Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Spoon feeding the facts

This is topic Spoon feeding the facts in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

Anyone else notice this trend lately?

Evil cannot just be in the world, it has to have a reason to be, an origin.

Everything has to be explained in painful detail--no hints that the reader has to put together.

Seems to me that it is no longer “respect the reader’s intelligence”, but it has become “gear your story towards those who need to have the facts pounded home”.

Sigh---

Shawn

Posted by James Maxey (Member # 1335) on :

Is this one trend or two?

If your statement is that few writers resort to some supernatural, unmotivated evil to explain the actions of their characters, then, yeah, sure. I see good writers delve deeper into motivation all the time. The reality is that all the great villians in the real world, say Osama or Hitler, are (or were) actual human beings with rather complex motivations for the things they have done (or will do). No one wakes up and thinks, "Hey, let's do some evil today." Remember that almost every bad guy sees himself as the good guy trying to bring a world gone crazy back into line with what he thinks it should be. Even deeply psychopathic serial killers aren't acting because they get out of bed evil. Their reasons may seem evil to us, but they are coming from a place where human livers are an essential part of a balanced breakfast, so a little late night ax-murdering makes logical sense.

The only home for villians who are motivated only by doing evil for the sake of evil are in action-toy-based cartoons and the occasional slasher movie.

If you are griping about writers explaining too much and not allowing writers to peice things together themselves, I would have to say this varies so much from writer to writer that it can hardly be called a trend. And there are very valid reasons for spelling everything out and leaving nothing to chance with the reader. If you explain too much, readers might find it tedious, but at least will understand what you are getting at and can follow the story. If you explain too little, they will just be confused and lost. Do you have to write as if everyone of your readers is a slow third grader or CEO of a major corporation? No, but it doesn't mean that people who write to be comprehended by these people are wrong.

--James Maxey

Posted by mags (Member # 1570) on :

Another "trend" that I have noticed, is that it use to be that much of the science fiction stories had some basis in science and if they did break rules that we know now, there were explinations for it. But currently, with the exception of a few hard core science fiction writers, it seems that many who are getting that label slapped on them are actually science fantasy, and aren't even researching stuff they are using, but basically trying to recreate the wheel every time.

EDIT: sorry for the sidetrack, but I really needed to get that off my chest.

[This message has been edited by mags (edited July 13, 2003).]

Posted by James Maxey (Member # 1335) on :

Maybe I'm feeling especially evil today, but again I must leap to the defense of these trends you are bothered by. There is an excellent reason for writers to "reinvent the wheel" when they write books. Every book written is possibly the first book read by a potential reader. It may be that you have read a hundred different "mission to Mars" stories, but other readers who pick up a mission to Mars story may be stumbling across the idea in fiction for the very first time. This is why even though writers like Bradbury and Robinson have done excellent treatments of the idea in the past, I as an author am free to just leap right into the water and write the from the same basic premise again. Obviously, it isn't okay for me to plagerize from what has gone before, but neither am I under any obligation to acknowledge what has gone before.

I would also say that one reason that genre fiction gets trapped into smaller and smaller market is because too many authors target only readers already familiar with the concepts, leaving readers outside the genre lost should they attempt to test the waters.

As for SF slipping into science fantasy, it has done so since its very earliest origins, dating all the way back to stories like Frankenstein and War of the Worlds and the Time Machine. Even the most "hard" sf writers introduce completely fantastic ideas with no real science grounding into their writings. They are writing fiction, after all, not science text books.

Feeling feisty,

James Maxey

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

There is a theory of fiction writing that says that different kinds of stories require different "reading protocols" to appreciate them.

OSC talks about this with respect to science fiction in his book on the subject. He points out that people who write for science fiction readers have to be very careful with their metaphors because their readers could take them literally.

Consider the difference between how a reader of some other kind of story would interpret the phrase "her world exploded" and how a reader of science fiction would interpret that phrase.

Other examples are "as the family sat at breakfast, the morning sun came through the window" and "his eyes dropped to the table."

(Samuel R. Delany calls these "subjunctive tensions," by the way.)

Other aspects of the reading protocols for science fiction include things like not explaining what's going on because science fiction readers tend to enjoy figuring things out from clues the writer gives them. Readers of other kinds of fiction find this kind of writing frustrating, and it is probably one reason you have to be careful when you try to introduce someone to the world of science fiction stories.

Michael Crichton, who could be considered to be a science fiction writer who writes science fiction for non-science-fiction readers, explained in an interview in the Del Rey online newsletter a year or so ago just what he does that makes his kind of science fiction accessible to people who don't ordinarily read it. If that interview is in the Del Rey website's archives, it would be worth looking up and reading. (What he does might qualify as spoon-feeding.)

I suspect that the "trend" Shawn is talking about is due to a desire for writers to be accessible to more than the usual science fiction reader.

And that kind of writing can be just as frustrating to the reader who knows how to use science fiction protocols to read science fiction. I know when I tried to read P. D. James' attempt at science fiction (THE CHILDREN OF MEN), I gave up after two and a half chapters of explanation and set-up, but that kind of "spoon-feeding" is what Ms. James seemed to think her readers needed in order to read her science fiction story.

Anyway, I hope I've offered one more way to think about what you are doing when you are writing a story. Reading protocols may be one of the reasons why writers are urged to consider their audiences when they write.

Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

It is not the writers who think the readers need this.

It's the publishers and the agents. I guess this is what is selling now. Spoon feed the facts, but beware author voice or outright telling vs showing.

Makes getting a story ready to sell a pain in the butt!

Part of it, I will say, is the JK Rawling factor--she spoon feeds everything--nothing is left to the imagination of the reader. Great for young readers--but adults read those books and oh and ah over them as well. So now we spoon feed.

Sheesh, what we authors won't do to sell our books. I feel like I am giving everything away--so why read on? Seriously. Why read on when you know everything from the start and there is nothing left to find out except maybe how the characters got there. No guess work, or assumptions. This is the way, I the author, see it and you better like it. This is the way this character is---know all his ambitions from the start etc. UGH

I can only hope by book two that book one sells enough copies for me to say--STET!!!

Shawn

Posted by Rahl22 (Member # 1411) on :

Don't worry Shawn, I'm sure you'll be telling editors and copy editors to "forget it" in no time!

Posted by mags (Member # 1570) on :

I wouldn't mind Rowlings books reiterating stuff as much if she were more consistant in what she wrote. She seems to forget sometimes, or just decides that she wants to call something something else.

As far as getting upset about reinventing the wheel... I don't mean things like the fact that most every writer who has sent people to Mars does it a different way, and treats what they will find, etc different. - it bothers me more when you have authors who send people to Mars and they are living in a breathable atmosphere, with lots of plants (and, no this isn't the older writings, as the opinion of Mars has changed since then.) but yet there is no explination of how they got there... more like the time is 2008 and the jungles have been there for hundreds of thousands of years... and the story was first published in 2000 - that kind of thing. In all honesty it would bother me more if everyone sent people to Mars based on what Jules Verne first did to send people to the Moon - or H.G. Wells for that matter.

Posted by Alexander (Member # 1665) on :

I too dislike being told too much. I prefer it when writers take their characters' world 'for granted' and yet manage, by fine art, to let you in on everything you need to know to understand. I similarly like not knowing everything about characters, and even actively wondering about them, yet being filled in on the crucial details at the proper time (and being filled in on these details in a matter-of-fact way, not being hit over the head with them).

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

Kathleen said:

quote:
Michael Crichton, who could be considered to be a science fiction writer who writes science fiction for non-science-fiction readers, explained in an interview in the Del Rey online newsletter a year or so ago just what he does that makes his kind of science fiction accessible to people who don't ordinarily read it. If that interview is in the Del Rey website's archives, it would be worth looking up and reading. (What he does might qualify as spoon-feeding.)

I'd definitely call it spoon feeding. Back in June I read Michael Crichton's Airframe. I loved the story and hated the spoon-feeding. It's a great techno-thriller in which he pauses to explain every little technical detail to the reader.

He did this in two main ways. The first was to have the POV character involved in tense, realistic, and highly technical conversations and meetings with a notebook in her hands. She would speak and hear the techno-babble, but then summarize in her notebook using plain English.

I hated that. I wanted to listen in on the techno-babble and figure out what it meant.

The second thing Crichton did was to give his POV character an assistant who was technically ignorant. Every few pages the POV character would explain what was happening to her assistant in plain English. As a reader, I just wanted to see her smack the assistant over the head and call him an idiot.

So there you have it. If you don't spoon-feed, Doc Brown will buy your book and tell everyone it's wonderful. If you do spoon-feed millions of people will buy your book, which Stephen Spielberg will make into a blockbuster movie, but Doc Brown will log onto Hatrack River Writer's Workshops and tell everyone he hated the stupid spoon-fed rag you call a book.

Your choice.