Do you "need" to introduce the reader to your setting? (Mainly sci-fi and fantasy)

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by LadyErica, Dec 19, 2018.

  1. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    IDK, you can do it either way I suppose.
    I wouldn't spend the first 3-5 chapters prattling on about it.
    I think with the write amount of cursory words you can establish
    setting in Fantasy/Sci-fi. Suppose it depends on if you have a need
    to go into it at depth with every last detail of every rock, tree, and
    building that exists in the world you have created.
    However I think we can infer as the reader, about where/when a
    given work of fiction takes place, based upon the little things that
    are acted upon by the MC(s).
    Obviously it would have elements that would fit the genre, and not
    have something so out of place that it throws it all into disarray for
    the reader. So if time travel doesn't happen to exist in the narrative,
    your character cannot simply whip out a smart phone in a medieval
    setting. That would toss all the established rules right out the window,
    and throw the disbelief factor right out the window.
    But basically you can do the setting bit however you like, cause there
    is not a right or wrong way to establish setting, just don't spend too
    damn long hitting the reader over the head with it. Action moves your
    story, not time period or place(s). :)
     
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  2. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Nah. It can't be vital when there are contrary examples. Erikson writes in a completely invented high fantasy setting. The setting and stories are complicated. He doesn't really set things up in terms of explaining the world. I went back and re-read the first book in the series after I'd finish around 4 of them, and I said "OH--SO THAT'S IT" about a dozen times, because I'd pieced together enough in four books that suddenly the fact that he didn't tell me much about the world in book 1 didn't stop me from knowing it. His series has done well, so I'd say there is a market for that. It's part of the fun of reading them. But it's kind of a love it or hate it thing. I've recommended his books to people who have decided halfway through book 1 they didn't know what was going on and gave up.

    I do like E. E. Smith, though ;)
     
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  3. LadyErica

    LadyErica Active Member

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    Again, thanks for all your help. :) A few points, though.

    First of all, someone "What if Snow White was never written?" That's a good question, but not all that relevant. It would be a bigger issue if fantasy was never invented. Tolkien might have invented the fantasy genre as we know it, but even he borrowed far more than he created. But ignoring that, fantasy as we know it is a huge genre today, and a lot of the stories share a lot of things. So if we're talking about orcs, elves and goblins in a fantasy setting, we pretty much have a good idea what they are like, right from the start. It's fantasy. It's an elf. Of course it's like any other fantasy-elf. I know there are sub-genres within fantasy like modern fantasy, urban fantasy, science-fantasy and what not, but I'm talking Tolkien-ish fantasy here. High fantasy? So if I have a story set in a setting like that, wouldn't people already know what things are like, based on other settings? I just don't want to reinvent the wheel. I do want to explain why it's a different wheel than the other fifty dozen wheels over there, but in the end, it's just a wheel.

    As for Star Wars, that's another good example... I think. I haven't read all that many Star Wars books, but they don't really spend time setting up things at all. We all know Jabba the Hutt was important in the original trilogy, and he had some business with Han Solo in the past. We know he's a gangster of some sort, and deals with slaves. But we are never told what a Hutt really is, or how they live, how they reproduce, how they sleep, how their lifespan is, or anything like that. We see Jabba, and we're told he's a Hutt. We know Jar Jar is the most hated character in Star Wars, but other than being aquatic, we don't know anything important about him. Yoda is a jedi master and lived to be 800 years or so, but other than that, how much do we really know about him? Or his species? We simply don't need to know.

    That's mostly what I'm talking about here. We know Krangidur was destroyed by orcs a long time ago. Do we really need to go into detail what the orcs are like? Do we care why they attacked Krangidur, if they are no longer a threat? It would be fairly obvious the orcs have taken over the lands around here from the rest of the story, so it could be obvious they are enemies of the heroes. But do we really need to learn about their society, their language, their religion, their eating habits, their family lives and all that? Or is it enough to say that's an orc, so stay away?
     
  4. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I feel that you're arguing the wrong point. You seem to be arguing, "Everybody knows all this stuff, so I don't have to give the reader a lot of detailed backstory."

    But IMO the real answer is that even if everybody doesn't know all that stuff, you don't have to give the reader a lot of detailed backstory, so usually you don't.

    Yes, it's enough to say, "That's an orc, so stay away," because it's enough to say, "That's a whiffencat, so stay away." You don't need to offer pages or even paragraphs of explanations of what a whiffencat is. You slip it into the story.
     
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  5. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Intrigued. Please do elaborate on what this creature is. :)
     
  6. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    Brandon Sanderson said that relaying more than one of character, setting, and plot with every sentence is the primary skill of writing fantasy.
     
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  7. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I've just seen this thread, and I see that lots of other people have made excellent contributions. The one I would like to make is this. You mention Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. Yes, there is a LOT of information about Middle Earth in those books. But go back and re-read it and pay attention to HOW Tolkien works this information in. (I mean the book, not the movie and its awkward prologue that was, in essence, an infodump. That didn't exist in the book. Moviemaking is a different art, even when it's telling the same story.)

    Tolkien starts Lord of the Rings with a birthday party, and the attendant kerfuffle it took to get it organised. He only hints at the world outside the Shire, and the Shire is something we can all identify with pretty quickly ...the nosey-parker neighbours, pain-in-the-butt shirttail relatives, children creating havoc, Bilbo losing the rag and feeling stressed and pressured, Frodo hanging around doing what he can to help, etc. A big tree. Food. Festive stuff. Gandalf (a kindly old wizard) arrives in a cart, and creates some pretty impressive magic that is identified as 'fireworks.' And etc.

    That is a gentle introduction to Tolkien's 'world,' isn't it? We find out about the other denizens of the world later on, on a need-to-know basis, as the four original hobbits move out of their comfort zone. Usually this information is given via one character, such as Gandalf, or Aragorn, explaining to the hobbits, etc. It's not given as a big wad of infodump. There is always the personal angle in there. We are getting the information painlessly, and learning as we go.

    You could do a lot worse to emulate that approach. Ditto Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy. Same thing. Start small, with individual characters and their immediate problems and concerns. Gradually a bigger picture will emerge.
     
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  8. 18-Till-I-Die

    18-Till-I-Die Banned

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    @Steerpike
    Well, I don't know about the book you're referencing, or at least I never heard of that author for all I know I read it and just forgot lol

    What I will say is, it would be, to my mind, IMMENSELY difficult to have zero exposition or introduction of lore or background in any kind of High Fantasy or Sci-Fi setting. Like, at some point someone has to explain what is happening and why. And this kinda goes to what @LadyErica was saying, or rather ties into what she mentions about Jabba the Hutt. No, we don'y get a huge backstory lore dump, but we DO get a massive lore exposition at the very beginning of the movie, every SW movie opens with a background establishing both the movie in question and the plot and the previous one or the background it's built on, so that as I said just with that opening text you understand a good chunk of the universe's lore. Again you have to kinda know what you're doing to make that work, and we can't all be George Lucas (and sadly Rian Johnson can't either...) but it's a necessity regardless. You HAVE to explain what is happening, why it's happening, give some background and some kind of a foundation no matter how nebulous or else it makes no sense. And I bet the books you're referencing do that to some degree, again it may be VERY subtle like what Doc Smith did, where he explains almost ad hoc as he introduces the technology, faction, ships, etc. So it may be happening almost in real time as the story progresses but it has to happen or else it makes no sense.

    Or put another way, I can't just open a story with like Rob Stark getting gutted while Lord Fray cackles "The Lannisters send their regards AHAHAHAHA!" and then start the story there with NO explanation of who the fuck Rob Stark is, NO explanation of who or what the Lannisters are, NO explanation as to why he's being killed, NO explanation as to what conflict sparked his assassination, etc. At best it would make no sense, at worst it would be almost off-putting to readers, or at least to me I imagine.
     
  9. Stormburn

    Stormburn Contributor Contributor

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    The type of narrative POV that you choose will say a lot about how you introduce information into your story. Tolkien used 3rd Person Omniscient for the LotR. Suzanne Collins used 1st Person in the Hunger Games.
    Imagine how different The Hobbit would read if written in 1st Person from Bilbo's pov.
    That said, one thing that I've learned is that if it needs to be to be in the story the story will tell you. Trust your gut. I would panic "Oh, this has to be in the story!" and force it in only to discover a point in the story later that called for that same information.
    Godspeed!
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2018
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  10. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    You assume it is enough that the characters know what they are talking about but the reader NEEDS to know too. A good read gets the reader involved. If you do it this way the reader is just merely an observer. I could just listen to people talking on a bus instead of reading your book.
     
  11. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I don’t agree that this is necessarily true. You can do it that way, of course, but there are good books where the reader isn’t spoon fed everything, and where characters talk about things that make sense to them but aren’t immediately clear to the reader. The key is giving readers the clues to piece it together.
     
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  12. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

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    Tolkien was also basically inventing a whole new genre of fiction, too, and didn't have the luxury of having readers literate in the tropes and motifs associated with it. Today if you mention Elves or Dwarfs in a fantasy novel, the reader is going to have a pretty solid understanding of what your talking about with out going into too much detail. I believe it's only when we deviate from the established definitions and devices that we really need to use a whole lot of words to explain these to the audience.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2018
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  13. Just a cookiemunster

    Just a cookiemunster Active Member

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    I didn't read the responses yet I don't know if someone mentioned this alredy but I wanted to throw my 2 cents into the pot. I write fantasy,however,I like to look at these kind of problems from my POV as a reader because in general you want to know what readers would think right? If you do not describe enough of the setting/history your world is going to feel empty and shallow. Now you don't have to go textbook crazy and some people like more description that others. It comes down to personal preference and balance really. But the main idea to fantasy to get the reader to think your world is a living breathing functioning world and they should be able to visualize it clearly. The reader should see what you see. I don't like books that leave it up to me to figure out what someone or something looks like. I mean you could say Darrin entered the castle and leave it at that because we all know what a castle is right? But maybe I would think of a gothic castle and my friend would think of a roman castle. But what you visualized was a white dome shaped palace adorned in gold with bear skin rugs and marble flooring etc
    You could say he saw the elf but it still does not give me a proper visual. I don't assume all elves look EXACTLY the same. I would rather you tell me something like: long black hair caressed his back and his broze skin glinted in the morning sun. Long slender fingers held the bow and arrow in position. You get the idea. :supergrin:
     
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  14. Aled James Taylor

    Aled James Taylor Contributor Contributor

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    I haven't read all the previous comments so my apologies if this has already been said.

    If you don't describe settings or the appearance of the characters, the reader may imagine these things for themselves. Different readers will imagine different details depending on what they are accustomed to. A reader in Norway may imagine pale skinned people while a reader in Nigeria may imagine an all back cast. That wouldn't be a problem so long as you don't drop in details about appearance later on. It would be uncomfortably jarring for a reader to think of a character as a black African for half the book and then learn of her long blond hair and blue eyes. Rule number 1 in writing is: Don't confuse the reader.

    If you include too much detail, the text may be tedious and the reader may soon lose interest. You could say, 'he reached for his sword' or you could say, 'with his left arm, he reached for his sword'. Do you need to specify which arm he uses? Would it matter in the reader assumed he was right handed? If what you need to convey and what the reader might assume are different things, you need to include the detail, otherwise it's gratuitous and maybe tedious.

    I'd avoid info-dumps like the plague, they're difficult to engage with and tend to be tedious. Background information may be necessary to make the plot appear plausible or it may be good for worldbuilding, or to explain the motivations of the characters. In place of an info-dump, you could have the characters ask each other questions. These questions shouldn't be out of the blue but relate to what they're experiencing at the time. There need to be a reason to ask or it would make no sense. You could have them tell each other anecdotes. Such anecdotes would need to be either interesting or humorous as friends don't normally give each other unrequested history lessons.
     
  15. animagus_kitty

    animagus_kitty Senior Member

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    ...they don't?
    that explains the looks I get from my peers when I launch into a rousing tale about Roman politics in the 3rd century.
     
  16. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

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    "I admit it, you are better than I am."
    "Then why are you smiling?"
    "Because I know something you do not know."
    "And what is that?"
    "I am not left handed."

    Probably, but I think what Aldred's referring to is Maid and Butler talk.
     

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