During the course of my story i either create a huge exposition dump or i mention something that's important for setting in a passing sentence. I was wondering how fellow writers find a happy medium. It's a science fiction/supernatural story.
Are you someone who writes an outline or someone who doesn't? Because how detailed I describe something depends on it's importance to the plot and I judge that importance on my outline. It helps to know where I'm going with this scene. If it's just a small hint or the payoff is too small or it's something that does not involve my protagonist, I wouldn't give it a full scene. Hope that answers your questions.
I do not write outlines. Every time I have idea or scene i write it down before i forget it which happen way to often. I do have a digest of all my ideas. I'll go back write one for the chapters i have written. It might help me write some more and fix the others.
That's a good mentality to have Metal. Being a pantser is fine and dandy, but the key to being a good pantser is making sure you go back afterwards and look at what you wrote with a plotter in mind. There's a good rule of thumb for me, which is looking for the "mission critical" stuff. What does a reader *need* to know, as opposed to what you simply *want* him/her to know. Because at the end of the day, if you're writing this book to sell to other people and you want them to enjoy it, then you're writing for them, not you. I just had to tackle this myself with my current WIP. (It's not specifically on the setting, but it's the same process.) I had to build up my character, his traits, and touch on his background in the first chapter. I made sure to use as many physical examples that fit into the action as possible in order to bring them up and briefly explain them. That way, every time one of them gets mentioned it is due to a natural occurrence in the scene that the reader then doesn't see as info dump or expo. (because its either a brief mention or 100% relevant. I try to make it both.) For instance - He's a private eye, so I have him physically doing a mission and questioning aspects of what he's doing to start the scene. This also leads into him briefly musing how he might get caught, which naturally brings up his mentioning of a robotic police unit, informing the reader this is set in the future without me needing to explain it. He is a British Moroccan immigrant, so at one point he notices an inconsistency in the mission briefing he's been given. The word "Gratis" comes up inside it, and that word has slipped him by. That is then used as an excuse to explain his lack of understanding of native English coming from him being said immigrant. His current mission is him enduring something, and he is treating it as a self-inflicted wound he's suffering through because he screwed up his previous job. The previous job's mistake was partly down to bad luck. The character thinks he is eternally unlucky, so I used the current mission and his previous to contrast and bring up that trait with reason to mention it. That was a setup though - he then gets caught, due to an unlucky situation, which gives a physical example to highlight to the reader he isn't making it up. When clues come up surrounding his current case, he uses his virtual/augmented reality glasses to look up the info. These are used heavily later in the scene when the action starts, so I set them up here with a physical example and one paragraph explanation (that also linked into his previous mission's mistake, making it even more "mission critical/I needed to know that" status in the reader's eye.) I wanted to expand upon his background from Morocco, and highlight he was used by gangs as a thief because he was nimble and agile, and was good at parkour. So in his escape, I have him scramble down passageways and over buildings, reminding him of doing so as a kid, reminding him of Tangier, the city he grew up in. By using the events that occur in the scene to touch upon his character and background I not only set him up and the story with even more info than I listed here, but I also interwove it all into a chase that helps hide the fact I'm using it to build up the character and the world he inhabits. The reader got an exciting action scene and ends the chapter hopefully thinking "Hang on, I know a helluva lot about Raz now, but I just read an action scene..." (Someone actually wrote that to me on Scribophile just today.) There is a lot more information to come in the book, but that was the basic, most important, *mission critical* stuff that the reader needed to know in the first chapter. Then I engineer the same again for later info I want to get across. That's my method anyhow. Even though I'm a plotter and not so much a pantser, this technique can be used in the editing process afterwards. It can also be used purely on setting as well. Readers want relevancy more often than not, so that's the basis of my thinking on most content decisions.
I think one aspect of what Steve Rivers said is relevant to my technique, which is that you can make things work. I'm not a fan of overly purple prose, pretentious or overly-long descriptions annoy me, but I do find myself a little cynical about the amount of writing advice that uses words and concepts like "need". What does that even mean in a writing context? After all, we don't write primarily for money, most writers do not make much profit, it is rarely a real career, writing is supposed to be fun. So while tedious writerly indulgence is not fun, there is nothing wrong with stopping to smell the roses. The whole reason so many writers are tempted to splurge with settings like sci-fi future or high fantasy worlds is that these setting are fun, and readers will want to know at least a little about them, in of itself. So the way I approach it is to put details I want in a way that will not feel as tedious. Obviously, there is a limit to how much stuff you can put, and how relevant it is to the plot is one metric for judging which things to put. But you can also slip plenty of unimportant details in as long as nothing gets too long-winded or is too random. And you can alter what you do to provide excuses for things. There is also a question of writing to your audience. Not all books are written for the same audience, and how much narrative details and world-building you include will sculpt what kind of audience you get. There are plenty of people who read the books of Lord of the Rings and Song of Ice and Fire, and while the more approachable filmed adaptions of these are partially responsible for their fame, there is a real audience for somewhat indulgent stuff. Those books are somewhat infamous for waxing lyrical at times, yet both of them were successful before they were adapted, when people had to grapple with that stuff to read them. I wouldn't necessarily advise writing that way, it's a bit risky to push it, but it is clear evidence that trimmed practical approaches to writing are not the only way. There is a spectrum, and you should allow yourself the option of doing what you want. Because you probably are not going to be famous or very commercial successful, so you should be prioritising the fun you have with this. Don't write someone's else book.
I think it should be 50-50. You write 50% for yourself so you enjoy your book, 50% so that other people enjoy it. It's like a conversation, no one listens to the one who hogs all the attention and no one likes the person who tells you everything you want to hear. But this is an imperfect world; everyone's 50% is different from everyone's else's 50%. So you as an author have to decide how much internal integrity you want to keep, vs how much you want to engage with your audience. You could become an obscure unappreciated author who wants to keep his authenticity or the sell out best sellers list author. Just depends on what your goals are.
Being a sell-out is an unreliable path to success, and fiction writing is not a good pursuit for practical purposes, it's better not to fake it.
Well there are no reliable path to success other than being rich+connected really. Even talent may not get you there. But selling things people want to buy tends to be statistically better for you.
I believe this ratio isn't in our control. Writers are like little cups and strings that cultures use to talk to themselves. If we're unlucky, one picks us to relay something with a 0-100 ratio, like Winnie the Pooh or A Clockwork Orange, and we spend the rest of life either disowning it or having to pretend to like it.
Oh 100%! It's more of a conceptual argument. Find a balance between what you want to write and what others want to read. Honestly you could find that balance at 99%-1%. But I aim for 50-50, for me books are about communicating ideas/expression/feelings with another person. I don't like writing "just" for my self yet.
So, you feel like you know how to weave worldbuilding in a way that feels interesting and relevant, but struggle to figure out what the right amount is. One thing to keep in mind is that this is very much a second draft problem, meaning you can ask for help from beta readers or critique partners. Setting information is always hard for a writer to gauge because as the author, you know your world intimately, an outsider can be a better judge of how much it takes to ground someone who knows nothing of your world. Another tip though, try physically highlighting your worldbuilding information. Being able to see at a glance how much and where your worldbuilding is, might help you decide where to start or where to pay more attention (You can just try it for a chapter or two to see if it helps) Having a place to start can make the editing process a little less overwhelming. As a rule of thumb, I go by, too much worldbuilding is when either A) the exposition is stopping the story from progressing or B) There are too many new separate terms and concepts introduced at the same time for the reader to remember. A can be sidestepped in a lot of ways. I just finished reading Gideon the Ninth, which has tons of description and what you might call exposition, but it never feels like it stops the story. That's because the exposition is told in this really voicy, snarky, chilling manner that tells us a ton not just about the world but the narrator's emotions and internal state, as well as crafting atmosphere and setting the present-day scene. Yes, it's exposition, but because it's fulfilling so many other purposes, it doesn't feel like the story is stopping. Weave it into an argument or character action, if the reader doesn't even realize they're being fed exposition, they won't complain about it. For B, it has less to do with the amount of worldbuilding as the number of brand new subjects introduced at a given time. A paragraph about Aeromancy and a paragraph about six different types of magic may be the same length, but the second is much harder to follow. Too little worldbuilding is either when the reader does not have enough information to figure out what is going on or why it matters, or the setting is so sparse that the reader fills in the gaps with something boring and generic. There is a whole lot of wriggle room between too much, and too little, based on writing style and the story you're telling.
Your character should interact with his setting, and everything you describe should be something he would notice from his POV. That gives you a good measure of what to describe and what not to I think.
The good thing about having a story take place in current time, in the real world is a kitchen is a kitchen. I don't have to describe it if I don't want to and people still know what it might look like. And right now I'm writing a General Fiction novel with about four major settings and I use them as kind of metaphors - the mc is a director and when he sees his star's (teenage boy) bedroom he marvels that it's reveals the boys personality rather like the over-decorated sets in tv shows and his impression of him is confirmed. Fantasy and other genre's like sci-fi and horror -need more explanation to either build their world and or to show us why it's special or different or spooky. Which can lead to over-describing. Whenever I do fantasy or a genre that needs a bit more detail I treat it somewhat like I do for regular fiction. What kind of impression do I want the reader to leave with? Can the description do double duty? In the fantasy novella I'm working on most of the story takes place in the ocean - but I'm less interested in describing every new fish or fish creature the mc comes into contact with instead I focused more on the water itself. The oppressive pressure rather then the beauty. Once you decide what you want to focus on it becomes easier and the details pull together more. You're not trying to find a sequence or order to sort a jumble of details that don't really have much to do with each other and by focusing on the mc's impression, rather than just scenery, the reader still feels connected to the story. Look at other books that you love in your genre to see how they do it and analyze where they got it right or wrong. Type out the description and see if you can alter it, shorten it and still keep it relevant and vivid.
