Writer's Block Daily

IIRC the author of The Legend of Eli Monpress described their work as anime inspired or something along those lines once also Japan has Light Novels which are often novels written to be like anime, if not the novelization of an anime.

Somewhat well said. Personally I'm not fond of opening chapters being little other than exposition. It's one thing to have an Opening Crawl like Star Wars or Halo ODST in visual media but other than that exposition only chapters kinda suck.

I personally prefer stuff that even if exposition heavy throughout the work (Lord Of The Rings I'm looking at you) opens with something other than exposition. For instance Tolkien's stuff opened with Slice of Life type stuff with some oddities and thin if any exposition and that which exists is tied to the scene or builds upon the world. (At least The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit opened that way.)

I emulate the same feel. I leave the reader completely in the dark on many things in my prologue and first couple chapters. You don't find out who or what Preyarans are or why Mat is in Rio Azúl fighting them or a lot of things then. I only start actually building the world, expositioning and elaborating on that stuff when it starts mattering aka when Admiral Mei Lin goes out in Chapter 3.

Even then I don't have exposition-only chapters. Everything has something else than that. A conflict setter, some Scenery Porn, a heartwarming moment, just something else.

edited 8th Oct '12 3:39:00 PM by MajorTom

Personally, I think this is a very bad thing to do. Giving the reader no clue whatsoever as to what is going on can be a turn-off for people. Read over The Hobbit again; the first three pages are nothing but exposition and establish the things you need to understand the story, like a little bit of who Bilbo is. The first chapter also has plenty of exposition on the dwarves, but that's woven into the narrative.

Now, if by "exposition" you mean passages like, "This is Alex. Alex is an anthropologist from U of C, and he's not the brave or outgoing type. No, Alex blah de blah de blah.", then I agree with you. However, not all exposition is given in contextless dumps. The opening of the first Mass Effect is pretty good with this; it has a brief opening scroll, but all that really says is, "It's the future, and something called mass effect is like super important." Everything else — politics, technology, biology, history — you learn from talking to people. Just because it's in dialogue and character-building instead of a dump doesn't make it not exposition. I once worked some minor exposition about segregation and magic into a conversation involving clothing stores, Hawaiian shirts, and Burger King.

To me, the primary purpose of exposition is to answer the questions, "Who are these people and why should I care?" If it's Chapter 3 and I'm not seeing any answers yet, I'll probably put the book down.

edited 8th Oct '12 5:40:30 PM by TeraChimera

And that's a lot of what I do. I don't go "This is Daniel, he's a man from parts unknown and knows the answer to yadda yadda yadda and invented blah blah blah that does yack yack yack and so on".

Thing is, I also keep the exposition relevant. I don't go world building and exposition dumping about the war or military or technology in Chapter 2 when the opening scene there is baseball. It's just not relevant and no amount of Narrative Filigree would make expo-dumping relevant there. Instead I world build exposition in Chapter three when it starts showing the military stuff and the world at large. The first three chapters are basically meeting the characters (well some of em anyways) and seeing they have a life outside the central plot that they aren't some useless plot device or trapping. I'm sorry if that style turns you off but I cannot stand protagonists who have no life outside the story, that they don't have any likes which aren't plot points, that they are simply the plot device by which the entire work revolves around. Those kinds of protagonists are shallow, boring and frankly do the work injustice.

Frodo had a life outside the Lord of the Rings. Bilbo too. Harry Potter has a life outside his shenanigans at Hogwarts. Master Chief has a life outside of kicking alien ass. (Mind you that is Expanded Universe type stuff but it exists.) Brian Robeson had a life outside being a plane crash survivor. Henry Fleming had a life outside of the Civil War. (It wasn't shown much but it was there.) Beezus and Ramona have lives outside of being just kiddie shenanigans shown on page. A lot of well-written protagonists have lives outside the story.

I have approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes of productive writing time left for the month.

Then X-COM hits my hard drive and it's all over.

But what you're describing there is exposition when you claim you give no exposition. Exposition isn't just worldbuilding, but also character establishment. That's not leaving the reader in the dark, like you said you were doing. Something like the opening of Final Fantasy XIII is leaving the reader (or player) in the dark.

edited 8th Oct '12 6:34:29 PM by TeraChimera

I just remembered that exposition seems to be one of the hot-button topics here.

Exposition is Serious Business!

edited 8th Oct '12 6:43:31 PM by chihuahua0

I think we may need a topic to talk about that in the general writing sense. I'll make one tomorrow.

Because for the next 45 minutes of today I'm going to try and close out this chapter. No promises but I'm going to try.

After that I'm going to bed because it's getting late and I have work tomorrow morning.

edited 8th Oct '12 7:02:28 PM by MajorTom

On not-exposition: should I call the war that emerged from Operación Soberanía in my alternate history the Beagle War or something else?

It wouldn't be the least-appropriate name. (See also the Toyota War.)

Public service announcement of the day: watch your word order! "All leaders are not good" (what was said) does not mean the same thing as "not all leaders are good" (what was, by all appearances, meant). (Brought to you courtesy of my management textbook.)

Progress continues to be made. It's amazing what you can do when you're actually enjoying what you're working on.

I think I have just created a religion with a holy book that is 90% cookbook.

wtf brain

Is it To Serve Man, by any chance? :D

This falls firmly into the category of "stories I have got to hear."

I wholeheartedly agree. And what does it say about me that my reaction was far less "WTF" and far more "Ah, yes. Hmmm"?

Don't worry, I made one that's 90% Ikea instruction pamphlet.

Instead of making a golden calf, they make a golden table?

@Crystal Glacia: How does that work?

I have this guy named Vince who gains god powers and starts crafting his own world; after some practice, he goes all out and makes a stable ecosystem and an intelligent race of humans and stuff like that. He starts explaining to them about their world, they diligently write it down since he's their god and stuff, and 90% of what he talks about happens to relate to ways that the world can be exploited in the name of a good meal. As a result, his people revere two big things- intellectualism and mealtimes.

Funny, but I'd be careful about going too far with that.

I don't even know if it'll get written or not; it takes place literally millions of years after any of my other plots. I just had a strange thought during APCS that, over the course of the next two periods, developed into... that.

EDIT: AAH THE POWER WENT OUT I'M SCARED. ; o ;

edited 9th Oct '12 6:40:13 PM by CrystalGlacia

12 pages of Menyic grammar and 24 pages of Menyic words! Yay!

Why do I want to change my avatar again?