Good luck anthimaeria's husband! Since I still have my fingers crossed for you, he may have my toes. It's getting bloody hard to type, let me tell you.
Yes, that's the whole problem with exposition, it's so satisfying to write it and to look at your paper or screen and think: now I know that about you, h character. And to be honest, I'm exaggerating its sins in this piece, I have read stories that were covered in the Exposition Fairy's bovver boot marks, and yet were still delightful. But too often she sticks her feet in the way of narrative or of dialogue and never lets us get to the important stuff of development, or shagging for that matter.
Your write and edit approach is the one that I agree is best in every direction; you end up knowing all that stuff, and you can make choices about what you tell the reader. All the imaginative worlds we enjoy as readers are ones in which we sense the author is holding back a tide of detail that exists just below the text. We do not need to be told what colour the slipcovers are, but we do need to believe the author knows.
And yes, awareness is the key.
I don't think that anyone does write perfectly first go. I like to think of myself as a minimal reviser, yet I have two large folders of early drafts of novel chapters which I have forced myself to keep so that I can stop pretending they don't exist.
I read a wonderful review of a new book on Shelley recently that talked about the scratched-out lines of his poems in manuscript form, where he edged his way closer and closer to those stanzas of breathtaking flight.
Coleridge may have managed it, but he was drugged out of his brain at the time, and came to a sorry end.
I will send you the draft of my novel in a year or so when it is at that stage. And you will despair for my sanity and say, "B, old chum, do you really think the kids are interested in 14th century religious disputes in the Baltics?" and I shall reply "A, matey, there's several big fight scenes! Plus -- ponies!"
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Yes, that's the whole problem with exposition, it's so satisfying to write it and to look at your paper or screen and think: now I know that about you, h character. And to be honest, I'm exaggerating its sins in this piece, I have read stories that were covered in the Exposition Fairy's bovver boot marks, and yet were still delightful. But too often she sticks her feet in the way of narrative or of dialogue and never lets us get to the important stuff of development, or shagging for that matter.
Your write and edit approach is the one that I agree is best in every direction; you end up knowing all that stuff, and you can make choices about what you tell the reader. All the imaginative worlds we enjoy as readers are ones in which we sense the author is holding back a tide of detail that exists just below the text. We do not need to be told what colour the slipcovers are, but we do need to believe the author knows.
And yes, awareness is the key.
I don't think that anyone does write perfectly first go. I like to think of myself as a minimal reviser, yet I have two large folders of early drafts of novel chapters which I have forced myself to keep so that I can stop pretending they don't exist.
I read a wonderful review of a new book on Shelley recently that talked about the scratched-out lines of his poems in manuscript form, where he edged his way closer and closer to those stanzas of breathtaking flight.
Coleridge may have managed it, but he was drugged out of his brain at the time, and came to a sorry end.
I will send you the draft of my novel in a year or so when it is at that stage. And you will despair for my sanity and say, "B, old chum, do you really think the kids are interested in 14th century religious disputes in the Baltics?" and I shall reply "A, matey, there's several big fight scenes! Plus -- ponies!"