Black Gate

A long, long time ago, I wrote my first novel. This was decades before I would get published. I was fresh out of college with grand ideas about how my book would set the fantasy world on fire. The story featured a main character that was half human and half elf, who set out to defend his elven kin from a nation of hostile orcs.

Yeah, I know. Not exactly groundbreaking. I’m thankful that novel was never published, more because of the shitty writing than the plot or characters. Yet, it brings up an interesting debate within fantasy literature.

Are races like elves, dwarves, orcs, and goblins fair game for modern fantasy?

Now, off the cuff, I’m inclined to say yes. You can write about anything you desire. Who am I to judge, right? However, while that may be the politically-correct answer, a little more digging turns up some complex issues for the modern writer.

My first introduction to those “classic” fantasy races was Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings saga, and it was continued in my formative years via games like Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer Roleplay. Growing up on a diet of elves and orcs, it was little wonder that I choose to feature them in my own early writing. I suspect that most authors begin by emulating their literary idols, but eventually you need to break away and find your own brand of storytelling. It’s difficult to find your voice when you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox.

But what about authors who genuinely want to write about these races? Here’s why I would advise against it.

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Not a lot of exposition in that type of ending, was there? Didn’t tell us much of what happened “after” – which actually turned out to be quite handy, when you consider the number of writers who have gone on to tell that “after” tale. Take Jim Hines and his Princess Novels, for example, where we learn the true, ever-after fates of Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty.

We no longer see much of that type of ending, perhaps because when that phrase was used more often than it is now, there was an understanding of what “after” meant, and what “happiness” was, that removed the need for any further details.

What I’m really talking about here, of course, is that old story structure chart we were taught in school, the action that rises to the climax, followed by the denouement. Where “climax” is defined by “the point at which you know how the story ends” and “denouement” is defined by “what happens after that point” – or, as we might call it, the final exposition.

We’ve all had the experience, when discussing a movie or a book with our friends, of finding that some of us want the “final” explanation, the wrap up after the climax, and some of us are satisfied that we know what happens “after,” without having it spelled out for us.

The fact is that often where you as the writer want to stop isn’t where readers want you to stop – or so my editor tells me. In my own case, with my first novel, The Mirror Prince, I had what I thought was the perfect spot to end the story. Both my agent and my editor told me that I had to tell a little bit more, that the readers would want to know what happened after.

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Simple. When giving the explanation ruins things. When what you don’t tell is as important as what you do tell. Or, at times, when it’s who you tell, not what you tell. After all, magicians’ assistants generally know a great deal more about the trick than the audience does – though there might be things even the assistants don’t know, at least not at first.

Most exposition deals with items and details known to the characters, which then have to be conveyed to the readers. What about things the characters don’t know, but the readers must? When we talk about exposition, and giving explanations, along with the how and the when, we also have to consider the who.

Writers are like magicians in this sense – we’ve got to keep our secrets, at least until the right moment when all (ahem) will be revealed. But here’s what makes our lives trickier than those of stage magicians: our readers are both the audience and the assistants. They’re watching the trick unfold, even while they’re participating in the unfolding.

Probably the most obvious example of this is the use of dramatic irony. You know, when the audience knows something the other characters in the play don’t know, because we’ve witnessed action or events that took place when they were off stage. Plays and movies manage this by, well, moving the other characters off stage – or by soliloquies if it’s Shakespeare (think of the beginning of Richard III, where he tells us what he’s going to do, and the other characters don’t know).

[Aside: ever notice that it’s always the bad guy who tells you his plans? That’s because it’s the bad guys who have plans. Good guys are just minding their own business until the bad guy acts up. I’m sure there’s a language in which “good guy” means “has no particular plans.”]

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Or so said Walter Jon Williams as he rushed, late, into the World Con panel I was telling you about last week. And he’s right, breaking up an extended piece of exposition with bits of action (or dialogue) is a great way to handle it. Besides, we’ve already cut the exposition down to the necessary, right? We’re not just putting stuff in to let the reader know how much research we did. I mean, I love swords and I’ve watched them being made, but you’re never going to learn how to make one from one of my books.

We’ve talked about using first person and that might be the easiest way to make exposition interesting for your readers, but plenty of writers – like Jack McDevitt – never use it, so what do they do instead? Whichever narrator you use, make the voice interesting and, perhaps most important, interested. If the information is vital to your character, it’ll be vital to the readers. This is why the stranger-in-a-strange-land trope works: the readers learn at the same time and pace that the character does. We take it all in.

Internal monologue, though, doesn’t work as well as you might think. Whenever my beta readers tell me that things feel a bit flat in a particular part, it’s almost always because I’ve got my characters mulling something over. That’s just about the worst way to show the readers character, and not so hot for other things either. Need the readers to know that slavery exists and that the main character might be in danger of same? Include a scene that shows it; don’t just have the character think about it.

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That’s what Tanya Huff said when Michelle Sagara suggested there was quite a bit of paranoia surrounding the idea of writing exposition – you know, all that explaining and informing stuff that I started talking about a couple of weeks ago?

As luck would have it, there was a panel on this very subject at World Con, featuring Jack McDevitt, Tanya Huff, Karl Schroeder, Walter Jon Williams, and Michelle Sagara (aka Michelle West), so rather than go on with my own prepared remarks, I’ll take this opportunity to relay their wisdom on the subject. They touched on many of the points I raised last time – notably the use of first person and the stranger-in-a-strange-land trope – and I’ll no doubt be referring to remarks made at this panel over the next couple of posts, where relevant to the specific subject at hand, but I’ll give you a short summary here.

What could be truer than the quote I use above – which, by the way, you should imagine being said in the most reassuring tone, the tone that says, “You can do it.” As writers, we hope never to write anything the readers find uninteresting. As readers, we know that there are parts we skip, don’t we? Just keep in mind that we don’t all skip the same parts. Setting aside how easy it might be to just do your job, think about what is being said here. It’s not your job to educate the readers. It’s your job to make whatever you do decide to tell them interesting.

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