[further chronicles of my ongoing discontent...]

[reenka]

I'm just curious: does anyone else have the 'too much explaining' or 'information-dump overload' pet-peeve while reading?

Like, you know how popular authors tend to be the ones who make every little fact they introduce totally 'clear' (except it's too clear), and even moreso when it gets into the land of telling-not-showing a character's feelings? Maybe I'm just hating on what's basically a standard third-person narrator; maybe I've become so used to super-narrow limited third-person that regular semi-omniscient third-person just feels like nails on a blackboard.

So okay, a character is introduced, and of course we have to know everything about his background as soon as possible in little asides (how many sisters and brothers, their occupations and personalities, all in nice little sound-bytes). Or the character receives a new 'mysterious object' that he doesn't know the use of, so he just randomly 'decides' to call it something like 'the Key' out of nowhere, wtf (and you can tell this is just another attempt to information-dump 'subtly'). Or because he doesn't want to be seen as a loser 'cause he can't run with his gym class since he has asthma, we the readers obviously need a whole background explanation of exactly what this means about his character and how this reaction came about, and btw, here's what he guesses is the personality types of the other kids around him and the gym-teacher, blah-blah-blah -.-

Just, can I get a little build-up to things naturally unfolding here? Sure, I get that there is a Larger Mystery at hand and -that's- what's getting the build-up (which is why we have all these Clues), but not everything needs to be strategically spoon-fed as a Clue! I feel like I'm being carefully hand-walked down the street and forced to observe all street signs and wait to cross only at the green light when specifically told to by the author, that kind of thing. It's just extremely annoying to me to be constantly 'informed' of things, I dunno :/ It feels very very oddly as if I'm reading nonfiction this way o_0

So like, this is a children's book (by Garth Nix, btw, called 'Mister Monday'), but I don't think it -has- to be this way just 'cause it's a children's book, and besides, lots of 'adult' popular novelists (and popular fanfic writers) write this way too. One of the worst examples is James Patterson and also Piers Anthony and hell, most of the popular fantasy authors (JKR is pretty bad about this too, to say the least). It's not -just- the tell-not-show thing (which is generally about feelings being ideally shown through action, right?), 'cause really it's also reflected in any writing style you can tell is meant to be 'clear'. Except instead of being 'clear', it's beating the reader about the head with clue-by-fours and spoon-feeding every piece of info with carefully measured constant doses, where -everything- that happens very clearly Means A Very Specific Thing.

I feel totally robbed of a lot of the pleasure of reading itself like this; it's like, by over-defining everything to such a degree, they're preventing me from having room within the story to imagine. Without that room, what's the use of reading fantasy lit in the first place? And yet, a lot of times the actual content of these sorts of books is quite imaginative on the surface level, at least, and they're often full of adventure & are addictive to read. Or, they would be if I wasn't constantly being thrown out of the narrative when I notice that once again, I'm being Told Something Important. Meh. -.-

I really wonder if the writer has a long list of Information They Must Import in their heads and/or laptops, and every paragraph is there to meet a quota of needed informativeness and usefulness to the plot. Plotplotplotplotplotplot... *killkilldestroy* :/ The funny thing is really that you can just -tell- how the events/character types themselves are clearly made to be 'fun' and easily understood/identified with, it's just that the writer goes way overboard making the worst sort of Hollywood movie from the fun material till it's just inane.... Yeah, inane is definitely the word; it's that leeching of mystery until every 'weird' event and 'quirky' character seems flat as a pancake.
    I don't know what happened with Garth Nix, btw; 'Sabriel' was super-awesome. *wibbles*

Comments

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I think the thing with those books is (I'm reading the series... have to get around to reading the 4th book) is that they're for kids much younger than the age that Sabriel is set at. That's why when I read the book, I thought that I would have enjoyed it a lot when I was ten, but not so much as an adult.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is really how often I feel this way in things written supposedly for adults; I think children over age 9 can read things more sophisticated in terms presentation than this. Though yeah, I'd have eaten it up when I was 10 also :>

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I think they can. Diana Wynne Jones has a note on that, on how for when she switched to writing for adults, she had to add on a lot of explanations and exposition which she saw as ham-handed and unnecessary.

So perhaps Nix is aiming at an even younger audience, or something, or he underestimates the youth.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

It definitely feels like underestimating and 'talking down', which is why it's a pet-peeve-- ie, it annoys me almost in a personal way. I think most kids (maybe moreso than adults, even) learn quickly 'on the spot' and can handle expanding their vocabulary & understanding as they go, literally as they read. Which is why things like Dickens' and Mark Twain's and Lewis Carroll's work is equally accessible to children & adults and why I was disappointed Nix (whom I thought of as a good writer) seemed to regress in skill this way.

Then again, I'm also quite sensitive about what I see as 'ham-handed and unnecessary'; how else to explain why I twitched reading the first few HP books especially & yet people of all ages ate them up...

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

The talking down was actually a pet peeve of mine in the Lemony Snicket books, which I otherwise love. There's so much explanation of vocabulary, and while it's done in a funny way, I think I would have been really irked by reading them as a kid.

[thawrecka]

Randomly surfing in via friendsfriends to say that I definitely have the 'information-dump overload' pet-peeve when reading. So much fiction has info-dumping that is incredibly clumsy and clunky and I wish the authors would do it more gracefully.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

It's good to know I'm not alone in peevishness :> Although I suppose if it can be called 'graceful' it's no longer even going to be perceived as 'info-dumping' in the first place.... Which is why I wonder if there's a certain writer's mentality associated with dispensing solid chunks of info.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hee! I get so sensitive about this because it's so hard to do. I've been reading this ms somebody asked me to read and halfway through a 300 page book the main character (such a Mary Sue) decides to look her son over and reflect on how he has a great sense of humor and brown eyes etc. It's like...um, what? It's not even the first time we've seen him in the book--and even if it was, you don't usually reflect that way on people you know.

But anyway, I'm always wondering about stuff like that. Recently I was reading a book written in letters and I was so sensitive over passages where I thought, "Would you really write this in a letter, or are you just trying to make the letters into a novel and you need description?"

At work I've gotten so used to watching for that in some sense, because we're not supposed to let anybody know anything they wouldn't know or see something they wouldn't see, so they can't really reflect on what anyone is thinking. JKR generally tries to go for physical cues (Harry had the feeling James wouldn't have stopped playing with his Snitch for anyone but Sirius...), but a lot of amateurs especially will go for "looks" that convey all this information you couldn't get. I remember one H/D fic from years ago where I specifically complimented the author on the way I thought she very realistically had Draco, the pov-character, catch signs that there was something going on with Harry without knowing at all what was going on.

Anyway, this is rambly, but I do always feel so self-conscious about info-dumping where it feels like it's written in neon: WORLD-BUILDING HERE! CHARACTER WORK! STUFF YOU'LL NEED TO KNOW LATER!!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Haha oh man, having to read manuscripts for people would be so awkward! People can be so touchy especially about their Mary Sues and anything you can tell is idealistically/fantasy-driven or purely a device. This is why I'm none too eager to offer to read anyone's writing 'blind', heh. I think my oversensitivity is partly 'cause I can totally overdose on description myself... I know I used to do tons of it (more rambling than info-dumping, per se, since informing the reader is never high on my list of priorities, um) and now I barely do it at all. To the point where I'd see where if I wrote a novel in letters I'd never really feel the need for description in the first place, haha.

Omg, the 'looks'! 'He looked like he had an omelette for breakfast, maybe with some tomato juice...' :D It doesn't have to be 'catching signs'; the pov character could just be -curious- about things and aware of the holes in his knowledge & then take steps to find out step-by-step-- seems easy enough. Like, they could -wonder-. The lack of sheer -wondering- is even more exasperating in a novel where the pov character is supposedly 'so curious' to the point where his whole family(!) always remarks on how he's too curious about everything. Inserting something like that into a text is just so lame... you can't really excuse it saying 'it's a children's book' unless you're writing for five year-olds. Gah.

I'm glad it's not just me with the noticing the neon tags or 'bookmarks', too! I think it's a product of over-organizing & compartmentalizing the component parts of a work that's supposed to feel fluid and whole. That's why I wonder whether it's a question of initial approach to writing... like, I have a vague idea of what I want to communicate, but it horrifies me, the idea of having a specific 'purpose' for every paragraph or whatever. I never want to feel like I know exactly what the writer's doing, that's what it comes down to, and it's even worse when I feel like I would've known when I was 10, too, hahaah.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

You may be hypersensitive on this issue if you read a lot of fanfiction. I know that whenever I take a break from reading novels, so all of my fiction is fanfiction, and then go back to novels, I get terribly annoyed with the novels telling me about people, since no one does that in fanfiction.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I tend to give novels a lot of leeway, though I know what you mean; I do get pickier with novels after all the bad fanfic, but then I'm thrice pickier with fanfic. Besides, in the case of 'those' kinds of novels with the 'clear' didactic writing style, it's not the personal descriptions alone, it's how every piece of info is ham-handedly and constantly highlighted as 'important'. Also, I think I can always tell well-written personal description from not-so-much :>

[tenillypo.livejournal.com]

I've noticed this myself. Fan fiction is such a different animal because it's presumed that the audience knows exactly what the characters look and sound like, the details of the background, and of world they live in. And for me, part of the appeal is definitely being able to jump into story without putting in the effort to get to know the world. Whenever I pick up an original novel after a long period of reading just fan fic, I have to sort of retrain myself to read in a world where I don't know any of the details going in. It's hard.

Which is not to say that there aren't also a lot of bad writers publishing original fiction, especially in the SciFi/Fantasy genre, where good world-building takes a level of subtlety and skill that many lack.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I guess in terms of character descriptions and environmental detail alone, it doesn't bother me-- I actually quite enjoy it, especially if it's inventive or out of the ordinary, like underground caves and waterfalls, made-up magical cities, that sort of thing. It's really not description that bothers me at all; it's a lot more to do with information I don't actually need as a reader for the supposed sake of 'clarity', except it feels like I'm being spoon-fed the most obvious (or useless) things. I'm not generally so twitchy as to think I don't need -any-. :)

[tenillypo.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I agree that description is necessary. But a lot of fantasy writers seem to lay out their world-building in a clumsy exposition dump and it's especially hard for me to slog through it after I've been reading good fic.

Good fantasy writers work the description/exposition in without clubbing the reader on the head.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Umm, I just meant pure description or exposition, clunky or not, isn't what I was talking about in the post? Mostly 'cause this assumes all 'description' is 'necessary' and it's just a question of it being worked in properly; not that clumsy exposition isn't a problem, but it's not a pet-peeve of mine, I guess. I'm just not sure that was clear :>

[tenillypo.livejournal.com]

The point of the post was clear, I think; my original comment was more of a tangent on how reading fan fic has affected the way I read novels. :-)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

God, yes, I hate it. Relevant information can be woven into the story without info-dumping. If you have to info-dump to tell us all about the character, maybe that stuff isn't relevant.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Omg yes, the relevancy is totally the issue-- it's just so distracting, and does the author really thing we all want to know this stuff? That's why it feels so masturbatory, so solipsistic on the part of the writer, like they're just indulging their own desire to describe/annonate every thing in their perfect little universe... arg.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's like they took all the backstory and character building stuff they did before writing and just dumped it in the book. It really doesn't need to be there. It's good for you to know all that stuff about your characters, but it's not really necessary for the story. (I am also of the opinion that most physical description is irrelevant as well, especially if getting the info across requires any character admiring themselves in the mirror.)

[shaggirl.livejournal.com]

I've noticed a very annoying tendency in post-HBP fic to spend the first several paragraphs recapping Voldemort's defeat and Malfoy's involvement in the war, be it as a spy, Death Eater, or deserter. Whatever his role, the intros all feel pretty much the same.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hahaha wasn't it always that way, a little after each book? Remember the post-GoF fics?? It was always 'so after the train-incident, the next year they met again... ON THE TRAIN', hahahah. So great. (Yea, I know what you mean. Then again, post-HBP warfics always sounded the same in so many ways... it's like whenever a writer feels uninterested in a particular aspect of 'plot', they stick in a trademarked cliche set-up.)

Man, where are you finding all these Death Eater Dracos :( My brethren. :>

[shaggirl.livejournal.com]

You're not missing anything. All the Death Eater!Draco's are just too scared to defy Voldy and spend the war trying not to have to A.K. anybody.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Man, where is the badass Draco of my dreams :(( Even my novella!Draco is sort of pathetic. Although that's generally the point :)) At least he -wants- to be badass :D That's really the thing people are missing in their quest to make Draco a weenie. I mean, he is, but he at least tries hard, talks big, wears leather ...*cough*

[moonmip.livejournal.com]

I feel totally robbed of a lot of the pleasure of reading itself like this; it's like, by over-defining everything to such a degree, they're preventing me from having room within the story to imagine. Without that room, what's the use of reading fantasy lit in the first place?

This is exactly how I felt reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I felt that Tolkien spent too much time in describing scenery - in other words, a lot of what other people adored about the books drove me crazy.

I have a theory as to why this 'over-explanation' sometimes occurs, particularly in the case of imagery. In Tolkien's case, he wanted to be sure that the reader saw exactly what he himself envisioned - and so he described it down to the tiniest detail (Bilbo Baggins's front door springs to mind here). There is nothing wrong with this approach - as an author, he is, after all, setting the scenes. I prefer to have the place as imagined in my head (although of course guided by his descriptions) - yes, it might not be exactly what he saw, but it was never going to be anyway, regardless of how much detail he gave. In the end, I don't think it damages the story irreparably to let people exercise a little more of their own imagination. Indeed, some authors deliberately do this - R. L. Stein, amongst others, has been described as having a 'sparse' style in which the reader is left to fill in much of the scenery themselves. I love this sort of reading, but I know other people find it irritating and would prefer more guidelines.

I do also wonder how many RL authors are taking up this writing form as a response to fanfic - my understanding is that J.K. Rowling is one author who has altered her writing style in an effort to counteract what she sees as the 'co-opting' of her characters by fanfic writers. By giving so much detail, perhaps you think you are giving fic writers less room to move and/or run with your characters (and hence distort them).

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

The funny thing (to me) is that I was talking about the exact opposite type of writing to Tolkien's-- like, JKR's is really quite different 'cause the writing style itself isn't big on long paragraphs of rambling prose description. She's more with the dialogue and action, but the effect is similar, though one is overly complex to the point of being didactic & the other overly simplistic, also to the point of being didactic. It's odd how overdoing things in either direction sort of achieves comparable effects in some readers, anyway.

I was just reading the last book in Alison Croggon's fantasy series, and it has something of Tolkien's weakness in terms of visual description-- though what bothered me more was over-defining other things, more intangible and value-oriented things like people's personalities and overall moral/social issues ingrained in the story. I think visual description taken by itself is just 'heavy' (drags you down) rather than intrusive in the same way telling you what to think and forcing you to know extraneous things about characters or their behavior is intrusive. In other words, some things are more painfully clunky and even pointless, whereas too much physical description is just... overbearing. I dunno if that makes sense :>

I think that while anti-fanfic sentiments may sometimes figure into it, people are plenty obsessed with info-dumping and are anal about all the details being 'clear' even without that. I think of it as native to the writer, something they naturally do, basically.

links

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

"If all stories were written like science fiction stories."

This wiki in general is also great.

Re: links

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, that's great. ♥

[therubaiyat.livejournal.com]

Like, you know how popular authors tend to be the ones who make every little fact they introduce totally 'clear' (except it's too clear), and even moreso when it gets into the land of telling-not-showing a character's feelings? Maybe I'm just hating on what's basically a standard third-person narrator; maybe I've become so used to super-narrow limited third-person that regular semi-omniscient third-person just feels like nails on a blackboard.

That just sounds like you've been inflicted with bad fiction that lacks subtlety. Popular and SKILLED writing rarely = the same thing.

And now is the time I run away from this random journal I was linked to with an affirmative nod in your direction.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hehehe no need to run away-- I have cookies!

But um, yeah. Too bad I sometimes like parts ofthe 'bad fiction' and thusly slog through it...