{"id":21279,"date":"2013-07-10T06:30:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T18:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=21279"},"modified":"2013-07-06T17:26:37","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T05:26:37","slug":"one-of-my-most-hated-tropes-of-sff-epic-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/07\/10\/one-of-my-most-hated-tropes-of-sff-epic-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"One Of My &#8220;Most Disliked&#8221; Tropes Of SFF \/ Epic Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the great dangers of writing SFF is what the great <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ursulakleguin.com\/UKL_info.html\">Ursula Le Guin<\/a> calls the &#8220;Expository Lump&#8221;, 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.<\/p>\n<p>Urrgh, I hear you all cry, quite rightly.<\/p>\n<p>But there is an SFF trope &#8216;sometimes&#8217; deployed to counteract this &#8212; or worse, simply to make the plot work &#8212; which drives me crazy as a reader.<\/p>\n<p>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?) <em>refuses to answer their questions<\/em> &#8212; usually on the thinnest of pretexts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t <em>need<\/em> to know that yet&#8221;\u00a0 is a favourite. &#8220;You&#8217;re not <em>ready<\/em> to know that yet&#8221; is another.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, the more I think about it, the more this device is primarily used as a way of making the plot work.<\/p>\n<p>Having said that, if a valid reason is provided for not passing on information,\u00a0 I will &#8220;buy&#8221; that and be a happy camper.\u00a0 But it&#8217;s all about the reason being convincing and not screaming out &#8220;plot device.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the great dangers of writing SFF is what the great Ursula Le Guin calls the &#8220;Expository Lump&#8221;, 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, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epicfantasy","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21279"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21355,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21279\/revisions\/21355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}