Infodumps and Badfic: Eternal Bum Chums? · 5:59am Nov 24th, 2013
Gentle reader, I present to you my tired ramblings on fanfiction tropes that piss me off. With that in mind, let's begin.
So you're writing a fanfic, and you have a great idea for a plot. Except the scene you have clearly fixed in your mind is partway through the plot, so you decide to open on that scene, and briefly tell everyone what's happened beforehand. It'll be just like one of those movie voiceovers, right? Well, not exactly. As it turns out, nobody wants to read the fifteen page backstory of Bloodbullet O'kittensquisher VI, alicorn prince of darkness, condensed into a block that would make Eren Yeager blush to the roots. In fact, I've found this sort of abuse of exposition to be a much better yardstick for measuring badfic than the presence of overpowered OCs or self insertions, although there's a definite correlation so far. It sucks, and I'm going to tell you why.
Now, far be it for me to slam the place of exposition in storytelling. I just want to get it out of the way that this is not my intention, however I keep seeing this time and again from authors. Misuse of exposition. Epic infodumps. It's practically the golden turd of bad HiEs and OC fics alike, where the arrival of the OC and their subsequent integration into the lives of the main characters is handled entirely offscreen, with an expository brick summarising the events thus far. It's either that, or long timeskips followed by infodumping. God forbid you do both in one fic. You know what this does? It shoots your pacing in the foot, and often makes the reader wish they'd gotten a narrative of the events you just summarised. Because frankly, those events often sound more interesting than the plot you have lined up, particularly viewed at face value as chapter one. That, and large blocks of nothing but exposition for 'past' events are a sure-fire way to bore your readers into submission, and they'll be much less likely to look favourably upon your red and black self-insert alicorn prince OC, if they even bother to read beyond your 'introduction' of his place in the setting.
Now, as for pacing, you've just written a synopsis of a story as the lead-in to your main fic, which means that you now have to slow things to a more natural pace and risk the expository rushing looking completely out of place, or keep with the breakneck speed. Now, the latter is infinitely worse, as the ridiculous pacing often seen in badfic is both a symptom of and a root cause of the reliance on exposition. You rush because you exposited loads, and you exposit loads because you think your pacing is fine when it's actually utterly crap. And it's pretty easy to see how rushed pacing leads to flat characters, poorly described or uninteresting sceneplay, and mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Either way, you would've been better off without the expositional onslaught to start things off.
This is utterly crippling for an OC fic, and particularly OC HiEs, because you absolutely need to establish the character of your OC in a concrete manner, and make them likeable in the meantime. This isn't Fanfiction.net, after all. How can you do that if you're rushing over huge chunks of potential character development in order to get to the parts of the story you really want to tell? You can't. The reader is left reeling, trying to work out where this new face fits among the cast, and will most likely find their familiarity with the established characters grating rather than endearing. It's like an unsolicited intrusion upon the entire fandom's collective waifus, perhaps. It also represents a certain lack of impulse control as a writer, I feel. Expository incontinence, if you will. You absolutely need to lay the groundwork for your OC before you have them do the awesome stuff you daydream about, assuming this is a self-insert. That means backstory, and showing it, rather than listing it in huge dry blocks of text. It's not going to be 'all awesome, all the time', because that's not believable in any halfway serious fic, and frankly it gets old pretty quick. Cool events like a sonic rainboom are mainly cool because of there is a significant build up to them.
Of course, it's much easier to exposit all that away, because honestly, who wants to bother with anything like dramatic tension anyway? Ain't nobody got time for that! All aboard the badfic express! Then you get down on your knees to Bullshitticus, god of students and last minute fudging, and pray that nobody will examine your backstory too closely, but that's mostly a fool's hope. Doubly so if your story includes details that are either extremely dramatic (such as the oft glossed over 'HiE arrival') or important to the character's development (e.g. said OC's oft handwaved transformation into a pony).
Probably going to get a little flack because of this, but one of the most grating things about Xenophilia (in my opinion) is that the human protagonist appears out of effectively nowhere, almost mid-romance with Rainbow Dash. It's the same effect, only the explanation for the rushing is absent entirely rather than being a hideous textwall of shit nobody cares about. Now, I'm aware that it got wrapped up later, but my point is that reading Xenophilia and stories like it from start to finish requires you to swallow the premise that these events are happening to begin with. Immediately. You must be this high to ride, etc. And if you don't accept the events on faith that it'll all be explained later, or given the fleshing out it desperately needs, you're shit out of luck, aren't you? Frankly, I'd rather you not introduce your protagonist in what should by all rights be the middle of your damned story, thanks, because their arrival and subsequent friendship with the main cast seems both pretty unbelievable and an important point for character development.
Anyway, I've ranted long enough. You get the point, I'm sure. It's one of those issues of justification, really. You need to justify the changes you've made, which are now past events within the story, and honestly your main routes out of that are going to be either flashbacks, in-story discussion of events, and exposition from the narrator. The middle option of the aforementioned is preferable, but I feel the moral of this story is that it is, in fact, generally easier and more satisfying to start at the beginning of your story, numbnuts.
It isn't ranting if it's presented in a decent manner such as this.
You seem only to be focusing on stories which take place in a familiar setting with familiar characters (i.e. Ponyville with the main six or something of the sort), do you have any ideas on pacing stories that take place with an entirely original cast of characters or in a radically different setting?
Also, might you have any theories on why red and black seem to be a visual shorthand for attempting to create a badass OC?
P.S.
Do you remember me, by any chance? I used to go by ElectroHaiso.
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I'd say it's less likely to feel like an intrusion if it's an original setting/cast, but unless you format your story in some very specific ways to build around it, you're essentially going to be playing catch-up with around half of your own fic. And that's going to look pretty awkward, familiar cast or not, unless you specifically account for missing a lot of details you'd otherwise have to hand. Basically, it's not necessarily always a bad idea, you just need to take a lot more into account and it may not necessarily pay off. It's like writing in second person, only somehow even more situational.
Red and black are striking colours with certain cultural associations that make them enticing. Red has been a colour of conflict for a very long time, having associations with fire, victory and the like since before Roman times. Fire has an even more iconic role as symbol than red ever did. Fire represents power, and so does red by proxy. It also has symbolic links to blood, which again helps establish that badass OC vibe. Black is similarly linked to death in western culture, much like white in eastern ones. Death and shadows. So we have a combination of blood, fire, death and shadows for a four-way association of angsty, edgy antihero-ness. I blame the nineties for popularising this sort of character, honestly. The nineties comic book trends in general, and Rob Liefeld's ilk in particular. Smirks, sneers, gritted teeth, bulging muscles, wangst for the sake of tragic backstory, hideously impractical costumes, 'blood' names, poorly characterised badasses, sociopathy presented as heroism... the list goes on, until 'heroes' become 'designated heroes' and the whole thing just tumbles into a pit of darkness induced audience apathy.
Um, anyway... I do remember you, aye. I posted britishwolf on one of your stories (with one such unsympathetic badass, iirc), and preread your stuff for a while. Was good fun.
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Yes, you read my first fic, Colt (now deleted and regarded as one of my worst stories by myself). However, you said your faith in me as a writer was restored after reading Breach. This actually makes me very sad, as I have not touched that story since September of 2012.
That was a surprisingly astute and intelligent answer to my question. Thank you. It's refreshing to read.
May I ask what your profile picture is of?
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That is the OC that the illustrious MidnightDancer made for me, since she doesn't draw humans, being interrupted from his reading by surprise snuggles from her OC. I've had it a while, and I sorta want to change it up for a bit, but I haven't found anything suitably awesome to use as a profile pic in the meantime.
I disagree with you on Xenophilia--to a degree, at least. I think stories should start at the point where they acquire meaning. That usually means showing a bit of the protagonist's normal life, since there's usually meaning in contrasting it to their changed life, but in this particular story, Lero's life before Equestria isn't really all that relevant, because he's mainly a tool to develop Rainbow Dash's character. His transfer to Equestria isn't relevant at all, and in that sense, it's completely skippable.
With that said, I do think the author skipped a bit of meaning in Dash's story. Rather than have the first chapter be her and Lero getting together, he could have done a chapter or two of Dash getting to know and become fond of this mysterious creature. It would show the beginning of Dash's development in relation to Lero, and provide a better explanation of what draws them together.
As for the general topic, it always amazes me when authors don't know how to convey information through action. If you need to convey from the start that your character is a prince, have a scene of him fulfilling whatever duties a prince fulfills. If you need to convey from the start that your setting has been transformed by technology, show your main character making use of that technology. Readers are more than capable of putting together what they've been shown, without your needing to tell them outright.
I adore your rants.
And your everything else
Needless to say, I agree.
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Hm, I suppose that is true regarding Xenophilia. That beginning still irks the hell out of me, though. And I'd just like to say that while it's not entirely relevant to Dash's story, I'd still like to know where the big bald monkey man in Ponyville came from, thanks. Suspension of disbelief and all that. I think getting it from the start of their friendship would have made that pill easier to swallow, though.
Edit: yeah, regarding showing via action, that is true, and it's one of the mitigating devices I really should have talked about last night but was too tired to. Still, this is largely a rant about a particular trend in OC fics and crossovers, really. I mean, I've read plenty of otherwise very well written romance fics that begin with the OC and a main character already in a relationship. And despite the quality of the writing, it feels cheap and lazy every single time, hence why I'm saying that while the story isn't necessarily bad because of it, it would have been better if they hadn't started there. That's material for your sequel mister! It's like they try to timeskip a bunch of stuff they don't think is important, and the events they skip end up utterly shattering my willing suspension of disbelief, almost in absentia, as it were.
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eheh, thanks love
1536120 I see I need to draw you something suitably awesome :)
The saddest part about this blog is most of the people who need it will never actually read it.
Also, building up to the main plot point is the only reason I haven't really published anything myself... Between life and my eternal A.D.D., it is incredibly difficult to sit down and figure out how things are going to get to where I want them.
So instead, I write a couple paragraphs at a time and go on with my day.
I'll finish it eventually. XD
The thing that bugs me, of all things in this is: why Eren Yeager?