World-Detailing in Science-Fiction and Fantasy Stories

Yzabel / November 2, 2005

Due to having gotten up way too early for my own sake this morning, yet not being fresh enough to properly work on my NaNovel, I was sifting through my “How to…” book by Orson Scott Card again, and this is when I realized that he had at some point written something that sounded true: in works of sci-fi and fantasy, the way many authors depict the worlds they have created isn’t the same as the way an author in other kinds of fiction would do. Or, should I say, us readers don’t interpret it the classical way, and tend to read between the lines, perhaps.There seems to be a certain consensus between sci-fi authors and readers, in that we don’t demand the writers to dutifully describe their universes from the start. At least, it’s not something I demand. I can satisfy myself with details handed out to me here and there, through a dialogue or an action that is perfectly normal to the protagonist, until, along my reading, I’m able to see the bigger picture. However, if I can’t see this picture from the start, I don’t feel frustrated. I don’t feel like the author is cheating me, retaining information from me, or being lazy and “not bothering” giving me all the tiny details all at once.Is this because of the codes inherent to both genres? Is it because, when we think “sci-fi”, we think of spaceships, of space travel, of more advanced technology, and don’t ask ourselves that many questions when we read about a colonization ship bound for another planet? I have the same kind of perception when it comes to fantasy, too. Tolkien was a genius of a world-builder, and when reading his books, one can easily see that, but I can feel the same sense of wonder and excitation when reading about worlds that are described in less details—provided the author has enough writing skills to give the right details at the right moments, that is, and we all know that this isn’t as evident as it seems.I’m not sure whether Card or myself in right in this; maybe we’re just mistaken. What’s sure is that when I write sci-fi or fantasy, I indeed prefer distillate the information about the world along the action, rather than in “exposition paragraphs”.fantasy, science-fiction, writing

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Comments

  • Melly

    I’m not sure I quite agree with this.I can’t talk about fantasy because I don’t read much fantasy but I think that speculative fiction as a whole has evovled quite a bit.Many authors write literary science fiction and use more descriptive narrative.Actually, I don’t know, because it’s also quite possible that these are the books I gravitate to and so I can’t really comment intelligently on the genre as a whole, right?I always find it very interesting the comparison between genre fiction and literary/mainstream fiction. Nice.

  • Yzabel

    Yes, I’m not sure myself whether this is true or only the way I perceive things. After all, I’m very far from having read “everything” in these genres, be it in hard sci-fi, fantasy or speculative fiction in general.

  • kalbzayn

    I prefer for authors to more slowly dole out the physical details of the world unless they are of vital importance for some reason. I barely make it through multiple paragraph passages telling me about the trees and the animals and the mountains in the distance and the clouds overhead, etc. I much prefer to keep the plot focused on the characters and the plot and add details of the world when the characters of the world need to interact with the surroundings.

  • Yzabel

    I too tend to have a problem with long expositions passages, so perhaps this is why I prefer the “let’s distillate the info” method. But then, years of crafting RPG scenarii have also turned me into a characters-focused person, finding plots and sub-plots everywhere, so I easily ditch the clouds in the sky…

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