Common First Author Mistakes - What are they, and are there SF speficic ones? - rec.arts.sf.written

Message from discussion Common First Author Mistakes - What are they, and are there SF speficic ones?

Dorothy J Heydt

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More options Jul 4, 8:01 pm

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written

From: djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)

Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 15:01:21 GMT

Local: Fri, Jul 4 2008 8:01 pm

Subject: Re: Common First Author Mistakes - What are they, and are there SF speficic ones?

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In article <g4lddk$9s...@registered.motzarella.org>,
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

> Another common first author mistake is "overkill" in the background.
>Sort of related to the Kitchen Sink problem, the author in this case is
>afraid that the reader may miss some aspect of the background the author
>thinks is important, and ends up with thousands of words of infodump and
>As You Know Bobbing that turn out not to be really needed.

Oh yes. This is sometimes blamed on Tolkien, particularly when
the infodump appears in a foreword. But really, Tolkien's
foreword consists chiefly of three elements: background information
about Hobbits (for those who didn't read _The Hobbit), a summary
of the plot of _The Hobbit_ (ditto) and some academic digressions
about the various ancient manuscripts in which the tales occur.
The important backstory is given later, in Chapter Two, with no
AYKB because Frodo *doesn't* know any of it.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djhe...@kithrup.com

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