Exposition-scarce Writing

[RX-79G]

Personally I get bored if for instance I am not not told what a character looks like or what they're wearing.

You haven't read anything where the author kept you interested with other matters, and you didn't have time to get bored by the lack of description or more mundane things, like clothes?

 

[Aquilonian]

You haven't read anything where the author kept you interested with other matters, and you didn't have time to get bored by the lack of description or more mundane things, like clothes?

Not in ordinary fiction, no. To be believable and interesting for me, a story has to have the same inputs as in my experience of my own world, in which I always know what people and places look like and how hot it is and so on. And I wouldn't see clothes as uninteresting, because they tell me a lot about the person- not their character of course, but about how they want to be perceived if they have any choice in their dress, or their station in life if they don't.

 

[RX-79G]

Not in ordinary fiction, no. To be believable and interesting for me, a story has to have the same inputs as in my experience of my own world, in which I always know what people and places look like and how hot it is and so on. And I wouldn't see clothes as uninteresting, because they tell me a lot about the person- not their character of course, but about how they want to be perceived if they have any choice in their dress, or their station in life if they don't.

I guess I had assumed we were talking about SFF, due to the forum.

 

[Aquilonian]

By ordinary fiction I meant fiction that's inteneded to be read as fiction which includes SFF, as opposed to books that aren't necessarily seen by everyone as fiction. For example I regard most of the Old Testament as fiction, but many others see it as real history. The OT came to mind because yes I do find it interesting even though it doesn't tell you what people look like. But in the case of the OT we all have an idea of that already, from illustrated Bible stories read in childhood. The people and landscapes are familiar to us already.

 

[LittleStar]

I might be the exact opposite of you @Aquilonian! For me the description in great detail of a characters clothes, hair colour, eye colour, face description, all of that is mundane and completely irrelevant. I will absolutly be turned away off by that, maybe not enough to put down a book, but it's something that helps ruin the emersion.

I think these details shuld be drip fed or even withheld. In my own writing there are almost no clothing or facial descriptions, light sprinklings now and again to get the world/setting across etc, but mostly ill pick out a feature that is striking to my pov, and focus on that when description arrives, bright blue eyes or deep red hair, along those lines.

Only something out of the ordinary, a scar running through an eye for example, is anythng less than exposition in my book (though obviousy exposition is sometimes needed and welcome). Until something relevant or out of the ordinary comes up Im perfectly content building images from my brain bank.
I know what a space marine looks like, two words gets everything I need to know. Where the non-exposition details come in are maybe his freeze ray weapons that I don't associate with space marines, or the fact that he is rake thin and can barely wear his big armour etc.

As you already know, Why waste words and time describing something I already know?


And just to quickly muddy my point before finishing. I love description. I love vistas, I love cities, I love characters, all of it. But if your going to describe a character don't stick it all in one (often very large and detailed) paragraph the second the enter the room

 

[RX-79G]

My opinion is that character descriptions are most useful for describing how characters see each other. (Silvia glared back into his beady little eyes.) The reader can and will fill in some blanks if they aren't important for the story, like whether the hero's hair is straight or curly. Sometimes we feel a responsibility to present everything we imagine, but less is more if Reginald's green checked shirt isn't actually going to drive the story.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Just wanted to add a few things:

There seems to be a common drive in modern SFF to have these huge series - 10 books series where each book is a massive door stopper. There are Trilogies galore in SFF at the moment - seems to be all the rage.

Older SFF tens to be a lot shorter and a lot more succinct, rarely does old SFF trot out hundreds and hundreds of pages in a sprawling multi book series. My guess: this to do with the publishing market (being published in serial formats) and a modern day drive to larger novels.

I recently used this as an example in another thread but McCarthy's The Road is a good example of very little exposition and I would definitely agree that Peter F. Hamilton has huge amounts of exposition as a general rule (although his more recent work has much less because he is building on pre-existing works). I am a fan of both here - I love the pulled back feel of The Road and the lack of exposition and sparse writing seems a great reflection of the setting. Hamilton on the other hand has created huge and varied worlds with some excellent Tech that benefits from info dumps and large sections of exposition.

 

[James118]

I've just finished off the (hopefully) final draft of a really cool and exciting scene in my next book, and immediately afterwards I discovered a wall of exposition on what the protag got up to the next day. He's a Very Important ManTM. So I asked myself a few questions about the exposition:

1. Is it relevant to the story at this point?

In this case, it's less pertinent to the plot and more a bit of background world-building, as well as some light foreshadowing.

2. Does it make an appearance, whether explicit or implicit, elsewhere?

The answer there was yes. So I've decided to trim back a lot of the irrelevant information that's wholly irrelevant to the plot.

It's been three or four years, at least, since my last major sweep through this particular story, and I'm finding a lot to trim. It's good to see that I've learned so much.

 

[Aquilonian]

"details should be drip fed... I love description. I love vistas, I love cities, I love characters, all of it. But if your going to describe a character don't stick it all in one (often very large and detailed) paragraph the second the enter the room"

On this I totally agree with you. Description should begin briefly, be expanded later in the course of naturally occurring events, for instance, when space marine leaves the room, "his hand rotator whirred quietly as he turned the doorknob" is better than spelling out in detail that he's half robotic.

"

I'm perfectly content building images from my brain bank. I know what a space marine looks like,

That's where I disagree. I DON'T know what a space marine looks like. Or to be more precise, I don't know what YOUR space marine looks like. My brain bank is not your brain bank.

 

[Toby Frost]

But does the difference between his space marine and yours really matter? If both definitions boil down to "elite soldier in space armour" then I don't think there's a lot of need to go into details unless they are directly relevant to the story.

 

[LittleStar]

But does the difference between his space marine and yours really matter? If both definitions boil down to "elite soldier in space armour" then I don't think there's a lot of need to go into details unless they are directly relevant to the story.

Just to quote you Toby for reference. This is exactly my point @Aquilonian.
If my space marine is unique then I'd add in said details, your whirring robot arm is a good example, not all generic space marines would have them as standard.

But if mine is a run of the mill marine, then aside from cursory descriptions and to break up 'he said, she said' etc. then I'd be happy writing and reading "he was a space marine" over too much description. Of course if the descriptions don't seem forced and slot nicely into the prose without taking me out of the scene, then as I said, I love descriptions

But of course the majority of the exposition arguments come down to personal preference.

 

[RX-79G]

But of course the majority of the exposition arguments come down to personal preference.

Deciding to write sparse exposition is definitely personal preference, which is why we have this thread. But whether you are writing rich or lean, you should be thinking about dumping the details that clog sentences and don't enrich the story. I think double adjective descriptions of unimportant stuff can sound really clumsy and distracting, like "thin black mustache".

If my space marine is unique then I'd add in said details, your whirring robot arm is a good example, not all generic space marines would have them as standard.

But if mine is a run of the mill marine, then aside from cursory descriptions and to break up 'he said, she said' etc. then I'd be happy writing and reading "he was a space marine" over too much description.

I realize that we are using "space marine" just as an example, but my head wants to explode every time I read something that uses clumsy old SF tropes like "space marine" or "tractor beam". Whether going for sparsity or not, I would hope any good writer would invest in a some exposition to create something new rather than leaning on this type of recycled and meaningless cliche.