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Conversly - to weed out the irrelevant info :-

"...don't bother putting in details which you do not come to rely on later in the novel"

Someone in my writing group, who I used to look up to as a Goddess but now realise does a lot more yapping then actually writing, told me that 'you can never know too much about a character' but I now think that's bollocks. I just want to know the important stuff.
One of my fave authors Minette Walters almost never describes her characters and I've never longed to be told they have red hair of whatever...I feel I know them in other ways.
HB x

Apparently Mr Darcy is hardly described in P&P, and yet ask any reader what he looks like (ignoring the Colin Firth lookalikes) and they all have a very clear image of him.

The idea of one-damn-thing-after-another combined in my head with a couple of other things, and gave rise to a blog post, which might interest people:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2008/06/wanting-needing-yearning-dreaming.html

Emma

Very interesting post, Emma.

I've just finished reading Ferney, by James Long and, while the premise was right up my street – two characters reincarnating together, by the half-way point I was thinking, this is just one damn thing after another. So many scenes happened that didn’t move the story along. (we’ll not mention the plot-holes big enough to drive a bus through… and possibly the worst ending in the history of novel writing)

Dee

You didn't like it then?

I do wonder - speaking as a non-sf/f reader here - whether the very freedom that letting go of the tethers of real physical contemporary likelihood gives, makes it harder to see if your plot has holes; whether you've managed to make your impossibilities nonetheless seem likely and convincing; whether each challenge arises naturally from the previous one or it is just ODTAA.

I've never tried to write in this area, so I really don't know, but I do wonder if it's one of those things that looks as if it would be easier, (just wave a magic wand or throw the transponders into reverse...) and is actually harder to pull off.

Emma

Very interesting thread - when it started I immediately thought of The Requiem Shark by Nicholas Griffin - a bunch of pirates set out in their ship and do something piratey, then something else piratey, then something else...

I've just finished A Small Part of History by Peggy Elliott, to which the ODTAA principle applies too. It's about people on the Oregon Trail and although it is interesting and moving, I did wonder why the author didn't just write non-fiction. It's all: person gets drowned - check; person gets killed by bear - check; wagons get snowed in and food runs out - check; woman dies in childbirth - check. It's very realistic, and I know I'm being harsh because I did enjoy reading it, but it recreates real pioneer lives - and real life doesn't have a plot.

real life doesn't have a plot

Mine does, but the MC is very poorly characterised so nobody cares. :O

It’s not sf/f, Emma, more like paranormal romance (which is what I write) but whatever it is, the plot should conform to the given theory. I believe absolutely in reincarnation, so my fiction can't deviate from what I believe – which makes it slightly easier for me to write about than if I was simply making it up. However, even if it was an invented hypothesis, the storyline shouldn’t go beyond its parameters in order to avoid an issue or hammer a square idea into a round theory.

You're right – I didn’t like it! I enjoyed the beginning so much, I feel cheated now

Dee


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Meant to say, it's on DGR's current reading list, so I'm agog to see what she thinks about it.

and real life doesn't have a plot.

No, it doesn't which is why they invented fiction, at exactly the moment when people stopped believing that God was in charge of the details of the plot.

Emma

I'm seriously worried that my latest is 'ODTAA'... but it's based on a life which really was like that... I've been having to strip so much out because it was even exhausting to write it all up. Oops!