Avoiding Literary Indigestion

If you've explored all the intricacies of your magic system on page one you're going to lose ninety percent of your audience right off the bat.  You simply can't throw that much abstract on a person that fast.  That's where learning curve comes in.

World-building, character details, etc. need to be built upon over the course of a manuscript, not covered in the first scene.  Each time you teach the reader something new about your world they need to digest it.  If you toss a ton of info down your readers' gullets too fast they'll get literary indigestion.  Not a pretty sight.

Info-dumping is your worst nightmare.  You can do similar things if you're a good writer using a Watson character or otherwise through dialogue, although you still must do it incrementally.  If you simply must get all the cool aspects of your story written down, put them as a list of notes in a separate file, don't add them to your manuscript.

Most people don't like heights.  Readers are similar in the literary world as they are in the physical world.  Thus, steep learning curves are scary and can lead to falling off the edge.  You really do not want that.

The Master of Weighty Tomes

Orson Scott Card's Xenocide has been a bit of a disappointment, as his writing style doesn't quite fit the six hundred page novel format.  However, one notable author penned far longer works smooth as silk.  He was none other than the great James Oliver Rigney, Jr., a.k.a. Robert Jordan.

Never before had I read such a long book that never felt like it dragged.  Robert Jordan could take ten pages of description and keep you focused no matter how dry it was at its core.  In The Eye of the World, one piece of dialogue by Moiraine stretched out to about five pages.  At the time I had never seen one character speak for so long (nor have I since, that I remember).  It astounded me.  Never once was my attention detracted.  Brilliant.

There's much to say about Mr. Jordan.  I have hardly begun to delve into his several million word contribution to literature and am yet to discover his secrets.  I'll be sure to reflect if I ever find them.

Troll Hunter (Part 1)

I'm on vacation and only got the first scene done today, so I'll call this the first part of a longer story.

     A bay mare hustled into the castle bailey.  The clop of its hooves on the cobblestone could have been rumbles of thunder.  Atop it straddled a women vested in half a suit of armor.  Her hair flowed behind her in tangled bunches.  She puffed almost as hard as her mount.

     “What is it?” one of the nearest lords inquired.
     “Gretmot,” the messenger choked, “has been attacked.
     The lord’s eyes sprung wide.  “The western fortress, besieged?”
     The messenger’s gaze dropped.  “They were breaching the gate when I left.”
     “No…”
     “Who did this?” another lord asked.  He wrung his calloused hands.
     “The hill trolls seem to have struck up an alliance with an ogre.  I think he was of the northern tribe, by his tattoos.  Beastly with a tree trunk.”
     The crowd of lords and ladies thickened.  The Prince was the last to join them, dressed in velvet robes of azure and crimson.  “Fear not, milords and ladies.  I shall have the best of my knights on the task at once.”  His gaze met the messenger.  “As for you, Lady Edlewine, I suggest you fix your armor.  We’ll need a first-rate troll hunter.”

Writing Speeches Under Duress

I've mentioned before that I do extemporaneous speaking.  My delivery still needs some work, but my content is going pretty well.  There are many challenges proposed by extemporaneous speaking, yet each can be overcome with due effort.

Thirty minutes may seem like a lot of time to prepare for a speech.  It isn't.  I am tense as a first-time skydiver when prepping.  Research takes the bulk of my time, as I'm not inherently learned in politics and economics, the biggest topics, and sources must be cited.  The intro is generally slapped on at the beginning or end of prep, while the conclusion is usually ad-libbed.  I use anecdotes or crazy comparisons most of the time.  The key to mastering the time crunch is still unknown to me.  My only advice: don't waste a moment and work like heck.

Taking an otherwise simple yes/no question and developing your answer with three points can be tough.  It can also seem impossible.  Sometimes I have to fudge the last one, using a short, weak point.  Doing so ups the stress even further and hurts the entire integrity of the speech.  However, sometimes it needs to be done.  In those cases, you just have to pack as much info and sources into it as possible.

I'm not even going to mention the actual speaking part.  My skill in that area is developing, albeit slower than I'll like and still beneath my seasoned competitors.

Depending upon the weather, I may or may not have a speech meet tomorrow.  It'll take a lot of help from the man upstairs to keep me from getting last.  Again.  Hopefully my decent ability to write speeches under duress will prevail.

Schedule Tweak

I'm tweaking my schedule a bit.  Due to my general laziness on general posts, I'm specifying the posts as literary criticisms.

Literary criticisms will be an umbrella-term for book reviews, mid-book analyses, and writing style evaluations, both for individuals and general styles.

As I posted a book review yesterday, I'm keeping this as my last general post.