Net your Reader with The Holes

[Katie-Ellen]

Exposition is not Art.

Exposition is not Heart.

Just the same as a page needs empty space......

"A good storyteller knows that a fishing net is not made of rope. A fishing net is made of holes. Without the holes, the net would not function. And a story does not exist without gaps in knowledge. Stories are made from what is withheld, not what is given. "

David Baboulene

Scriptwriter (Hollywood/London)

Image: The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

 

[Emily]

Love this (and that card, wow, beautiful artwork)

 

[Rich.]

"A good storyteller knows that a fishing net is not made of rope. A fishing net is made of holes. Without the holes, the net would not function. And a story does not exist without gaps in knowledge. Stories are made from what is withheld, not what is given. "

This is a very fancy way of saying, don't be obvious. Part of me loves this quote – the part of me that loves it is going to buy the book (thanks KT!) – but another part, a more primal part, thinks that a rock is a rock, regardless of what I might use it for. I know some fishermen, and I can well imagine what they'd say if I told them their nets were made of holes.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Il Matrimonio is a fisherman of the salt water variety. I'll ask him.

Back in a sec.
......
..........

He just grunted.



(Own pic. It is a bit rubbish. But never mind. Taken in the Sea Life Centre in St Malo. Wonderful place.)

The metaphor's got a big 'ole in it.

But exposition is a killer in the bud of so many Pop Up subs. I think new writers are tyrannised by the idea the reader has to UNDERSTAND right away, right from the first page.
It is a false tyranny.
The reader only has to be enticed.
One hook or cookie as @AgentPete refers to them.
The rest is voice.
Plot is important, of course, no story without a plot, but the voice is what the reader stays for. That voice that promises the reader, I know what I am doing here, you're in safe hands.

 

[Rich.]

Juxtaposition is a wonderful thing. The spider crab (is that what it is?) is now your husband in my mind.

As he grunted, what was his face doing? You want the meaning of a grunt, look to the eyes.

I agree with everything you said, by the way. And I would add that those cookies work best when they speak to the emotions. Make 'em feel it and they'll be yours till the end.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Heheheee....yes, a spider crab.

Il Matrimonio has a total poker face.

(edited so as not to unduly break the flow of the thread.)

 

[Carol Rose]

Gorgeous artwork on that tarot card.

I really love this concept. Many writers, especially when they're beginning to write, are under the misconception they need to feed their readers every scrap of backstory and extraneous information as soon as possible, so the readers understand what's going on. As a result, the beginning of the story ends up reading like a travelogue or a history textbook, instead of a novel. We also see this referred to as an information dump.

It's okay to keep readers guessing. Not to the point they aren't sufficiently grounded up front, or else you run the risk of loosing them because the story is too confusing right away. It's a fine line to walk, but luckily for us we have the Writing Groups and Pop-Up Submissions, right here on Litopia, to help us fine tune those aspects of our work.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Indeed we do @Carol Rose.

....'holding two inconsistent ideas in your head without allowing yourself to see the inconsistency.'

I think that is a profound observation in general @Kirsten and a difference in writing between the competent and the extraordinary. A looseness that is not laxity, and an ease with dichotomy or uncertainty. Life is about uncertainty. Full of holes. Interstitial space.

I like this.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. Next time you find yourself doing something unusual or contradictory that surprises other people or yourself, remember that you contain multitudes. Sometimes that contradiction is a sign of progress."

-Walt Whitman

Here is another card, same card, same artist, different deck for Litopia's Tarot aficionados. The Legacy Of The Divine Tarot. A voyage into the unknown. Going off of a new study course. Also an omen of recovery from illness.
Do you have a preference?

 

[Rob Reid]

Great metaphor about hooking the reader!

Before I began writing fiction I wrote a lot of business reports. While this is good experience for skills such as grammar, sentence structure and narrative clarity, I soon realized that there is a huge difference in how you "hook" the reader. In business writing you want absolute clarity - if the reader gets confused, they get annoyed. In fiction if the reader is unsure about some things, they will keep reading in the hope of finding the answers, assuming the author sets the hook well - a crucial skill, but one not easily mastered.

A example of this approach done well is The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman. For most of the novel the true relationships between the characters are a mystery and the story is told in three alternating timelines forcing the reader to guess at how it all connects. Rather than being annoyed by this lack of information, I found myself compelled to keep reading. I enjoyed the book and admired Rachman's technique, but I find it a challenge to try a similar approach in my own writing. Any further advice on this topic would be appreciated.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

@Carol Rose started a thread yesterday, discussing the challenges of 'just enough' exposition.

"I found myself compelled to keep reading."

Can you pinpoint why that was @Rob Reid?

 

[Rob Reid]

I found the characters interesting and engaging so I wanted to know more about them. It was clear that the author was deliberately withholding key information (big holes in the net!) so it read a bit like a mystery novel with several threads gradually becoming clearer until all was revealed at the end.

 

[CageSage]

This is a very fancy way of saying, don't be obvious. Part of me loves this quote – the part of me that loves it is going to buy the book (thanks KT!) – but another part, a more primal part, thinks that a rock is a rock, regardless of what I might use it for. I know some fishermen, and I can well imagine what they'd say if I told them their nets were made of holes.

Whichever way a writer works it, the reader has to find some form of loop that isn't closed, and they have to, absolutely have to, find a way to close that loop, pull that net up to see what it's got, look under that rock to see, always to see ... what is that, where is it, why? The open loop keeps the brain interested, hopefully the rest of the story is enough ...