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I finally stopped over-explaining my plot after a friend's blunt comment
My buddy Jenna said my 20-page outline felt like a textbook, not a story. She told me to trust the reader more and cut half the explanation. Anyone else get told they're being too obvious with their worldbuilding?
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emma_dixon7010d ago
Read a book once where the author spent two chapters explaining fire-breathing lizards. Nobody cared. But everyone noticed the main character’s habit of cracking her knuckles too loud. That one little thing got mentioned in every review.
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lopez.quinn10d ago
Flip it around and look at what you're not explaining at all. Sometimes the stuff we assume readers will get is way more confusing than the stuff we're killing ourselves to explain. Like I had this fantasy town where nobody ever locked their doors, but I wrote three paragraphs about the magic lock system. Turned out readers cared more about why a bakery stayed open 24 hours in a supposedly sleepy village. That one detail I glossed over became the real hook.
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burns.jenny10d ago
Oh man, that bakery detail thing is such a good point. I had this whole backstory for why my character could speak to animals, like three pages of ancient forest spirits and bloodlines. But a beta reader just wanted to know why the main character's horse kept trying to eat her hair. I never once thought about that horse being a jerk. Now I've got this whole subplot about the horse being grumpy because it misses its old owner and nobody is asking about the magic anymore. It's funny how the small weird things grab people more than the big explanations. Sometimes you just gotta let the reader wonder and not fill in every gap.
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