Black Gate

As it happens, this line isn’t needed where it appears. We’re watching a movie and we can see for ourselves how tall Luke Skywalker is.

But imagine that we’re reading the screenplay or a novel. That one line tells us quite a bit. That troopers are usually tall. That Luke isn’t.

For a really brilliant example of how this works in a novel, consider Tom Holt’s Expecting Someone Taller. Without even opening the book, readers immediately know something about the main character’s appearance: he’s shorter than anyone expects.

I thought I was finished with exposition in my last post – or as finished as a writer ever is when talking about the elements of writing. But then I realized that, in a way, description is a particular form of exposition, just as necessary, and just as likely – yes, I’ll say it – to be skipped, or at least skimmed, by readers if it’s too long.

And description, like other forms of exposition, carries its own peculiar difficulties. What I’d like to talk about this week is how characters, especially main characters, are described. You know, what they look like, not their personalities.

[Aside: Is a fictional character an object? In giving them human characteristics, are we indulging in personification?]

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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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