Secrets of Writing: Feeding Plot
The Audience will need to know a lot of information in the course of your story. The more complex the story, the more information they’ll need. But you can’t just shove this information down their throats. It goes back to the old dating rule I mentioned before. Your goal is to seduce, not to bore. If you want to seduce them you have to feed them plot details like sugared grapes, one by one.
To do this, you don’t tell them everything they need to know about a character and his back story right away. You only tell them what they need to know so they can form a picture in their mind that’s more solid than the one the artist provides. You then slowly feed them more and more info at every opportunity. But in ways that disguise the actual value of this information.
Too often writers will have characters using this kind of obvious exposition:
“So, Ajax, do you remember how we defeated Blue Snot yesterday?”
“Yes, Nukehead, by using your polaris beams on him while I blew up his computer. And then we went to lunch at McDonalds. You had the Happy Meal and I had a Quarter Pounder and fries.”
“I’m glad you remember these details, Ajax, because it seems his computer wasn’t completely damaged. And now Professor XYZ has come back to claim it. I think this will cause some serious problems for us.”
“Not Professor XYZ! I thought he was killed when we…”
You get the picture. The characters are telling each other what they already know in a forced, unrealistic manner. This is known as “table dusting”. It’s supposed to give the Audience vital information, but it’s really an amateurish way to do things. In a later chapter we’ll talk about Ex positional Dialog, but for now let’s address the concept of feeding plot.
If your Audience needs to know something, it’s better to tell them in a visual way if you can. If you can’t, then the person who passes on this information should tell it to a character who doesn’t know it, and who wants or needs to know it for some reason. This way, you at least make the passing of information credible.
You also want to make it succinct. Say what you have to say in the briefest, yet believable way you can. The less they have to read, the easier it’ll be to remember. And save the best information for last. Especially if it involves personal secrets. You can get more mileage that way.
REMEMBER: Feed them plot information in small doses. Save the best for last.
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