Sentences/Paragraphs Test and Edit

[LilTV1155]

Just wondering, when introducing the environment & characters, when should I infodump?

Can you give me some reference examples?

 

[greyblob]

Just wondering, when introducing the environment & characters, when should I infodump?

Can you give me some reference examples?

isn't the whole purpose is to not infodump - instead find a way to introduce information in an interesting and engaging way?

and what refrence are you asking for? descriptions?

 

[LilTV1155]

isn't the whole purpose is to not infodump - instead find a way to introduce information in an interesting and engaging way?

and what refrence are you asking for? descriptions?

Like when you want to introduce the city or a character, you can't help talk a little bit about the location / person's background.
Ex. Introducing the General's daughter at the Ball or selling the city's attractive points to a tourist character?
It's hard to control the tendency to not infodump. So I was thinking, will 3-5 sentences be considered enough before moving the plot onward?

 

[greyblob]

Like when you want to introduce the city or a character, you can't help talk a little bit about the location / person's background.
Ex. Introducing the General's daughter at the Ball or selling the city's attractive points to a tourist character?
It's hard to control the tendency to not infodump. So I was thinking, will 3-5 sentences be considered enough before moving the plot onward?

I think this is almost entirely reliant on the author and their style. but the underlying line is that it has to be engaging and dynamic, otherwise it would just be an analytical essay. I don't really have a formula for it - it's more of a trial and error for me. though, 3-5 sentences feel too short. but again, I believe it's just preference.
here are some examples.

Spoiler: from: 1q84

Aomame loved history as much as she loved sports. She rarely read fiction, but history books could keep her occupied for hours. What she liked about history was the way all its facts were linked with particular dates and places. She did not find it especially difficult to remember historical dates. Even if she did not learn them by rote memorization, once she grasped the relationship of an event to its time and to the events preceding and following it, the date would come to her automatically. In both middle school and high school, she had always gotten the top grade on history exams. It puzzled her to hear someone say he had trouble learning dates. How could something so simple be a problem for anyone?

“Aomame” was her real name. Her grandfather on her father’s side came from some little mountain town or village in Fukushima Prefecture, where there were supposedly a number of people who bore the name, written with exactly the same characters as the word for “green peas” and pronounced with the same four syllables, “Ah-oh-mah-meh.” She had never been to the place, however. Her father had cut his ties with his family before her birth, just as her mother had done with her own family, so she had never met any of her grandparents. She didn’t travel much, but on those rare occasions when she stayed in an unfamiliar city or town, she would always open the hotel’s phone book to see if there were any Aomames in the area. She had never found a single one, and whenever she tried and failed, she felt like a lonely castaway on the open sea.

Telling people her name was always a bother. As soon as the name left her lips, the other person looked puzzled or confused.

“Miss Aomame?”

“Yes. Just like ‘green peas.’ ”

Employers required her to have business cards printed, which only made things worse. People would stare at the card as if she had thrust a letter at them bearing bad news. When she announced her name on the telephone, she would often hear suppressed laughter. In waiting rooms at the doctor’s or at public offices, people would look up at the sound of her name, curious to see what someone called “Green Peas” could look like.

Some people would get the name of the plant wrong and call her “Edamame” or “Soramame,” whereupon she would gently correct them: “No, I’m not soybeans or fava beans, just green peas. Pretty close, though. Aomame.” How many times in her thirty years had she heard the same remarks, the same feeble jokes about her name? My life might have been totally different if I hadn’t been born with this name. If I had had an ordinary name like Sato or Tanaka or Suzuki, I could have lived a slightly more relaxed life or looked at people with somewhat more forgiving eyes. Perhaps.

Spoiler: from: hellbound heart

Why then was he so distressed to set eyes upon them? Was it the scars that covered every inch of their bodies, the flesh cosmetically punctured and sliced and infibulated, then dusted down with ash? Was it the smell of vanilla they brought with them, the sweetness of which did little to disguise the stench beneath? Or was it that as the light grew, and he scanned them more closely, he saw nothing of joy, or even humanity, in their maimed faces: only desperation, and an appetite that made his bowels ache to be voided.

“What city is this?” one of the four enquired. Frank had difficulty guessing the speaker’s gender with any certainty. Its clothes, some of which were sewn to and through its skin, hid its private parts, and there was nothing in the dregs of its voice, or in its willfully disfigured features that offered the least clue. When it spoke, the hooks that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed, by an intricate system of chains passed through flesh and bone alike, to similar hooks through the lower lip, were teased by the motion, exposing the glistening meat beneath.

“I asked you a question,” it said. Frank made no reply. The name of this city was the last thing on his mind.

“Do you understand?” the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy-the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated. “Do you even know who we are?” it asked.

“Yes.” Frank said at last. “I know.”

 

[LilTV1155]

but the underlying line is that it has to be engaging and dynamic, otherwise it would just be an analytical essay.

In other words, transitioning and relations?

 

[greyblob]

In other words, transitioning and relations?

transitioning yes, but I'm not sure what you mean by relations

 

[CarburetorThompson]

View attachment 11769

Here's the imagery.

For Forward phase of Spaceship which was supposed to look like a 12 armed starfish/squid. I kinda failed the design there. But you get the idea.
Bigger wings flaps like fish fins.
Smaller wings turn to steer, dock, and shoot jets that push the space vessel forward.
When folded together like triangular pyramid, can use turbines in each small wing to allow for hovering and safer landing.
The lumps are ball joints which allows for 180 degree rotations, supposed to micmic hummingbird's wing flight pattern.

Not sure if the rudders have jets on them like the wings, in which case forget what I’m about to say.
I’m assuming the spaceship can also do atmospheric flight due to its sharp aerodynamic look, which is why it has rudders, but 6 is a bit redundant, and it gets to point where you start to receive diminishing returns. The rudders don’t turn an aircraft, it’s actually the ailerons, or for your ship it would be the wings doing a similar function. Rudders just correct for oversteering tendencies.

Over all I love the design. Especially the middle picture which reminds me of a b-2 bomber (which I’d recommend checking out as the aircraft has no rudder), and the way you describe the arms of the ship reminds me a lot of space combat in Gundam.

I know you didn’t necessarily ask for design feedback, but I can’t help it when I see a cool space ship.

 

[LilTV1155]

transitioning yes, but I'm not sure what you mean by relations

Like maintaining a connection to the character or information you were trying to transition from in another paragraph.

Not sure if the rudders have jets on them like the wings, in which case forget what I’m about to say.
I’m assuming the spaceship can also do atmospheric flight due to its sharp aerodynamic look, which is why it has rudders, but 6 is a bit redundant, and it gets to point where you start to receive diminishing returns. The rudders don’t turn an aircraft, it’s actually the ailerons, or for your ship it would be the wings doing a similar function. Rudders just correct for oversteering tendencies.

Over all I love the design. Especially the middle picture which reminds me of a b-2 bomber (which I’d recommend checking out as the aircraft has no rudder), and the way you describe the arms of the ship reminds me a lot of space combat in Gundam.

I know you didn’t necessarily ask for design feedback, but I can’t help it when I see a cool space ship.

Thanks for the design feedback and the correction with the steering part. Okay. So I will reduce the steerer parts to 3 for X, Y, Z motions.

I used the rudders because I......thought that spaceships were . . . . some sort of ships even though the vehicles are more closely related to airplanes?
But tbh, I'm not really sure what to call it. It look and acted like a jet fighter / airplane in midflight and acted similar to a . . . . submarine in the water.

Below is the correct pictorial form for Spaceship in Forward Motion (Underwater / Space).

 

[LostLibrarian]

Just wondering, when introducing the environment & characters, when should I infodump?

There is a concept thrown around that I like - "Exposition as ammunition".

Don't take your information as something you dump on your readers and go on. Weave it into your story. Dialogue, Quests, revelations.
You can either throw in 3 pages of the history of the city and the old emperor who signed an important treaty. Or you let the MC find that out through his own actions and give the reader that information at the same time.



A rule of thumb thumb I try to go by (and mostly fail because I suck) is the following:
Upfront description of characters and environment should only be as much as you would give an artist who you pay to paint the same scene. The artists wants to know clothes, facial expressions, the rough landscape, and a few special things that should be more detailed in the painting. And that's that. He doesn't care about the history behind the look of the uniform or why the clock tower has a blue roof...

And to me, that's the level of "upfront information". Enough so that the reader can paint that same scene in their minds.
Everything else (history, reasons, foreshadowing) should come through actions of the characters and the information they discover..

 

[eun_]

Just wondering, when introducing the environment & characters, when should I infodump?

Can you give me some reference examples?

For me, it's when a character is progressing to a specific location or area.

I like to keep those precise and concise. Mostly 1 to 2 paragraphs and that's about it. Though mostly I like to write them in crumbs, that way it's much more easier to read. I usually get lost on the middle of my writing when writing overcomplicated expositions haha...

Two of my expositions for example:

Spoiler: Sample 1

He led his feet to a place he saw within Meros' memory. Northeast of where they were currently at was an abandoned church. It was once known as the heart of the Seventh Lane, but by the time Meros Visconti got to this place, the church was already abandoned. Countless beggars took the once holy site as their own home, marking areas of the church as their own territories.

However, what others didn't know was that underneath the church was a massive cave. A tomb. A crypt. Meros Visconti first encountered the area after lurking near the church. While exploring the massive underground complex, he found it to be desolate, untouched. No one bothered to live here, nor cared about its existence. It was waiting to be discovered, and discovered it was.

Spoiler: Sample 2

Moments continued to pass and before long, he was in front of the church. He looked at its half-ruined state, with glaring holes everywhere, particularly atop the church. Windows were shattered and broken, with the remains showcasing how colorful the windows would be if they were still intact. The church's door was also battered, full of holes and cracks.

The residents of this once glorious building tried to cover up the holes by patching it with ragged clothing from within.

The reason why I did not add the two spoilers together was that those two are separated by lines and actions not really related to exposition. But if I were to mix them it becomes a chore to read and overall, not pleasant to write at all.

Hopefully this helps!

 

[greyblob]

Like maintaining a connection to the character or information you were trying to transition from in another paragraph.

LostLibrarian explained it pretty nicely. you're transforming the information from a raw state to a more palatable form.
for example, if you're trying to introduce the Captain's daughter and you want to show that their relationship is bad. you can simply spit it out and mention their past, or hint to it in a conversation while dropping subtle comments about their previous interactions.
though physical characteristics have to usually just be told up front, and too much of it can become overwhelming.
how you do it is up to you really. that's why I chose the examples above: both are very different, and I'd consider neither to be infodumping.