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If you're going to write genre, with rich world-building and complicated future technology and deep magic systems, it's going to happen sooner or later: you'll need to explain what a Florznap is. Whether it's describing why your hero's sword is different from what the reader thinks of when they imagine a sword, or the details …
Continue reading "Stumbling Through The Minefield: Expository Depth"
Your characters didn't appear out of the ether, newly created on page one of your book. At least, they shouldn't feel like they did. They had lives before the story starts, families, jobs, religious affiliations, pets. If you're going to make them feel real to the reader, you need to know their backstories. You need …
Exposition is a crucial part of any story. It's how you create your world and how you share it with your reader. Yet it's also a great way to bring your narrative flow to a crashing halt and bore anyone who was kind enough to pick up your book. Writers often decry the "infodump", the …
DAVID WELLINGTON 