Suit up: A Guide to the Action World

⤷Tips on Conveying Information without Stalling the Story Part 2

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𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖛𝖊𝖞𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕴𝖓𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕾𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝕻𝖙. 2

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This is the continuation...

Now that we established the difference between Action and Information. Let's read the examples based on the same dialogue in the previous chapter to understand the topic further.

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Let's look back at the three quotes I isolated earlier.

"Gered was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go." 

This gives us information about Gered's age and experience. It draws from fact (past fifty) and the past (he had seen the lordlings come and go), and it's relevant to that conflict between these more experienced watchmen and their youthful superior.

"Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner." 

This gives us information about Will's interiority. In this case, the verbs tip us off to the state-of-mind focus of these sentences: had known, wished. And again, note the relevance to the conflict.

"Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife." 

This gives us informational context that will help us understand the nature of the conflict between Royce and the other two (he's rich; he's got something to prove; he's very young; he's not strong).

If your information (facts, past, interiority, context) is not relevant to the story's state of affairs, your reader will tune it out—or worse, come to distrust your narration. If, for instance, I were to inject the following additional information about Ser Waymar Royce, how would you feel about it?

A reader maintains a sense of balance between information and action. Even if it's only subconscious, the reader is thinking, Is the information relevant to the desire+conflict that comprises the action? Do I need to know this right now? Am I distracted from the story?

Any time you throw off that balance, the reader will feel it.

So:

1) Don't give us information that isn't relevant to the current scene desire + conflict.

2) Give us the minimal amount of information possible. There's quite a lot of information that can just be implied via the affairs of the story. You may want to add more and you may argue it's relevant to the desire+conflict. And you may be right. But is it really necessary?

3) Don't try to slip in excessive information in dialogue. We're on to you. We know what you're doing. You're not going to get away with it.

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Storm. T.D. (N.d.). Action vs. Information: Convey Info without Stalling the Story. retrieved May 19, 2022 from.https://www.stormwritingschool.com/action-vs-information-convey-info-without-stalling-the-story/