One Of My “Most Disliked” Tropes Of SFF / Epic Fantasy
One of the great dangers of writing SFF is what the great Ursula Le Guin calls the “Expository Lump”, ie in lieu of a Vulcan Mind meld between author and reader, the author downloads details of worldbuilding, backstory, or other essential plot information in a giant lump of text.
Urrgh, I hear you all cry, quite rightly.
But there is an SFF trope ‘sometimes’ deployed to counteract this — or worse, simply to make the plot work — which drives me crazy as a reader.
This is when a character (often older, wiser, mentor type) with all the knowledge the (usually younger) protagonist needs to fulfill his or her quest, or at least avoid making really stupid mistakes (survive to fulfill quest/destiny, anyone?) refuses to answer their questions — usually on the thinnest of pretexts.
“You don’t need to know that yet” is a favourite. “You’re not ready to know that yet” is another.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more this device is primarily used as a way of making the plot work.
Having said that, if a valid reason is provided for not passing on information, I will “buy” that and be a happy camper. But it’s all about the reason being convincing and not screaming out “plot device.”
You couldn’t be more correct about this. This is my main reason for disliking a lot of of fiction, that otherwise might be enjoyable.
Thanks for commenting, Bob.:)
Out of curiosity, can you cite some examples of what you’re thinking of? Not just where a mentor character deliberately conceals information, but does so in a way that in hindsight is unnecessary or counterproductive?
The first one that comes to my mind is from the novel (is this old enough or good enough to call a “classic”?) THE SWORD OF SHANNARA, where the Druid mentor Allanon deliberately conceals from hero Shea Ohmsford the details of exactly *why* the titular Sword’s magic will actually destroy the Warlock Lord. But I have to say that I in fact always found the truth (no pun intended) of that storyline quite clever, and in fact bought the narrative’s “because” answer pretty completely. I’d be interested to see if you’re thinking of books or stories I’ve read.
Thanks for your comment, Stephen, and the example from The Sword of Shannara, which I must confess I read at high school and most of the plot details have gone into the “information in, information out” file and so I cannot recall the story in any detail. 😀
(I find) the trope is pretty widespread in the genre, and one of the reasons I posted on it, was because I have been wrestling with the whole “info dump vs release of information” tension in writing WALL3, and found the process as grrgh-arrgh as stumbling over either example while reading. However, I also have this policy on my blog of not trashing other writers. (It’s why I don’t do reviews, only report back on books I like.) So that is why I haven’t given examples, and I know you may feel this is a copout in light of your question, so please, ‘chide at will.’ By way of a halfway house, I note that examples given by my Twitter followerss in response to the post include Dumbledore in Harry Potter, Brom in Eragon, and Belgarath in the Belgariad.
I agree with this post.
Personally I find the “hiding information for not much good reason” worst than the “expository lump”.
However the “expository lump” is much easier to spot.