On Poetic Narration
May. 2nd, 2005 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranPoetic Narration is a sneaky way of doing infodumps without getting too As-you-know-Bob...
The beauty of it is that you can get away with describing a large number of different things in a very short space of time, all under the guise of talking about the feelings those things evoke. Think about your classic love sonnet. Why the heck is the guy telling his love all about her hair, her eyes, her face? It's not as though she doesn't know what colour her hair is ("as you know, Brenda.."). He's getting away with it because he's really talking about the feelings those things generate. Oh, and along the way, we get to know the girl's hair colour, eye colour, what she looks like etc. Infodump? What infodump?
The trick, I think, is that you have to be genuinely focused on the feelings and the elaboration of those feelings has to fit the story itself. It's okay to wax lyrical about the power of the ship's twin 1.5GW turbines from the Sokerav Spaceworks from the point-of-view of ship's chief engineer. It's not okay to get all Eye-of-Argonny about miserable beasts straining under their pathetic loads when those emotions are completely superficial to the story.
The beauty of it is that you can get away with describing a large number of different things in a very short space of time, all under the guise of talking about the feelings those things evoke. Think about your classic love sonnet. Why the heck is the guy telling his love all about her hair, her eyes, her face? It's not as though she doesn't know what colour her hair is ("as you know, Brenda.."). He's getting away with it because he's really talking about the feelings those things generate. Oh, and along the way, we get to know the girl's hair colour, eye colour, what she looks like etc. Infodump? What infodump?
The trick, I think, is that you have to be genuinely focused on the feelings and the elaboration of those feelings has to fit the story itself. It's okay to wax lyrical about the power of the ship's twin 1.5GW turbines from the Sokerav Spaceworks from the point-of-view of ship's chief engineer. It's not okay to get all Eye-of-Argonny about miserable beasts straining under their pathetic loads when those emotions are completely superficial to the story.
