Okay, so I don't to have to repeat that title through out this whole post, so were just going to talk about introducing new worlds ( although the same things should apply to all the others).
K, so you've written this insanely amazing book about this insanely amazing character who lives in this insanely amazing world. Problem is that this new world that your so proud of is pretty confusing and has alot of rules that the reader needs to know about. The main question is how to teach the reader with out making it: 1. obvious ( as in having the MC say: " Here, let me explain..."), 2. BORING, and 3. long.
Well, for starters, don't give the information all at once; only give the relevant information (and at the right time). We don't want to know the entire history of your dystopian society on the FIRST PAGE of the book. Save the information for when we want to hear it. And if all thats important is the fact that your country is ruled by a corrupted totalitarian government with an evil leader, then don't tell us about the bloody Civil war that took place 500 years before and put that government in place.
And another thing: NOTHING ruins a book like taking away all the surprises. Don't get carried away and tell us everything to make sure we have any questions . We WANT to have questions (the good kind). Sure, we want to know how the world works enough that we're not totally confused. But we DON'T want to know all of its secrets. In the book Matched ( AMAZING book, btw), Cassia explains how the Matching system works before its her turn, but she doesn't explain the significance of the blank screen until acouple pages later when the information is suddenly relevant. This creates suspense and mystery. So you need to figure out what information we need to know ASAP so we aren't confused, and what information has to wait to keep us interested and wanting answers. TIMING people. Timing is everything.
Oh, and one more thing. You don't need to explain every single little thing. Give us some credit, we can figure some things out or just use our imagination. In the book Matched, there are these things called hover cars that are mentioned a couple times through out the book. Thats all we know about them though. Their names. We dont know how they look, how they work, how fast they can go and how high up of the ground they are. But thats okay. Because we don't need to know ( and quite frankly, I don't really care too much).
Now that you know some guidelines, I took the method of sharing info with the reader and broke it down into three really simple categories ( but only two really matter):
1. Don't teach the reader, teach the MC. Okay, so this is a really good method because it accomplishes other things besides the whole explaining thing. When the MC has to stop the conversation to say " Hold up. Can some one please tell me WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON??", it gives us, the readers, and opportunity to say " I know right! This is confusing!". This then helps the readers to connect and bond with the character as they learn together. Another pro to this method is that people are generally fascinated with discovery. Would the Percy Jackson series have been as successful if Percy had practically grown up at Camp Halfblood when we found him? No, I dont think so. Because we like to see Percy's confusion and reactions to the crazy things that start happening to him. Why? Because in most cases, its like what we would do. If I started getting chased by a Minotaur and my mom turned to gold dust, I would be FREAKED OUT. And so was Percy. So once again, we connect because our reactions are similar, and we're discovering new things together.
2. Have the MC explain it to the reader. Okay so when your doing this, keep it sounding natural. Keep it with in the flow of conversation/ thoughts your character is having, so it doesn't seem weird when they start spouting information. Evie from Paralnormalcy ( GREAT book), is not going to be walking around the mall reviewing all the rules and guidelines she must follow as an employee at International Paranormal Containment Agency. She might, however, complain about how much work it is to travel the world doing bag and tag missions after she just tased a vampire. Get it? Another way to do this ( if your introducing like a ritual, action, etc.) would be to have someone go before the MC, and have them kinda review/ explain what they're doing.
3.Have the narrator explain everything to the reader in the Prologue. Haha, no. Yeah, don't do this (unless your writing a childrens book, which in that case it could work). I don't want to read a Prologue( or worse, a first chapter) that says: Jimmy lives in ______. ____ was ruled by an evil totalitarian government that made there citizens do this, this and this. Ugh, no. Just DON'T DO IT.
Okay, so those are the most basic methods I could break things down into. Of course there are variations of this such as MC has a limited knowledge of things or that the MC knows everything and their explaining it to another character who is learning ( like in Inception), etc.
Oh, and one more thing. You don't need to explain every single little thing. Give us some credit, we can figure some things out or just use our imagination. In the book Matched, there are these things called hover cars that are mentioned a couple times through out the book. Thats all we know about them though. Their names. We dont know how they look, how they work, how fast they can go and how high up of the ground they are. But thats okay. Because we don't need to know ( and quite frankly, I don't really care too much).
Did I miss anything important, or do you disagree with anything I wrote? Or do you just want to complain to me about how insanely long this post was? Put it in the comment section.
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The Equilateral Triangle
