Are you done explaining yet?

So for the rare Vragon of this year (Joking I'm not that bad I think) I'd like to raise the discussion topic of getting information out there. Now things in a story tend to be confusing if not explained well and certain things can be labeled as "Plot Convinience" even if you already had that idea all long.

Course on the other hand, explaining every nook and crannie fo your world and how it freakin works can discourage a reader from reading. Even in a narrative end where you show the characters learning or perhaps ingrain it in the plot somehow it can be very aurdorous to keep the reader engaged while at the same time getting the info drop they need.

So now comes the overall point of this stupidly long dual wielding paragraphs. How do you feel about mechanics explainiation? What are ways you do that and why do you think they work for your story? Your thoughts on stories that don't do well or possibly ways that certain books/novels could have taken to make it less of a chorse to read through or explain what they needed to.

Anyway just throwing this out for discussion so we all can talk about writing things and not for the purposes of showing that I Vragon am still a living indiivudal. Don't feel like you have to answer all three; Just some thoughts or an idea about it is fine.
Thanks!

I can't think of a way that explaining the mechanics of a world has gone wrong, but I can definitely think of one where it went right in a published book. (And forgive me for this, but I'll be talking about something that I adore that I haven't thought about in almost a year.)

Orson Scott Card, in Ender's Game, doesn't take the time to explain the mechanics of the world. In the first chapter, he drops information and some technology of the world but doesn't take any time to explain it. What's a "desk"? Don't exactly know. What's a "monitor"? Don't exactly know. But the reader is given enough clues in the narrative through characters' actions and dialogue that the reader can pick up enough information to not be totally lost. We're never told exactly what Card imagined a "desk" to be, but readers can guess enough to come up with a general idea.

As for myself, I really haven't had a chance to explain mechanics in my writing. Mostly because the characters are all confused on how things work in the world.

I try my best to explain only what is pertinent to the story, and in such a way it does not come across as an "As you know, Bob" infodump.

You do not have to mimic The Lord of the Rings and go on and on for five pages about a piece of grass.

Ooooh! A topic about explaining things! I could go on on this one and on and on and on...

Vragon said:

So now comes the overall point of this stupidly long dual wielding paragraphs. How do you feel about mechanics explainiation? What are ways you do that and why do you think they work for your story? Your thoughts on stories that don't do well or possibly ways that certain books/novels could have taken to make it less of a chorse to read through or explain what they needed to.

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The thing about mechanics is that if you let them be or go explained they will for the most part just ramble and technobable whatever excuse to justify the price they are charging for the repairs, including how they had to twist their finger four different ways to reach a specific valve and their insurance doesn't cover that.

Not exactly a "wrong" analogy, but I feel like it is useful because it highlights a couple of things:

* Mechanics are sweaty and greasy. They are one of the two things that are making your story work.
* Sometimes, having a mechanic explained makes less sense, or produces less satisfaction than leaving it opaque, at least for the time being.
* You most likely don't want the mechanic have to be / go explained to you. That's time that you have to pay up with your money. You very likely would prefer that the mechanic spends that time working and shown working.
* At the end of the day, if the story still doesn't work the mechanic is just going to have had done a whole lot of nothing.

Basically I agree with Bardothren in that mechanics explanation -if there needs to be an explanation, I'll get to that later- has to be integrated in the form of demonstrating the mechanics.Showing that something works is better that having to call it out by name and explain, in particular when for plot reasons the explanation has to be done in a fragmented way. If you have to explain, you can disguise the explanation as an in-universe element of the setting activities itself - for example, as part of an advertising campaign, a teacher's work or a scientist's tutoring of a new plot-relevant artifact. Heck, you can even *have* to hint or explain postgraduate-level concepts to your audience and do so in a manner so tightly integrated with the narration that they don't even notice that they are receiving free education with their entertainment package, as The Matrix and Speed Racer did (coincidentally both are Watchowski movies, hmmm).

However, sometimes the best way to explain a mechanic is to bring it to the forefront of the story and then don't explain it. If the mechanic you are explaining is "natural" in your story's world, then it would stand to reason that, for example, when we see one of the characters first interact with it, they won't be at all surprised and won't require an explanation about it. It's just like the setting sun or using a toothbrush, so they'll just shrug, if even that, and continue to interact with it naturally. The narration might not even need to acknowledge that this concept that is being introduced is new to the audience.

That's more or less my thought about if even having to explain things.

EmeraldSky said:

You do not have to mimic The Lord of the Rings and go on and on for five pages about a piece of grass.

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B-b-but what if it is the best, most nutritious EVER grass to have been plot-relevant in the story of the world?

Venia Silente said:

B-b-but what if it is the best, most nutritious EVER grass to have been plot-relevant in the story of the world?

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Then it is worth the five pages of description.

In terms of Pokemon, what I've done so far when inventing novel mechanics is to use something which happened in some official media to back it up--so instead of being entirely new, it's more of a logical extension of what we've seen in canon. After that, the 'how' is pretty unimportant, because you can rely on the stuff Nintendo made up and then proceeded to not really explain.

TaillowFeather said:

In terms of Pokemon, what I've done so far when inventing novel mechanics is to use something which happened in some official media to back it up--so instead of being entirely new, it's more of a logical extension of what we've seen in canon. After that, the 'how' is pretty unimportant, because you can rely on the stuff Nintendo made up and then proceeded to not really explain.

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Fair, I try to not stray from the actual mechanics and try to use mechanics found all over pokemon canon. Some examples are,

Items, outfits and looplets: PMD
TMs, Berris, Z-crystals and mega stones: Versions
Synergy: Pokken
A few other things

save me the trouble of explaining items unless I use it for a narrative or going into detail.

I don't think you should just drop in a page full of explanation as to how something works, but rather perhaps a paragraph or two the first time it shows up and is actually recognized, and then elaborate more on it as time goes on but dropping more subtle hints of its full capabilities the whole time so people can't call you out for plot convenience later on when you do actually decide to use it as a deus ex machina.