Thou Shalt Not Infodump

I want to share my pain.

Several years back I read book 1 of a series. It was a good book. The main flaw was that there were no pauses for the reader to catch a breath. It was non-stop action. The result was reader fatigue. By the end I was on overload. The action wasn't affecting me any more. I just wanted to get to the last page. Nevertheless, it was well written otherwise. I was interested in the next book. Instead of doing one, the author started putting out other books. I had this idea that he would learn about writing doing those and there would be pauses in the sequel. It would be great. Finally, after years of waiting book 2 came out recently. I was going to buy it immediately but didn't. The day I checked again, it turned out to be Amazon Prime day, and I got it for $2.99.

Roughly the first 25% of the book was a massive infodump. By page two my eyes had glazed over at the flow of background information. This was two Kindle pages, which would be roughly one or so paperback pages. After non-stop action in book 1, basically nothing happened in the beginning of book 2. There were, I believe, two things relevant to the end of the book that were peacefully inserted into the flow. The rest of it was infodumping, setting and background information.

The book is set in the future, partly in the real world and partly in a virtual reality video game. There's background and history for both worlds. This automatically doubles the mind-numbing flow of information. Like a sucker I expected the story to begin on the next page. For 25% of a 400+ page book I kept expecting the info to stop and the action to begin. It didn't happen.

At 25% the story starting moving very slowly forward. The main character was finally doing something no matter how insignificant. At 43% the story picked up where book 1 ended. Imagine you get to the end of book 1, wait years for book 2, and the story doesn't start again until 43% of the way into book 2. Arrrrrgh! It was almost like the first part of the book was a prologue. One of the reasons for the infodumping, which slowed but never really stopped, was that the author kept inventing new elements for the world. Every time something new was introduced, background information was dumped into the text.

Would you like to hear the worst part? Almost none of the infodump was relevant to the story. It bogged things down. It was annoying, more annoying than the undisguised, science fiction references. The main character is named after a comic book/movie hero. Other characters were named after real people. After four or five of these references it became irritating. Every time it happened, it took me out of the story and made me think about Star Trek, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes or whatever work the name or situation referred to. Sometimes a reference was a quote from a movie or a scene from a movie rather than a name.

If you're a writer, infodumping is a necessity. Readers need to know things. The correct way to do it is to insert the information in small pieces along the way. Blend it into the text. Put it in dialogue. Make it relevant to the story. If it doesn't affect the outcome, is it really necessary? Some things are there for flavor alone, but they can't bog the story down. Brandon Sanderson puts it something like this. There has to be forward momentum. The reader has to feel like the story is progressing. Massive infodumps do not progress the story.

But there's also good news. This summer has been very cool, very rainy but cool. Normally, the temperature would be around 100F(37.78C) during July. It's barely broken 90F(32.2C). Last night it dropped to 61F(16.1C), when it should be in the 70s(21-24ish C). Would you like to hear the best part? There's a cool front coming down from Canada next week. Not only will it be cooler. The humidity should plummet as well. I can't wait! We're a little over four weeks from September, the time the temperatures start to get better and the humidity starts to drop. This cool front will get me that much closer to autumn and the end of the high temperatures and massive humidity. The humidity is the real problem. Dry heat is much easier to deal with than sticky, sauna heat.

Have a great weekend.

Let There Be Water

The water has been fixed. I can run the dishwasher and the washing machine again. I've taken the solar shower down and can take regular showers again. It's so nice not to have to haul all that heavy water. While I was, I thought about those movies and books in which the hero procures a water source, and that's the end of the problem. If the hero's injured, carrying the water is a chore. Otherwise the authors never focus on it. It's amazing how tiring and time-consuming moving water is and how much of it it can take to do things. It's also surprising how little it can take. Washing dishes doesn't take much. Washing clothes takes a lot. Wet clothes are even heavier than wet water. I ended up going to the laundromat almost immediately. But all that's over with. I'm no longer getting my 1800s on.

I got a little bit done on the paintings for the covers for AoE and the mystery/romance from a few years ago. I'm not an illustrator so I don't know if they'll work out. But I'm trying. I also got a little writing done recently. Slowly, things are kind of getting back together.

This next part contains more, massive spoilers to the last Hunger Games book. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Hunger Games is pure Greek storytelling, which is a disappointment. In Greek stories the hero wins but loses the thing he loves most or the thing most precious to him. That's boring and not true to life. Imagine having a child or spouse die every time you got a big promotion at work. That's Greek literature. The last time I talked about this I was fewer than 20 pages until the end of book 3. I speculated that maybe the virgin, female protagonist would die as a sacrifice. It didn't happen. She used knowledge from the character who represented Lucifer to murder the character who represented God. The God character was standing on a balcony and fell when she died. That's right. The God character was a woman. The imagery is God falling dead from heaven. The Lucifer character laughs, when God dies.

And then the story fizzles out. The protagonist is locked up for a few weeks and then sent home with no consequences and no punishment. Admittedly, there aren't always consequences in real life, but she murdered a major character. No, she was the victim. The romance part fizzled as well. During the story, the protagonist loved the one she was with at the time. She never made an active choice between the two men in the story who loved her. At the end, one of them moved away, and she married the one who stayed in town. There was a line saying she loved him, but it was never really shown in the story. She flip-flopped back and forth between the two men or just used one like a tool and threw him away.

Book 1 was a page turner. Book 2 wasn't bad. Book 3 dragged and had an unsatisfying ending. All the annoying, irritating things I was hoping would be fixed never were, because that's not Greek storytelling.

I haven't seen the movies, but I know this. There's no way the weak, wishy washy, flip flopper from the book will ever make it to the big screen. The character is too weak and feeble as a person. She's a passive victim. Hollywood will change her into a strong character, because that's what audiences like. So, I expect the movies will be decent or even very good. Except the last one? In book 1 the protagonist trades places with her sister to save her life. In book 3 the sister is killed right in front of her eyes, because Greek storytelling demands the hero loses the thing he loves most. Would Hollywood ever put that in the movie? I kind of don't think so. They changed the ending of The Manchurian Candidate. The nation is in a different place. I don't see them ending the movies in a sad, tragic hopeless way like the books did.

Have a great weekend.

I Was Shocked.

After the Islamic terrorist attack in Boston a while back, they came up with a slogan, Boston Strong. I was at Walmart last week and saw this on a truck and thought it was funny.

If you live overseas, AA is Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization that helps people recover from alcoholism. Unfortunately, they consider someone to be an alcoholic forever no matter how long ago the person quit drinking. That's complete nonsense, of course.

One of the family legends on my dad's side is of a relative in the early 1900s who used to go to bars. One night he got in a fight and beat a man up so badly he nearly killed him. That was the end of his drinking. Even if he was an alcoholic before that, he surely never was afterward.

In other things, I had a mind-blowing shock this week. I was watching an episode of Mannix from 1967, when I saw someone familiar who didn't look like I was used to seeing her. I remember her from Star Trek in 1989 and 1990 in which she played a bit of a crusty, battle axe of a woman. In the Mannix episode she was a total babe. The difference was amazing. It was Doctor Pulaski from Start Trek: The Next Generation. My mind is officially blown. Is she still alive? Yes.

Have a great weekend.

Typical Greek Story

Still no running water. I need cold, running water to try to paint book covers. As a workaround, I picked up some cheap paint brushes at Walmart that I can use temporarily and throw away if ruined without risking my professional brushes. Someone did come out to look at the water situation, but nothing has been done.

I talked last week about Hunger Games book 1 and how it has a spirit of prostitution. I'm almost finished with book 3. I'm at the very end with fewer than 20 pages to go. I said before that the female protagonist keeps believing lies and how this is the lie the hero believes, which I think comes from Greek literature. It turns out the entire series is a Greek story and possibly, depending on whether the protagonist dies in the last 20 pages, a Greek tragedy. The rest of this is going to contain some spoilers for book 3, if you think you might want to read it or watch the movie.

With about 20 pages left the female protagonist murders the person opposing President Snow, who is the villain of the series. The symbol of Snow is the white rose, which he said is perfect. The symbol of the villain is perfection. Snow's opponent is murdered by the protagonist with information provided by Snow, information that cannot be verified as true.

The problem with Greek stories is they have the same ending. The hero wins but loses the thing he loves the most or the thing most precious to him. Boring. Life doesn't work that way. Hunger Games is pure Greek storytelling. The reason the protagonist murders someone is because she thinks that person destroyed the thing most precious to her. There's no direct proof. There's no trial. The protagonist takes her own vengeance. Technically, the thing the protagonist loves most is herself, but in the story she's supposed to love something else more. No way. By her actions she loves herself most.

Something they don't teach in Greek literature is that a lot of the stories are a retelling of the garden of Eden story with Lucifer as the hero and God as the villain. It works something like this. God is usually but not always portrayed by Zeus. Lucifer could be any of the other gods. There's a woman in the story who needs knowledge or wisdom or something. The woman is a symbol of Eve. God(Zeus) is trying to keep her from getting it. Lucifer(some god in the story) is opposing Zeus to help the woman acquire wisdom or whatever she thinks she needs. Finally, Lucifer gives the woman(Eve) knowledge, and together they've defeated God. Hunger Games is the same thing.

In the series, Lucifer(President Snow) is symbolized by a white rose. Despite his evil/sin, he is perfection. Snow is repeatedly called a serpent, and his breath smells like blood. The God character is authoritarian and trying to defeat Lucifer and free humanity while at the same time withholding information from Eve(female protagonist). But the God character is a bit ruthless as well and will sacrifice anyone to win. When Eve(female protagonist) kills God, Lucifer is standing there watching. It was his knowledge/wisdom that empowered Eve to defeat God. The overarching theme of the series is rebellion against authority.

This isn't the first young adult series to take a walk on the Lucifer side. The Golden Compass, a knowledge that's withheld by authority series, is anti-God. The Percy Jackson books may be, too, but I haven't investigated those. I probably won't. I only read the Hunger Games, because they were fairly clean, cheap in French and I needed the language practice with a series on the young adult reading level. This series and Divergent will give me at least 1.2 million words read and maybe closer to 2 million. One point two is an estimate based on 250 words per page, which is probably low, as these are physically large books.

Did I mention the female protagonist is a virgin? If she dies in the last 20 pages, she'll be a virgin sacrifice.

Have a great weekend.