{"id":2138,"date":"2010-06-14T03:40:02","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T07:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=2138"},"modified":"2010-06-14T03:46:59","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T07:46:59","slug":"an-interesting-concept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/an-interesting-concept\/","title":{"rendered":"An interesting concept"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, I was hanging out with a friend of mine and a couple of girls in the apartment complex where I currently live.\u00a0 We got to talking about books, and one of the girls said something really interesting:<\/p>\n

Every book needs to have one thing that the main character knows that the reader doesn’t know, and one thing that the reader knows that the main character doesn’t know; otherwise, it’s too boring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s a fascinating concept.\u00a0 I know that both things are important, but I’ve never connected them together.<\/p>\n

When the reader knows something that the main character doesn’t, it can make for great suspense.\u00a0 A good example of this is this scene from Xenogears, when the characters are trying to hunt down a monster in the sewers (skip to 6:37):<\/p>\n

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It’s harder to pull off having the characters withhold information from the readers, but it can be done. I think a good example of this is the scene from Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back<\/i> when the Millenium Falcon arrives at Bespin and C3PO gets shot:<\/p>\n

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Granted, nothing really vital is withheld here, since by this point Master Yoda has seen Luke’s friends in danger, and Bobba Fett has clearly followed them to Bespin–but the audience still doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, and so it creates suspense.<\/p>\n

In terms of Orson Scott Card’s MICE quotient<\/a>, this would definitely fall under the “information” component of stories. In Brandon Sanderson’s class (and in my own reading), I’ve focused a lot on character, setting (milieu), and plot (event), but I haven’t thought a lot about information.<\/p>\n

I wonder how my own novels measure up to this principle. Let’s see…<\/p>\n

In Genesis Earth<\/i>, there are a lot of things that Michael and the reader doesn’t know, but not much that one knows and the other doesn’t. There are, however, quite a few things that Terra knows that the reader doesn’t. Those all come out in the middle, though. In terms of information withheld from the reader, I suppose you could count Terra’s feelings for Michael, in the buildup before the climax, but that’s about it.<\/p>\n

In Mercenary Savior<\/i>, the reader knows a TON of stuff that James doesn’t know–it’s a major source of the suspense in that novel. In terms of things the characters know that the reader doesn’t, there’s much less, but I can think of a few things Danica knows that are kept mysterious until a key climax. Those aren’t foreshadowed until maybe 50 or 100 pages before the reveal, but I suppose it still counts.<\/p>\n

Thinking WAY back to my first practice novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea<\/i> (which I will probably never publish), there is, again, a TON<\/b> of stuff the reader knows that the characters don’t. Basically, every character is clueless in some crucial way, and the resulting comedy of errors drives the plot. In terms of information withheld from the reader, though, there’s not as much. There is<\/i> a point where Ian runs off without an explanation, but I’m not sure if that’s just my own poor writing. I could probably pull it off in a revision, but I don’t know when or if that will ever happen.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I suppose I’ve done that in my own writing. I suppose it’s much easier to do this in third person, however–Genesis Earth<\/i> is entirely in first person, and there isn’t anything Michael thinks about that the reader doesn’t see. He is an unreliable narrator at times, but he’s not the character withholding the information–and if he was, I don’t think it would have worked very well.<\/p>\n

In any case, it’s a very interesting principle. I’ll have to keep it in mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, I was hanging out with a friend of mine and a couple of girls in the apartment complex where I currently live.\u00a0 We got to talking about books, and one of the girls said something really interesting: Every book needs to have one thing that the main character knows that the reader doesn’t… Continue reading An interesting concept<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,32],"tags":[78,94,411,323,8,324,306,4,599,271,412],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","category-ge","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-english-318","tag-information","tag-mystery","tag-writing-in-general","tag-orson-scott-card","tag-star-wars","tag-the-lost-colony","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-video-games","tag-xenogears","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-yu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2147,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions\/2147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}