Exposition Diagrams

What's your opinion on using Exposition Diagrams in a written story that's supposed to be mainly text? I know some series that does it but would there be a point where it's too overused?

I think it worked in Deltora Quest because that was the interactive part of the book where the reader could solve the puzzle along with the characters. If you used it sparingly like that it'd be fine, but if you use it for every explanation it'd seem like you should be making a comic book instead.

I'd say that it'd be fine to do even a few times. It'd become a quirk of the work, like Deltora Quest having the puzzle diagrams, or Matthew Reilly's Jack West series (7 Ancient Wonders, etc) having diagram/blueprints of the "dungeons" in the end papers. Not really any different to maps I guess.

I don't think heavy use of it would make people think "this should be a comic book". If they're just diagrams/flow-charts/etc, they wouldn't really illustrate the characters or be comics.

The point at which they become overused is the point at which there's no good reason in the story for them to be there.

Cool, I guess the way I use it is similar to Deltora Quest. Some of them I do use to display the obstacles but about half of the solutions, I think a diagram is needed to make it understandable and not be buried in adjectives.

I estimated how many times I think I'll need them and I can approximate to 3k words. So it's cool?

edited 6th Aug '13 8:56:13 PM by PsychoFreaX

What does 3k words mean in the context of a diagram?

Oops, I meant once every 3k words, sorry. :P

edited 7th Aug '13 1:03:54 AM by PsychoFreaX

Makes sense to me, I can see why a quick visualisation tool would seem better than a drawn-out description if it's a puzzle or something.

Once every 3k words is what, every 12-15 pages? How many words is your work in total, out of curiosity?

My final product I plan to be about two million words. I plan for my current version before I redo the whole thing to be about 400k words.

4k Words per chapter and roughly 35 chapters per volume. That sounds right.

That's going to be a lot of diagrams, and can lead to some expensive books, both with paper and ebook format. Consider that when planning the diagrams.

One every chapter seems like it's going to be a lot. More than that, I can't say, as with so much else about writing, whether it works or not is going to lie in the execution, not just the idea.