Comments on: Schrödinger’s Cat and Writing: Less is More https://www.theeternalscribe.com/schrodingers-cat-and-writing-less-is-more/ Everyone Deserves a Happy Ending Sun, 01 Jan 2023 21:32:50 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 By: forrestdl@gmail.com https://www.theeternalscribe.com/schrodingers-cat-and-writing-less-is-more/#comment-46 Sat, 29 Jun 2013 19:27:52 +0000 http://theeternalscribe.com/?p=185#comment-46 In reply to KJ Charles.

So true. I routinely keep back information from my readers that I know myself. Another good example is with my vampires in Forever After. I know everything there is to know about the biology of the vampires, but I only write most of that stuff indirectly. If I went into massive detail about all that jazz, it would first be an info dump (which is a no-no), and second would include a lot of technical jargon most of my readers wouldn’t understand. It might be fun for the odd doctor or scientist, but it would make the general public’s eyes glaze over.

I never read the last Harry Potter books, but I can certainly understand where you are coming from there. Backstory’s should be well integrated into the story. Maybe a scene at a time. Stephen King’s It is my classic example when it comes to too much backstory. The novel was a thousand pages long and the average flashback was easily fifty pages long. I finally put the story down halfway because I no longer knew which way was up anymore. Now, no dissing King. I loved some of his earlier works. I think at some point, he just got wordy and got carried away. I tend to pick his books up depending on length, books like Christine and Cujo.

]]> By: KJ Charles https://www.theeternalscribe.com/schrodingers-cat-and-writing-less-is-more/#comment-45 Sat, 29 Jun 2013 10:53:48 +0000 http://theeternalscribe.com/?p=185#comment-45 Very interesting, I like your thinking! Although also, sometimes it’s good if the writer knows those things – even if she doesn’t tell the reader. If you know your characters’ hinterlands, even if you don’t disclose the detail, that will come through in the writing, and the reader will get a sense of depth and complexity, even if they never find out the full truth. (Whereas if you tell the reader everything you know it ends up like the later Harry Potters, as we plough through pages of backstory and detail that don’t actually advance anything.)

I suppose The Turn of the Screw is the classic example of withholding pretty much everything…

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