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Default   #8   Suzerain of Sheol Suzerain of Sheol is offline
Desolation Denizen
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quiet Man Cometh View Post
As an exercise one time, I took every character in a story of mine and changed their ethnicity, just to see what it would do. (Was watching a show that was talking about the sort of roles actors are able to get according to their ethnicity, like African Americans usually getting the roles of villains or uneducated types.) Previously, everyone was white, not out of conscious thought, but out of habit. I made one character African American, another Asian, and another Eastern European. It didn't change a bean.

12: Info dump!

I shouldn't have to say this but I still see it. Please, keep information to what's needed at the moment in time. I don't need to know a character's life history when they are first introduced. It's especially annoying when it happens during something else. I don't need to know where a character found their sword, what they named it, why, and who they already killed with it in the middle of a fight.

Managing info-dump might mean that you don't get to tell your reader everything you want to about your lovingly crafted setting or characters. It sucks sometimes, but keeping things trim really helps the writing, and there will be other moments to show off stuff.
Even if it *is* relevant at the time, do try to work it in naturally and don't just drop it in a huge wall of text talking straight to the reader. Unless your name is Jonathan Ronald Reuel. :|

13. Resurrection/cheating death. Unless it's a plot point, like, "If you kill the bodily form of the Nazgul, they'll simply fly back to Sauron and be re-endowed with earthly essence", if someone is killed... leave them dead. And pulling the ol' "Let's have Aragorn fall off a cliff, won't that be DRAMATIC?!?!?!" is a horrible idea. Unless you're writing some kind of avant-garde literary short fiction, having your character die of freak natural causes really shouldn't happen, and you shouldn't waste time trying to trick the reader into thinking it did, only so you can say "Gotcha!" ten pages later. Unless your name is John Ronald Reuel. :P
Cold silence has a tendency
to atrophy any sense of compassion
between supposed lovers.
Between supposed brothers.
Old Posted 11-15-2013, 10:48 PM Reply With Quote