Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 20:20:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Mike Noakes <s669330@aix2.uottawa.ca>
To: Nightman <nightman@provide.net>
cc: ffml@fanfic.com
Subject: Re: [FFML][rant][fanfic-related] Flashbacks, and more!


On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, Nightman wrote:

	I don't know.  If you end up assigning too many text indicators
unecessarily, than you lose a lot of the tools necessary to deftly and
subtly manipulate the language.

It's like mangoes--one or two are great, but a dozen'll make you sick.
Gary Kleppe has done an excellent job of berating me on my overuse of 
these elements, when it occurs.

	Doesn't annoy me at all.  Plenty of novelists use it, and its a
normal tool, I think, in stories that are very 

plot-and-action-oriented.

Crighton does it -- a number of perfectly fine authors do.  In a story
that jumps around a lot (physical and/or temporal location), it grounds
the plot quickly, at the beginning of each chapter.

Good point.  On the other hand, Threads, by Dewin Duvae and availible on 
my webpage at:

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/9118/EastWindow/Eastwindow.html

makes an interesting use of _not_ bothering with scene change markers.  
It's a bit of a surreal experience, but that's what he was aiming 
for--the mark of a successful artistic expression.

	What doesn't work (slightly different topic) which I've seen in
some fics, and even in some published works (just another indication, 

in

my opinion, that you really don't have to be all that good at writing 

to

get published), is the long prologue that situates you with a deluge of
chronological details.  You know, the kind that goes:

<snip a bizarrely intriguing scenario>

	And so on, and so on...

	Right, goofiness aside (I got a bit distracted), stuff like this
get put out, and, for me, few things (not even SI) ensure an immediate
deletion.  Having all this background data is great -- just feed it in
through the peripheries, throughout the story.  Readers are a fairly 

smart

bunch, they'll figure out what's going on (and sci-fi/fantasy readers 

are

even more intuitive, they'll fill in the gaps and get what you're 

getting

at quickly...)

I think that I agree with you on this, with one kibitz:  It is often 
useful to put that kind of information as an appendix to the story.  
Note that since the Appendix is read after the main story, it still 
isn't a way to get around slipping the info to the reader--rather, it's 
a way of giving them a potentially fun read that wouldn't work as 
in-story exposition.  Kind of like the language glossaries and timelines 
at the end of Lord of the Rings--you don't have to read them if you 
don't want to, but they are great for filling in the story you just read 
with additional depth.

	Wow, I'm in a conversational mood.  This is the most I've sent to
the FFML in, what, eight months?
	Anyway, just my two euros.  (What's that in Canadian funds, I
wonder?)

	-Mike Noakes

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