The Craft of Writing, Part Five: Information

Hello, hello, hello, hello! I hope your Valentine’s Day went well. Whether with a romantic partner-in-crime or alone with God, I’ve recently heard a number of my wise friends say that what matters most is that you foster the prime relationships you have – both with God and your fellow man. I have to wholeheartedly agree.

Today we’re crossing into the second half of our series about the craft of writing. So far we’ve covered plot, character development, setting and pacing. Now, continuing on the notion of pacing is a factor to which it is intimately tied: the dissemination of information. What do I mean by this? By “dissemination of information,” I mean the revealing of mysteries, the answering of questions or the introduction of something new to the story. Essentially, it’s adding a bit of novelty.

Suppose, for example, you’re writing a story in which your protagonist unveils and ultimately foils a grand conspiracy. You can’t simply reveal the whole conspiracy in your first chapter, or else you’d have nothing left to reveal in the rest of the tale. But if you wait until the second-to-last chapter to reveal all that information, then with what have you filled up all of the previous chapters? What you need to do is space the information out, spreading it like butter over the toast of your novel. This is most preferable for two complementary reasons:

1. By spacing out the information, you’re contributing to the proper pacing that you worked hard to establish according to last week’s post. If you go too long without revealing information, your story may soon grow boring. And if you give away everything at the start, then you have nothing left to reveal and the rest of your book (until the climax) will be similarly boring. What works best is establishing a steady rate of revelation: a little bit here, a little bit there, some more here, some new facts there. And eventually, these little bits of information will begin to form something new underlying your story, something rich and developed. Your readers will feel like detectives, better able to identify with your protagonist as they put the information together along with him (or her).
2. But you also want to add breaks. If every chapter reveals truckloads of new information, then your reader can quickly become overwhelmed and lost in all of the novelty. My recommendation is similar to that of the pacing: after every high-speed place, after every information dump, take a break and allow the reader to catch their breath. Let them process the information for a bit before you throw something new into the mix. You don’t want to pull a Matrix Reloaded and wait until one of the last parts of the tale to unload everything, or it will be too much for the audience to take in at a time (I still have no idea what The Architect was saying in that scene). Let the audience take the information in little spurts, or at a slow and steady rate, but not too slow, or you’ll lose their interest.

Now you may, unfortunately, run into a pinched point where you have no choice but to reveal a large amount of information in a short amount of time. It’s understandable, it happens to me from time to time. If you have exhausted all other options and find yourself facing this conundrum, my advice is to try and be as careful and clever as possible. While writing Torjen II: The Search for Andross, I arrived at a chapter where I was forced to introduce over a dozen new characters who were to have an intense discussion. The best I could do in that scenario was to make each as unique as possible so that the reader could keep them separate, then focus predominantly on only a few of them. I had a similar issue in my most recent work, The Choice of Anonymity, in which the ultimate explanation was revealed in one chapter. To balance this, I added foreshadowing in order to set this up, and then I still held a few key bits of information on reserve so as to keep the reader engaged. The foreshadowing worked like a charm, allowing for the revealed information to read more like a linking of facts than a wholesale revelation of them.

So the basic rule of thumb is to tie in the revealing of new information with the pacing you’ve already constructed. That adds some consistency to your book, as well as depth. But as a final note, let me point out that in the end of your work, all of the most important information must be explained. That’s my personal pet peeve in writing, when mysteries are established and then left unsolved. I mean, sure, you don’t have to explain whether or not one character followed through on their resolution to quit smoking or if another character ultimately conquered her fear of flying. But the big, crucial information that forms the core plot of your work must be answered.

However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be answered in this book. Suppose you’re writing a trilogy, or a series, or a grouping of works that interrelate but don’t form a linear series. If, over the course of your stories or books (notice the plurality there), those things will eventually be answered, then you may withhold key pieces of information to be made clear later. Again returning to The Choice of Anonymity, I leave the ultimate fate of all but my protagonist unknown, but the reason for this is that there will be two follow-up novels in this trilogy, and their fates will be made known there.

So if you’re going to establish a mystery, or some unresolved question, please ignore the tendency of the highly-talented and fascinating writer/director J.J. Abrams, who chooses to leave his mysteries unresolved. Let it be known, my friends. Let it be known.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I’ll discuss the deeper relationship between the protagonist and antagonist!

In Which the World is False

Good day, readers! Last week, I described five times in films and television shows in which characters broke the metaphorical “Fourth Wall.” Today, I’d like to describe five times when something similar happens. These are situations in which characters seem to break the Fourth Wall – realizing that their world isn’t real – but they don’t get as far as reaching the audience. To put this simply, these are situations in which characters discover that their world is the creation of a larger, more real world, but which is, itself, the world of the movie. If this is still confusing, it’ll make more sense as we go along. But before we do, I want to specify that these are not examples of characters realizing that their world is simply different than what they think (as in The Island, where clones are raised in a real facility believing that they’re the only humans left), but, rather, realizing that their world isn’t even real. So let us begin.

Also, WARNING: there are spoilers to follow, so be forewarned. SPOILER ALERT

Number One: Stay

I know this was number one on last week’s list as well, but it’s just such a great movie. I’ll spare you the details, since I shared them last week, but in this film, the main character, a psychiatrist, ultimately comes to realize that his whole reality – and, by inclusion, he, himself – is merely a dream created in the dying moments of college student, Henry Letham. The penultimate line in the movie is when the psychiatrist, Sam, tells Henry “this is a dream and the whole world is in it.” But can you imagine being Sam, coming to the understanding that you and everyone and everything you’ve ever known are only the figment of someone else’s dream? He decides he doesn’t “know what’s real anymore,” to which Henry simply replies “you are,” then he ends it. And in the end, we’re left with the flicker of hope that the created Sam lives on in the real world, having escaped the destruction of his fake one.

Number Two: The Thirteenth Floor

Now I know I can’t get away from this list without mentioning the poster-child of the fake-world-in-a-real-world genre, The Matrix. However, we shouldn’t be led to believe that the Matrix was actually original in its story. In fact, it appears to be an amalgamation of The Terminator and a very little-known 1999 film, The Thirteenth Floor. As a matter of fact, The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor debuted only about two weeks apart. There are many differences between the films: while The Matrix is an action/kung fu film with killer robots, The Thirteenth Floor is a detective film, with the antagonist(s) being a man with a god complex. Essentially, while investigating a strange death, a detective’s search leads him to a technology company which is creating a new brand of virtual reality, one which is completely immersive. But as he explores this virtual reality, he comes to realize that the “fictional characters” that were designed inside have gained their own level of consciousness. This leads him to explore his own world, in which he ultimately comes to discover that his world is, itself, yet another virtual world designed by the “real world.” This movie plays off of the dream-within-a-dream motif, and I actually find myself more drawn to it than I do The Matrix, as it focuses on greater character development. So if you like action and kung fu, go with The Matrix, but if you like detective stories and greater emotional depth, then The Thirteenth Floor is right for you.

Number Three: Existenz

At almost the same time that The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor came out, there was a Canadian picture called Existenz, starring Jude Law as a…person. I’m actually not sure what he really turned out to be. In this film, a game designer is unveiling a new type of system which is totally immersive, but a terrorist cell surfaces and attempts to kill her, fearing that her game will upset people’s ability to tell between what’s real and what isn’t. This film is, admittedly, substantially stranger than the more straightforward Matrix/Thirteenth Floor films, but it has its own quirky charms. Now where I think it has its most lasting effect is that it leaves the audience unsure of whether or not the final scene actually takes place in the real world, or simply in yet another false reality. Indeed, the final line of the film is spot on: when the protagonists of the film (Jude Law being one of them) stand up and point a gun at one of the game’s beta testers, prepared to kill him, the tester holds up his hands and asks the question, “are we still in the game?”

Number Four: Justice League

In the second episode of the animated series, Justice League Unlimited, there’s an episode entitled “For the Man Who Has Everything.” This is an adaptation of the Superman story in which Superman finds himself living a happy life on the not-blown-up Krypton, married to Los Lane and raising their son. Unfortunately for the Man of Steel,, it’s revealed that he is actually in his Fortress of Solitude, found by Batman and Wonder Woman with a parasite attached to his body. The parasite places the victim in a happy – albeit fake – world, leaving them totally vulnerable in the real one. This parasite is revealed to have been part of a plot by the villain, Mongrul, to avenge himself against Superman, but with the help of Batman and Wonder Woman, Mongrul’s plan is foiled and Superman is forced to watch his false son fade into nothing.

Number Five: Doctor Who

In what is the absolute most recent episode of the science fiction serial, Doctor Who, we find the Doctor and Clara investigating strange happenings at the North Pole. With the help of Santa Claus (yes, you heard me right), they discover a gathering of parasites which attach to their victims’ faces and put them into a false reality in order to distract them from the fact that the parasite is feeding off of their brain matter. This is similar to Existenz in its dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream scenario, and with some strong humor from St. Nick. But ultimately, the characters make it finally back to what we’re led to believe is the real world (after having reached what, until that point, they merely thought was the real world).

Now before I end this article, I’d like to make just a few honorary mentions which don’t exactly correspond to this, but certainly play with it. There is Supernatural‘s inversion of the theme, primarily the story arc revolving around the character, Chuck Shirley, a prophet who writes a book series called “Supernatural,” based on the visions he has of the brothers’ exploits. His book series is often used comedically in the show, such as when Sam and Dead inadvertently ended up at a LARPing convention with a bunch of other people all pretending to be them, or when Sam and Dead discovered a girls preparatory school doing a musical based on the brothers’ lives, for which they became advisers to the director.

There is, of course, the Christopher Nolan film, Inception, in which characters invade the dreams of corporate enemies for various reasons. While this film doesn’t really play up the theme of the unknown false realty too much, the ending is reminiscent of Existenz, leaving it open as to whether or not the characters are all truly awake.

And finally, the season six episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Normal Again,” has Buffy suffer visions of a mental hospital. She eventually comes to the decision that her whole vampire-hunting life is merely the creation of a delusional girl struggling to find her way back to reality. However, this is ultimately revealed to be the scheme of a demon trying to get her to murder her friends and stop hunting monsters, so this is a false world trying to convince her that it’s the real world and the real world is false.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these lists, and if you’re looking for movies or television shows in this arena, I hope I’ve given you some ideas of things to track down. Now with this in mind, get off your computer, go outside and enjoy the day. If, that is, the day you see is truly real…

Until next time, friends…