it, this part is bafflegab for the geeks, I don't need to worry about it." Some of the writers I really like are fabulous at inventing language that ought to be the correct terminology, that evoke odd combinations or funny ones. The really good ones build on some key terminology, where you get a hint from the name of something, and later there's some plot surprise built into that name. That could be pretty concise, but it's much more likely to suggest a tone of frivols and leisurely nonsense--it can be a bit like breaking the fourth wall if you get tooo cutesy.

[kaigou]

Ah, the cutesy. I've drop-kicked books that have shown signs of that. It feels like the author's being too clever by half.

I think what I liked about Clancy's work was that even though a lot of it he made up and/or way-extrapolated, it still felt like there was a realness to it, a weight. A lot of fantasy novels are so wrapped up in their sense of 'magic' that they're like bad CGI: nothing has any real weight.

Despite the fact that I did get bored with the Game of Thrones series (too many rapes, too many deaths), there was no doubt that it had the same kind of foundation-feeling to it. A good, solid weight, and I don't mean the book itself. Maybe because it pivots far less on some less-weighted fantastical elements, and instead is pretty strongly rooted in things you'd find in any real-life history: betrayal, murder, warfare, and so on.

on tech exposition

[brainwane]

Sort of relatedly, on Michael Crichton and tech writing. And what do you think of Jo Walton's thoughts on incluing?

Right now one of the books I am reading is Catalogs And Counters about the history of Sears, Roebuck. You'd like it.

[kaigou]

I didn't see a link to Jo Walton's post. Do you have a link to that? You're right about Michael Crichton, and the bits I've read of his earlier works remind me of some of the best scientific writing I've read, too. (That was actually the kind of journalism I had wanted to study in college, so I could write for magazines like Scientific American and Psychology Today and whatnot, where I could take complex scientific concepts and make them comprehensible to the average person. Problem: I attended a too-small school with no journalism degree, damnit.)

Sears is a fascinating history, though I think I'd rather like to read an insider's take on its plummet, thanks to that boneheaded moron who smashed it together with Kmart and then drove both into the ground. I guess that would qualify as a trainwreck kind of history reading, though.

[brainwane]

I met a science communicator who works for a particular lab-type facility, SLAC maybe, in their press office. I sort of fell in love with the idea of science communication because of the science writer character in Asimov's story "The Dead Past" and how Asimov points out how powerful and scarce he is! (in retrospect: authorial self-insertion?)

Jo Walton on incluing. You might also be interested in some of her "on writing" stuff.

[kaigou]

very interesting! thanks for the links. I did chance on one of her posts talking about made-up languages for fantasy works, and was going to reply, but apparently I can no longer comment on LJ. I permitted every script (even facebook.net, which I almost never do, and google analytics, which I definitely never do) and still the stupid spinner sat there. So maybe LJ just doesn't like Firefox, or else they're out to stymie anyone using a script-blocker. Who knows. If I could've, I was going to link her to the conlang generator, in case she wanted to pass it along to anyone else curious. Eh! Guess the lack o' posting ability on LJ means I should go do something non-computer for at least an hour or so today.

soooo brainded, another 11-hour day, ugh.

[brainwane]

I have her email address and would be happy to email her about your conlang generator - what address should I give?

[kaigou]

Erm, which address? For email, kaigou@dreamwidth.org would work fine, and the generator itself is at words.karinoyo.com. Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

What is your tumblr? I will definitely subscribe!

[kaigou]

I was being kind of tongue-in-cheek. (Sorry!) I don't have a tumblr. I can barely remember to update either of my blogs on a regular basis. I doubt I could handle a third. I already feel guilty that I post so rarely here, as it is. Sigh.