Tags
Last week, Mike linked me to this article about 8 tips on writing from Kurt Vonnegut. For the most part, I agreed with these tips.
On the other hand, I didn’t fully agree with this one:
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
This information can be interpreted many ways: does he mean go crazy with the info dumps? Be blatant with your plot points? Indeed, if there are so many pieces of information that I can see the ending coming without finishing the story, then why would I read it? Isn’t that in direct violation of tip #1?
Some stories–particularly horror–just don’t function with this advice at all. I mean, if we saw what was coming in a Lovecraftian piece, would it be nearly as interesting? Would it even be Lovecraftian?
So what does he mean here? Well, I can’t speak for Mr. Vonnegut, but my take on it would be the following:
Seed your plots with enough information so that when your readers get to the end of the story they can see the progression, and the conclusion makes sense. Conversely, if they could not finish reading the story, they could, with some consideration, create an ending for themselves (whether or not it was your own).
(This still doesn’t work with some specific niche story types, but it does fit on a broader level.)
What are your thoughts on the matter? Should you give it all away at the beginning, sprinkle throughout, or wait until the big reveal at the end?
Mimerki said:
Having read a lot of Vonnegut and heard him speak, I think this is more “don’t be unnecessarily coy”. There’s a certain class of writer who wants to keep everything a little bit of a secret but if the revelation that the main character’s roommate is also (shock!) her sister isn’t somehow central to your plot, just say, “My sister and I share a walk-up.”
And, to a certain extent, in a first draft it is probably better to infodump when you have the chance and come back later to clean that up.
Then again, I have seen people take #3 (Every character should want something) to weird extremes too. While every character should want something, you don’t have to detail the wants and needs of the nameless barista. I am sure that everyone who works at my favored coffee shop is a fascinating person, but they appear in my life as Nice Coffee Guy or Rushed Coffee Lady.