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writerstorm Nov. 24th, 2009 02:51 am)
meretia posting in writerstorm Nov. 24th, 2009 02:51 am)I cannot get my characters to drop exposition.
I'm working on a fantasy involving a parallel dimension inhabited by the personifications of character tropes and archetypes. I suppose you could think of them as being in the same general ballpark as the Endless from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comic. They appear as ordinary people (or most of them do, anyway), but they sort of influence their world based on the trope they represent--the Wise Woman's sphere of influence is a very serene place and others sort of naturally turn to her for advice, the Pirate Queen is a cut-throat corporate CEO surrounded by similarly ruthless business folk--if that makes sense. My main character, Fox, is a pretty ordinary woman who owns a bookstore and gives Tarot readings in a little college town in southwestern Ohio. She's got no reason to know any of this.
My problem is that none of my trope-world characters will tell her about it once she gets entangled in their problems. What's happened is that the Pirate Queen's gentleman friend, the Knight in Shining Armor, went missing shortly after Fox did a Tarot reading for him at her bookshop. The Pirate Queen doesn't believe that Fox had nothing to do with her and tells her basically that she'd better either give him back or find out what happened to him, or else. All the trope characters involved are too worried about their own problems to slow down and tell her what's what or don't care that she doesn't know.
The villain was supposed to show up to Fox’s house looking like a pair of normal people so that it could try to ferret out of her what she knows about all this. Then when it was inside it would sort of gradually lose track of its human form, drop some hints and minor explanations and a warning, and leave. But it basically swept in in its normal nightmare form, said, “heh, you really don’t have any idea what’s going here at all, do you? Now keep your damn mouth shut or else,” killed her pet lizard, and swept out. It told her its name when she asked, but it didn’t do any of the explaining I’d meant it to do.
There’s also a later scene where Fox goes to meet with the Pirate Queen (O’Malley), who would explain the whole thing. What has happened is that O’Malley has skipped that section of the conversation entirely. I’m still working on it, but pretty much the conversation has been a one-sided “Okay, so where is he? I don’t believe that you don’t know anything about this, quit playing stupid. Yeah, I don’t care what my assistant told you I’d do–What? The scary villain's involved? You’ve seen what it does, and it hates him more than it hates most people. Oh crap, this is bad. This is really bad. Get out there and do something about it.” from O’Malley. Even when I try to steer the conversation the way I want it to go by having Fox come right out and ask “whoa, wait, you’re dating a knight? What are you talking about?” O’Malley completely ignores the question.
There is one more character (or pair of characters, I’m still not exactly sure) Fox is going to be spending time with who might do a better job of explaining it to her, but his attitude is pretty much “look, lady, I don’t care, I know what’s going on here so just be quiet and let me lead.” Also Fox doesn’t really like or trust him very much. I have one last one who might tell her what's up because he likes feeling like he's smarter than other people, but I'm not positive he doesn't die before she comes on the scene.
Even aside from where it fits, having someone saying "why yes, I'm the Whatever, we're all this" seems really artificial to me. People don't talk about themselves like that. I just can't figure out how to get this idea across. Anyone else have any ideas?
I'm working on a fantasy involving a parallel dimension inhabited by the personifications of character tropes and archetypes. I suppose you could think of them as being in the same general ballpark as the Endless from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comic. They appear as ordinary people (or most of them do, anyway), but they sort of influence their world based on the trope they represent--the Wise Woman's sphere of influence is a very serene place and others sort of naturally turn to her for advice, the Pirate Queen is a cut-throat corporate CEO surrounded by similarly ruthless business folk--if that makes sense. My main character, Fox, is a pretty ordinary woman who owns a bookstore and gives Tarot readings in a little college town in southwestern Ohio. She's got no reason to know any of this.
My problem is that none of my trope-world characters will tell her about it once she gets entangled in their problems. What's happened is that the Pirate Queen's gentleman friend, the Knight in Shining Armor, went missing shortly after Fox did a Tarot reading for him at her bookshop. The Pirate Queen doesn't believe that Fox had nothing to do with her and tells her basically that she'd better either give him back or find out what happened to him, or else. All the trope characters involved are too worried about their own problems to slow down and tell her what's what or don't care that she doesn't know.
The villain was supposed to show up to Fox’s house looking like a pair of normal people so that it could try to ferret out of her what she knows about all this. Then when it was inside it would sort of gradually lose track of its human form, drop some hints and minor explanations and a warning, and leave. But it basically swept in in its normal nightmare form, said, “heh, you really don’t have any idea what’s going here at all, do you? Now keep your damn mouth shut or else,” killed her pet lizard, and swept out. It told her its name when she asked, but it didn’t do any of the explaining I’d meant it to do.
There’s also a later scene where Fox goes to meet with the Pirate Queen (O’Malley), who would explain the whole thing. What has happened is that O’Malley has skipped that section of the conversation entirely. I’m still working on it, but pretty much the conversation has been a one-sided “Okay, so where is he? I don’t believe that you don’t know anything about this, quit playing stupid. Yeah, I don’t care what my assistant told you I’d do–What? The scary villain's involved? You’ve seen what it does, and it hates him more than it hates most people. Oh crap, this is bad. This is really bad. Get out there and do something about it.” from O’Malley. Even when I try to steer the conversation the way I want it to go by having Fox come right out and ask “whoa, wait, you’re dating a knight? What are you talking about?” O’Malley completely ignores the question.
There is one more character (or pair of characters, I’m still not exactly sure) Fox is going to be spending time with who might do a better job of explaining it to her, but his attitude is pretty much “look, lady, I don’t care, I know what’s going on here so just be quiet and let me lead.” Also Fox doesn’t really like or trust him very much. I have one last one who might tell her what's up because he likes feeling like he's smarter than other people, but I'm not positive he doesn't die before she comes on the scene.
Even aside from where it fits, having someone saying "why yes, I'm the Whatever, we're all this" seems really artificial to me. People don't talk about themselves like that. I just can't figure out how to get this idea across. Anyone else have any ideas?
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I'd say have Fox be the one who does the exposition. Have her be struck by the resemblance to X stereotypical character, or of a character from such-and-such book that she read. She does own a bookstore, after all. Make these characters as Troperrific as possible, so that interacting with them is a veritable Cliche Storm! (Links contain some offensive language and things.) And they have different trappings and things, but she starts to realize she can predict their behavior just by thinking what so-and-so would do in this situation.
Each time she meets a new person on this adventure of hers, she starts trying to determine which character archetype he or she is. By the time someone actually explains it to her, it's less of a surprise and more of a confirmation.
Bonus plot twist: Fox herself is the embodiment of a character archetype, but doesn't realize it (and won't until someone tells her).
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It sounds like unconsciously you're really resisting the idea of dropping exposition in conversation, and rightly so. You might try reframing Fox as more of an observer than an interviewer. Readers can take a little bit of "okay, we're catching you up with talking heads," but it's much more interesting to watch action or just plain interaction. Even if all the details don't come pouring out all at once, they'll watch with the POV character long enough and start to figure it out, which is part of the fun. We're also much more engaged with Fox if she's not just absorbing everything, but actively working to deduce the rules.
Does Fox have a guide who knows the world? A sort of "Stick with me, kid" character might be able to help her navigate the new rules of the universe without making everyone explain themselves. Inhabiting the world is going to reveal a lot more than explaining it.
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I like your set-up, though!
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I agree with all the reasons given for not including an infodump so far, but I do also want to give another. If you do end up including the information scene, there's a good chance it won't be just artificial, but forced. Force something and there's one of two things going on: whatever you've forced into the story really doesn't belong in it or some part of the story is majorly flawed and needs some severe revisions. It's usually the former, in my experience.
If some of the information is really, really necessary, look into dispersing it rather than writing one long infodump for readers to slog through. Exposition can be done well, but nine times out of ten all it accomplishes is bogging your story down. By dispersing the information into much smaller chunks the story keeps moving, readers get a chance to figure it out on their own and you reduce the chance of said readers skimming or skipping parts of your novel significantly.
Chances are, you've already been doing the information-dispersing. All those scenes you describe here, they all have pieces of the puzzle that makes up your world. If you really, desperately need some information/explaining done, would having Fox think on all she's seen and showing her figuring it out on her own be an option? (With the added bonus that, written right, you'll reaffirm the reader's belief that Fox is a smart woman, capable of thinking on her own. Unless of course she isn't then that idea is useless, but hopefully you see what I mean. ^-^)
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(2) Aren't there any Trickster characters?
Does she buy/sell old books? Could a Trickster character drop off a book with hints or explanations in it?
(3) She does Tarot.
Would the field exerted by the trope characters at all affect her readings? Could that make her curious?
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Once you know that, I have some basic worldbuilding questions: Do they know they're archetypes, are they immortal because they're archetypes, do they have special powers, do people know about them, do only certain people know about them? Even in Sandman there's a lot more going on than just the Endless, and his characters had many places they could go for information. I'm not suggesting you need a Gaimanesque world of crazy people, but consider sources of information other than your primary characters. Books, museums, universities, secret societies, archetypes not directly involved but sympathetic to Fox, other humans who know about the archetypes, etc.
I like the idea of combining Fox doing research and some other, human/archetype source of information, and I definitely advocate sprinkling the exposition throughout the text. Infodumps are awkward and irritating to the reader.
Also, I know someone suggested making Fox an archetype herself as a plot twist, but I have to come down against that. In my opinion it would be incredibly predictable--of course fantasy books aren't about normal people! Everyone in a fantasy book must be fantastic! Blargh. I admit to a slight bias, however.