Pacing of information in a fictional world

[Aludra]

Don't have to involve time-travel or anything.  Maybe your low-tech character comes from a primitive planet or has liven in a vault all his life.

Or you could kind of work backwards.   
Maybe your character could be a bit of a nerd about 'ancient' history.
So you'd write like:

I reflexively use the Driving Guide Attachment on my feet to start up my brand new XXT LasRocket and pull onto the busy Starway.  This is the worst galaxy for Starway traffic, and everyone is just using it to get to the next moon's StarCoffee shop because they don't like the one on their own damn moon. I wish I lived in 2020, when there wouldn't be any such traffic! But then I'd be using wheels and pedals instead of the latest bioengineering technology to keep my hands and mind free to contemplate my predicament and facepalm at all the terrible "captains" whizzing about.


^^This is why /I/ don't write.  But you get the idea.  Nerdy historian main character could work as easily as a Nooby side character.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I already admitted that probably wasn't the best way to explain the principles of a laser. If you'd like to dwell on nit-picking instead of commenting on the actual advice I can simply stop offering it.

I'm sorry, that was not intended as hostile; I was just thinking of the coolness inherent in demonstrating how one's world works by having a character offer an explanation which the reader is meant to recognise as completely wrong, and what that might tell the reader about the character,

[meh]

Well, yes, ideally.  The problem is that "counterintuitive" is in the eye of the beholder.

And the beholder is the FPN, whose intuition is strictly bounded by your characterization.


For my own part, lumping things as post and prior to a great Crash/Cataclysm/MomentOfGreatRevelation helps.   Only have the character explain tech and social conventions to that point.      Multiple such events, of different significance to cultures within your world?   Even better: you can have your FPOV attempt to synchronize them, just as Thucydides had to do for the various calendars of various Greek cities and tribes.

[Aakaakaak]

I'm sorry, that was not intended as hostile; I was just thinking of the coolness inherent in demonstrating how one's world works by having a character offer an explanation which the reader is meant to recognise as completely wrong, and what that might tell the reader about the character,

Ah, okay. I couldn't hear the gears turning on the idea. I get it now.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I reflexively use the Driving Guide Attachment on my feet to start up my brand new XXT LasRocket and pull onto the busy Starway.  This is the worst galaxy for Starway traffic, and everyone is just using it to get to the next moon's StarCoffee shop because they don't like the one on their own damn moon. I wish I lived in 2020, when there wouldn't be any such traffic! But then I'd be using wheels and pedals instead of the latest bioengineering technology to keep my hands and mind free to contemplate my predicament and facepalm at all the terrible "captains" whizzing about.

The historian, the primitive from the vault, the person from another setting/culture/context (I think that's at least as old as Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes if you want to count strictly SF) and indeed the child/adolescent protagonist who is in a position in their life to be learning/being taught key bits of How the World Works are established ways of fidning reason to explain things to someone, yes.

I think I am a bit twitchy about this at least in part because it feels like that is something that has been done a thousand times before; every farmboy who grows up to save the world from the Dark Lord somewhere along the way gets taught about who the Dark Lord is and why we are fighting them in the first place.  Not that that can't be done well, just that I'm not finding it appealing. Whereas really good complete-immersion-into-alien-world books where you pick it up as you go along seem to me to be few and far between, and when that is done right I both love and admire it; that's a direction to which I am much more drawn.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

And the beholder is the FPN, whose intuition is strictly bounded by your characterization.

To an extent.  I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that a lot of things that seem intutive to me personally are not intuitive to many other people, and writing a character to whom things are intutitive which leave non-me readers going "huh ? How the heck did she just conclude X from Y ?" is a failure mode that worries me.

For my own part, lumping things as post and prior to a great Crash/Cataclysm/MomentOfGreatRevelation helps.   Only have the character explain tech and social conventions to that point.      Multiple such events, of different significance to cultures within your world?   Even better: you can have your FPOV attempt to synchronize them, just as Thucydides had to do for the various calendars of various Greek cities and tribes.

I am, at this point trying to sort out all the information I have for the relevant setting so that I'm not overloading it, and just focus on a couple of the cool bits for the first story.  Series are marketable, right ?

[meh]

...

For my own part, lumping things as post and prior to a great Crash/Cataclysm/MomentOfGreatRevelation helps.   Only have the character explain tech and social conventions to that point.      Multiple such events, of different significance to cultures within your world?   Even better: you can have your FPOV attempt to synchronize them, just as Thucydides had to do for the various calendars of various Greek cities and tribes.

I am, at this point trying to sort out all the information I have for the relevant setting so that I'm not overloading it, and just focus on a couple of the cool bits for the first story.  Series are marketable, right ?

I am trying to simplify things for you here: your character need only explain things to that all-changing event.


"Since the Great War no one had seen a technomage"

[Aakaakaak]

Series are marketable, right ?

If you go by how Jim states he got published...they're almost mandatory.

[prophet224]

Ok, I think this is a great question, and it is a problem that everyone in sci-fi or fantasy has to deal with to some extent.  If you are in the far future or distant anywhere, you have that much more to explain.  So don't.

Seriously.  Look, you don't have to explain everything in great detail.  Maybe there was a 'Great War' recently.  Have a character mention his or her 'time in the Big One'.  You don't have to go into details, but if you want to later, you can.  The reader now knows that these people have somewhat recently dealt with a large-scale war, and all that entails.

Maybe you have some new technologies, say an Alcubierre-based gravity warping drive.  Do you need to explain that in 2340 they were able to tap into quantum energy, which allowed both power and an alternate method for creating the gravity warping than dark matter?  Nope.  Explain that so-and-so drive was developed in <insert year>, warps space, and allows FTL speeds within relativity by moving the frame of reference.  Minimal details.  Tell what it does.

From a social standpoint, have them think whatever they think, based on their situation.  Sometimes it is better to leave the question mark there.  If Joe talks about something that seems unusual to us today, and the other characters appear to take it in stride, the reader will generally go "I wonder what that is all about" and give you space.  You can then use a reflective scene to bring out more of the history. 

On a side note, think about the movie 300.  Those events occurred in 480B.C.  A thousand years from now, do you think there will be entertainment centered around key battles from our time's world wars, for instance?  You betcha.  Use that sort of thing to draw compairsons.  Just a thought.
That's just my thought.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Ok, I think this is a great question, and it is a problem that everyone in sci-fi or fantasy has to deal with to some extent.  If you are in the far future or distant anywhere, you have that much more to explain.  So don't.

I know one does not have to explain everything, but there's only so much I can leave unexplained; the failure mode there is "A happens for unexplained reason, and then B follows on from A for reasons also unexplained, and then C comes on from that where a contemporary reader would most likely expect D to happen instead", and unless enough of the How Things Work basics are in there somewhere, it just looks like pulling plot from thin air rather than playing fair with the rules of that setting.  I mean, a detective story where one met all the characters and then had the detective present the solution but never got the reasoning between the data and the solution would be at best gimmicky and at worst pointless.

Nope.  Explain that so-and-so drive was developed in <insert year>, warps space, and allows FTL speeds within relativity by moving the frame of reference.  Minimal details.  Tell what it does.

There's also a general-feel question here.  Yes, there is made-up future science in it, but I want a solidity to it, and too much just describing what it does can end up feeling like "the ship is driven by a combination of plot contrivance and invisible pink unicorns."  (This is not _Star Wars_, in which one can substitute "the Plot" for "the Force" throughout.)

[svb1972]

It's going to depend on the social mores, the scientific ones.

For example:

If you're building a world where polyamory is the norm:  Have the protagonist meet a monogamous couple and react how strange that is (although how he would know they were monogamous.  a sticky point i guess.)

If there is no marriages, but a marriage contract between people with a time-limit, to be renewed every so and so.  Perhaps one of the Protagonists friends can be talking about how his family pod fell apart because Maria would only renew her marriage contract if Alphonse was removed from it.  But Terry and Bob would rather leave and form a new pod with Alphonse then do that. 

If it's an issue of science. 
Have something break, and the protagonist has to take it to a mechanic/engineer/hobbyist to get it repaired.  Said hobbyist can 'chat' about the X-Luger Ionized engine.  And how it's so much better than the coiled plasma engine and why, as he's repairing it.

If you're in a military setting, the Military LOVES history lessons.  Have the protagonist flash back to a history lesson from a favorite Instructor.

It would help if we knew what A -> b ->C looked like, and why you're worried that people will feel like they're being hit by the Plot hammer.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

It would help if we knew what A -> b ->C looked like, and why you're worried that people will feel like they're being hit by the Plot hammer.

Hrrm.  Talking about this and staying clear of forum policy on story ideas is not easy.

If you're interested, I'll PM you when I get around to cleaning out my PMs, which will probably be in about a week.

[svb1972]

Sure

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

If you're building a world where polyamory is the norm:  Have the protagonist meet a monogamous couple and react how strange that is (although how he would know they were monogamous.  a sticky point i guess.)

That works fine for issues where there is the equivalent of monogamy around.

The harder bit is issues equivalent to, to stretch your metaphor, polyamory being so much the norm that nobody had ever heard of monogamy for centuries, and that they would never bump into anyone who practised it or have any reason to talk about it or even think about it consciously; the unexamined background assumptions that are different from ours.

[svb1972]

That works fine for issues where there is the equivalent of monogamy around.

The harder bit is issues equivalent to, to stretch your metaphor, polyamory being so much the norm that nobody had ever heard of monogamy for centuries, and that they would never bump into anyone who practised it or have any reason to talk about it or even think about it consciously; the unexamined background assumptions that are different from ours.

The way around those is to create social situations where people talk about their homelife.
 A small group of friends getting together.  "Hey Marvin, how's the home life?" 
"Well, you know.. I'm missing Marie alot, she's up visiting Joanna from Venus.  It sucks, cause John(or Jane) and I feel like the bed is empty with out her."

"I know what you mean, Nathan and Serephina went out of town about a month ago .  Mark, Gavin and I had our hands full with all the kids."

Maybe go to a restaurant (if they exist) where they get a nice romantic table for 5..