Are You Giving Readers the Tools to Understand Your Story?

One of the reasons story beginnings are so tricky is the sheer volume of information the author has to share with readers, just to make sure readers understand what’s going on. This grows all the more true when your story is presenting unusual or unexpected characters or settings.

The trick is sharing the information without bringing the story to a screeching halt. Writers come up with all sorts of clever tricks such as dialogue and inference to try to get the info across without being obvious about it.

But sometimes the best way to accomplish this is to be obvious. For example, in the fantasy Magic Lost, Trouble Found, Lisa Shearin wastes no time sharing salient facts about her first-person narrator. She doesn’t beat around the bush; she just states point blank that her character is an elf from a crime family who makes her living “searching” for lost goods. She could have spent paragraphs weaving this info into an explanatory scene. Instead, she wastes as little of readers’ time as possible.

Let’s break this down and see how she makes this work.

To begin with, she’s succinct. Her matter-of-fact explanations are accepted by readers because she doesn’t bore them. She tells them only what they need to know, then moves on to the action.

Secondly, she’s prompt. Everything she shares is information that will shape readers’ perceptions of the character, so Shearin gets the grunt work out of the way first.

Third, she shares the info in a way that’s both true to the narrator’s voice and entertaining. Of course, this method isn’t always going to be the best choice, but because its simplicity makes it attractive to everyone involved, it’s always worth considering.

In our attempts to please our readers, we can occasionally out think ourselves. Sometimes simple really is best.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Have you ever found it made more sense to tell readers information rather than trying to be subtle? Tell me in the comments!