Discovered Substack whilst reading The Simple Things mag. I have been doing various writing assignments since discovering I love writing, learning and sharing information during Lockdown. Mainly health, well-being and outdoors stuff. I'm looking to start and grow an audience and Substack seems just right. I'm not sure where ir how to start and your writing tips and insights are valuable
Final thought - sometimes a bumper length infodump is the right way to go. The tale to get to Simova had action, new alliances, personal conflict (Jayna 😑), and did the heavy lifting to set up the next action. But finding out about the notes would be several more chapters of planning, execution, and an exciting scene of people looking at display cases. An infodump is also a time skip.
Sometimes you just have to exposit all over the place. Don't worry about it. Happens with some of the greatest world of literature. William Shakespeare in "Hamlet" spends most of Act I infodumping. If one re-reads "Lord of the Rings" and flips past all the songs and anytime someone starts expositing on lore, you skip half the book.
At least you haven't paused for 12 pages between two lines of dialog ti describe everyone's clothing, down to the stitching pattern, and describing the lamps in the room - looking at Robert Jordan, here...
Is your staging a bit static? Don't worry about it. I'm thinking the upcoming Babylon 5 episode, "Messages From Earth" is going to spend an entire act with characters sitting around a table while the guest star gives ALL THE BACKSTORY.
As you noted, you've got Holland to play off, and his asshole nature makes him perfect to push a "just get on with it." Birhane is a nice edition, too. He's not part of the SDC group, we don't really know him, and, as he points out, he's Active-duty Police, so, will he keep his mouth shut and help the gang, or does his sense of duty require him to report on what he's hearing? He's a possible "Chekov's Gun" hanging on the wall. So, despite being an info dump, this chapter also has potential spin off obstacles. That's tension. If one is reading and thinking.
So... Kaenamor's journals exist, and someone wants to complete his spell. That wasn't on my bingo card (side note: 20 minutes ago we decided we were NOT going to bingo with friends tonight). Hopefully closing the loop will produce a stable system. Depending on the author's mood, completing the portal network would either change the balance of power ending this book on a big "Now what?" or, the completed network allows all the energy to spill out and the entire network collapses, separating the Triverse, and ending the story on a "Now what?" As the author has said, he's near the end of the book, so this reader assumes the spell will be completed. Which is a good climax. Since the author hasn't seen Blake's 7, I assume he's not going end the story on an absolute bloodbath where everyone does but Holland (who is captured).
The author, and readers of my comments for Triverse, know I've been speculating for a long time Lola would turn out to be a wielder. I assumed a simple rationale - Lola is descended from an expat Palinor wielder who didn't give that knowledge to their Mid-Earth family. Now Simon has introduced at least one way a Mid-Earth human can attain magical affinity. Thus, I'm still waiting for Lola's magic to activate in surprising and traumatic fashion.
Not to mention implications about aen'fa magic (huh - did the PORTALS disrupt aen'fa magic?), power politics across three worlds, etc.
Thus, the exposition did what good exposition does - deliver a bunch of answers while setting up all new questions. For example, in the B5 re-watch we've just "seen Kosh" for the first time - but have we seen his true form, or only what he chose to show? A two-year mystery gets a resolution which opens a new mystery.
Wouldn't mind a private Lola/Clarke scene. Like Clarke, I suspect Lola would tell him more than the others. But, methinks next week is back to flashback.
As you note, the alternative to this was spending an entire chapter with Simova doing the exposition in person which would have then delayed getting back to Clarke and the others. So the trade off was that this way introduces a useful time skip, and also the opportunity to throw in the additional revelations about the portals, and the retaking of the Atlantic station, and so on. I think you're spot on, in that exposition can be engaging as long as it's asking NEW questions, not just answering old ones.
Discovered Substack whilst reading The Simple Things mag. I have been doing various writing assignments since discovering I love writing, learning and sharing information during Lockdown. Mainly health, well-being and outdoors stuff. I'm looking to start and grow an audience and Substack seems just right. I'm not sure where ir how to start and your writing tips and insights are valuable
Final thought - sometimes a bumper length infodump is the right way to go. The tale to get to Simova had action, new alliances, personal conflict (Jayna 😑), and did the heavy lifting to set up the next action. But finding out about the notes would be several more chapters of planning, execution, and an exciting scene of people looking at display cases. An infodump is also a time skip.
Exactly! The shifting of the pace I think keeps it fresh, and next week we'll be into something completely different again.
Sometimes you just have to exposit all over the place. Don't worry about it. Happens with some of the greatest world of literature. William Shakespeare in "Hamlet" spends most of Act I infodumping. If one re-reads "Lord of the Rings" and flips past all the songs and anytime someone starts expositing on lore, you skip half the book.
At least you haven't paused for 12 pages between two lines of dialog ti describe everyone's clothing, down to the stitching pattern, and describing the lamps in the room - looking at Robert Jordan, here...
Is your staging a bit static? Don't worry about it. I'm thinking the upcoming Babylon 5 episode, "Messages From Earth" is going to spend an entire act with characters sitting around a table while the guest star gives ALL THE BACKSTORY.
As you noted, you've got Holland to play off, and his asshole nature makes him perfect to push a "just get on with it." Birhane is a nice edition, too. He's not part of the SDC group, we don't really know him, and, as he points out, he's Active-duty Police, so, will he keep his mouth shut and help the gang, or does his sense of duty require him to report on what he's hearing? He's a possible "Chekov's Gun" hanging on the wall. So, despite being an info dump, this chapter also has potential spin off obstacles. That's tension. If one is reading and thinking.
So... Kaenamor's journals exist, and someone wants to complete his spell. That wasn't on my bingo card (side note: 20 minutes ago we decided we were NOT going to bingo with friends tonight). Hopefully closing the loop will produce a stable system. Depending on the author's mood, completing the portal network would either change the balance of power ending this book on a big "Now what?" or, the completed network allows all the energy to spill out and the entire network collapses, separating the Triverse, and ending the story on a "Now what?" As the author has said, he's near the end of the book, so this reader assumes the spell will be completed. Which is a good climax. Since the author hasn't seen Blake's 7, I assume he's not going end the story on an absolute bloodbath where everyone does but Holland (who is captured).
The author, and readers of my comments for Triverse, know I've been speculating for a long time Lola would turn out to be a wielder. I assumed a simple rationale - Lola is descended from an expat Palinor wielder who didn't give that knowledge to their Mid-Earth family. Now Simon has introduced at least one way a Mid-Earth human can attain magical affinity. Thus, I'm still waiting for Lola's magic to activate in surprising and traumatic fashion.
Not to mention implications about aen'fa magic (huh - did the PORTALS disrupt aen'fa magic?), power politics across three worlds, etc.
Thus, the exposition did what good exposition does - deliver a bunch of answers while setting up all new questions. For example, in the B5 re-watch we've just "seen Kosh" for the first time - but have we seen his true form, or only what he chose to show? A two-year mystery gets a resolution which opens a new mystery.
Wouldn't mind a private Lola/Clarke scene. Like Clarke, I suspect Lola would tell him more than the others. But, methinks next week is back to flashback.
As you note, the alternative to this was spending an entire chapter with Simova doing the exposition in person which would have then delayed getting back to Clarke and the others. So the trade off was that this way introduces a useful time skip, and also the opportunity to throw in the additional revelations about the portals, and the retaking of the Atlantic station, and so on. I think you're spot on, in that exposition can be engaging as long as it's asking NEW questions, not just answering old ones.
Pretty much.