carnalisation:

balioc:

oligopsalter:

As a reader, I like worldbuilding, even (and sometimes especially) the expository parts. I read SFF because it’s the genre that most delivers that. It feels actively annoying when I have to sit through Plot that I’ve seen a million times before to get to soak in a world that I haven’t, or even to look at (say) extruded D&D fantasy in fine everyday detail with new eyes.

I feel like this should be obvious, but I still see, pretty regularly, appeals to authors to stop so much worldbuilding and focus on what obviously really matters to presumed readers, the story. I’m sure there are plenty of readers for whom that’s true! Good for them! But it’s not universal and we’re living in a long-tail world. Unless you’re right on the edge of being able to write full-time and writing to market means the difference between having a day job or not, don’t let The Average Reader become a sort of imperative-issuing Big Other. I would guess there are many more readers who love baroque expository worldbuilding than there are people who are really into, I don’t know, mpreg werewolf fanfiction, but there’s a thriving audience for that and more power to them, so don’t let them hog all the fun!

Amen.

This can be applied more generally to showing-versus-telling, I think.  If you’ve got something that’s more interesting than the beat-by-beat progression of your yarn, you should tell us about it, rather than slicing it up into little pieces and embedding those pieces in the unfolding plot.

…but then again, I read splatbooks for fun, so maybe I’m not the best person to ask.

…but I’m probably not the only one who does that kind of thing.

Regarding “show don’t tell” – I went through books at an immense speed as a child. Real-life social interactions were mystifying, but books offered me all they lacked: they explained what was happening, why it was happening, what people felt when it happened, and how their reactions related to their feelings. It was a cheat sheet for human behavior, and it made little me more empathetic and interested in people even when my experiences with them were unpleasant.
When I encounter books that took “show don’t tell” to heart, they confuse and sometimes anger me. What do the characters mean by raising an eyebrow, or blinking slowly? Why are they reacting with anger here, and nonchalance there, and why do your other characters treat that as meaningful and informative?
It’s like dramatic face shots in movies, where the actors stare blandly at something and there’s emotional music and it’s obvious it’s supposed to convey something, but I never know what that is.
There’s a weird opposite phenomenon of characters reading facial expressions and narrating their readings “the look in his eyes told me he was deeply troubled by what he just saw” – they’re eyes! They’re orbs with lenses and people use them to see. How can you tell?
Obviously reading facial expressions is not magic for everyone. Still, I miss being catered to by writers allowing me to get a good view of the inside of character’s heads without having to throw up my hands and say “well I guess these people have reasons and emotions but I’ll never know which, thanks a lot”.

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#re: OP: #yes this #I looked in the notes and found this branch #which is not *as* pure in its Yes-This-ness as the OP #but is interesting and definitely has its moments of relatability #(I distinctly recall going on a similar rant about ”the look in their eyes” in my early teens) #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #autism