Re: Putting your articles into a book, that is what Patricia C. Wrede did. She has a writing blog and her book "Wrede on Writing" is based on a lot of those articles with some extra prose to blend it all together. Just got to hear her talk at Minicon. She was the guest of honor this year.
So, you compose your story. Let it sit for a while. Review it by turning it over with a shovel. Dump the parts that bog it down. Organize it organically by composting the detritus. Got it.
There are two ways to put info dumps into your story.
One is to have a fascinating narrative voice so that the reader will read to see what sort of charming or witty or sardonic comments the narrator will make about it.
The other is to make the readers curious about the knowledge, generally along with the characters, so they want to know.
Neither one is easy, and both still stop the narrative dead. (An important point is to ensure the transition from narrative to dump and back is as smooth as a swan swimming into a shadow and then out again.)
For prospective writers I highly recommend they watch the first episode of he TV series Castle. It's truly a master class on exposition without any info dump. By the first 20 minutes, you find yourself totally intrigued by 5 different characters. Sample piece of dialog:
This resonates well for revealing/explaining in-story knowledge.
But one of the real problems I find is sussing out how much real-world cultural knowledge the readers are likely to have, to avoid having to explain references which are obvious to me. Case in point, I was recently reading a story involving a violin of mysterious origin which had a variety of effects upon the characters who came to be associated with it.
Problem is, the author provided one clue (a bit of a the neck resembled a fingernail). Those of us immersed in the Child Ballads immediately knew the source story of this violin ("The Twa Sisters"), and for the rest of the novel, all the studiously trickled material merely confirmed what we already new and rang flat. The author no doubt was comfortable feeding out the ongoing clues to cement the effect in the end, but it was old news to people like me by the time we arrived at the end.
I decided early in my own writing that I would assume real-world knowledge on the part of the reader, while still (as needed) providing fair reminder bits of explanation in passing. I believe this is how all of us who love to read first learned our esoteric bits of history and culture, so why not perpetuate the process? Story-clues need to be well thought out, of course, but real-world clues only need a fair treatment, in case the reader happens not to know (wink, wink, nod, nod).
Re: Putting your articles into a book, that is what Patricia C. Wrede did. She has a writing blog and her book "Wrede on Writing" is based on a lot of those articles with some extra prose to blend it all together. Just got to hear her talk at Minicon. She was the guest of honor this year.
So, you compose your story. Let it sit for a while. Review it by turning it over with a shovel. Dump the parts that bog it down. Organize it organically by composting the detritus. Got it.
That’s a good way to put it.
Know yourself.
Some writers have to remove detritus. Others have to expand spare parts.
There are two ways to put info dumps into your story.
One is to have a fascinating narrative voice so that the reader will read to see what sort of charming or witty or sardonic comments the narrator will make about it.
The other is to make the readers curious about the knowledge, generally along with the characters, so they want to know.
Neither one is easy, and both still stop the narrative dead. (An important point is to ensure the transition from narrative to dump and back is as smooth as a swan swimming into a shadow and then out again.)
For prospective writers I highly recommend they watch the first episode of he TV series Castle. It's truly a master class on exposition without any info dump. By the first 20 minutes, you find yourself totally intrigued by 5 different characters. Sample piece of dialog:
"Are you asking as my blood-sucking
publisher or as my blood-sucking ex-wife?"
This resonates well for revealing/explaining in-story knowledge.
But one of the real problems I find is sussing out how much real-world cultural knowledge the readers are likely to have, to avoid having to explain references which are obvious to me. Case in point, I was recently reading a story involving a violin of mysterious origin which had a variety of effects upon the characters who came to be associated with it.
Problem is, the author provided one clue (a bit of a the neck resembled a fingernail). Those of us immersed in the Child Ballads immediately knew the source story of this violin ("The Twa Sisters"), and for the rest of the novel, all the studiously trickled material merely confirmed what we already new and rang flat. The author no doubt was comfortable feeding out the ongoing clues to cement the effect in the end, but it was old news to people like me by the time we arrived at the end.
I decided early in my own writing that I would assume real-world knowledge on the part of the reader, while still (as needed) providing fair reminder bits of explanation in passing. I believe this is how all of us who love to read first learned our esoteric bits of history and culture, so why not perpetuate the process? Story-clues need to be well thought out, of course, but real-world clues only need a fair treatment, in case the reader happens not to know (wink, wink, nod, nod).