Chasejxyz
Inkling
The four POV characters in my WIP are all humans that have magic, which is a big deal because that's not "supposed" to happen. They got it (in some way or another) from a disaster that happened 20-something years before the subject matter of the book. Some characters weren't born yet or were somewhere else and didn't see it. If this was, say, a hurricane then the reader would know what that is and what it would look like. But it was a rampaging kaiju, whose fallout (both literal and figurative) caused all these things to happen, and I'd imagine that's something the reader might want to see.
So my question is...how do I go about describing the event? Would a character who saw it just tell a POV character about it? Do I sprinkle in little tidbits throughout the text and hope the reader puts 2 and 2 and 2 together? Or do I fiddle with the history of one of the POV characters so they were there and show the event in a flashback/nightmare? There's no body/bones to see, and the areas that were affected the most are exclusion zones; there's no magic items to find, no characters hiding out there, no reason to go besides to get radiation poisoning and die, so that's out.
Has someone had a similar issue? How did you solve it? Or did you encounter this in some piece of fiction and have thoughts on how they executed it?
So my question is...how do I go about describing the event? Would a character who saw it just tell a POV character about it? Do I sprinkle in little tidbits throughout the text and hope the reader puts 2 and 2 and 2 together? Or do I fiddle with the history of one of the POV characters so they were there and show the event in a flashback/nightmare? There's no body/bones to see, and the areas that were affected the most are exclusion zones; there's no magic items to find, no characters hiding out there, no reason to go besides to get radiation poisoning and die, so that's out.
Has someone had a similar issue? How did you solve it? Or did you encounter this in some piece of fiction and have thoughts on how they executed it?