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Sometimes a fencing lesson is just a fencing lesson.

Velka

Sage
I read this article a few days ago on Kill Screen, and it's been brewing in the back of my mind since.

While the main conversation is about a character in Witcher 3, it is framed in a literary critique. The tldr; version of the article is that while players of 'story-based' games expect the interactions and choices they make to hold significant meaning and consequence, sometimes a fencing lesson is just a fencing lesson.

I really liked the conversation about 'sideshadowing' and examples of how Tolstoy and Dostoevsky used it in their works. "Nobody in Anna Karenina is destined to do anything" made me laugh out loud.

This quote, however, was what made this whole article stick in the recesses of my mind:

In Great Expectations, Pip gives a pie to a convict, and the reader assumes that this apparently inconsequential event will in fact be consequential… We do not expect our daily donations to be Dickensian pies. In novels, when bread is cast upon the waters, it comes back manifold, but in life it often just drifts away.

As I work through editing the first draft of my novel, and slowly slog through writing the first draft of the follow-up book, I'm finding I do have moments in both works where I use sideshadowing. Now, everything I've read, and advice I've solicited (and sometimes haven't) have all pointed to the "unless it moves the plot forward in a meaningful and clearly communicated way, cut it and never look back" camp. As I gain more confidence in my worth as a writer, and the quality of my work, I'm finding this advice, while valuable in many ways, doesn't always jive with my style and the way I want to tell my stories.

I think there is magic, and value, in using "moments of seeming insignificance in order to conjure a literary world of “possibilities that could have happened even if they did not"." I like subtlety, I like nuance, I like moments that simply exist to add a layer of realism in literary works. (Which is why I probably would fail horribly at writing YA where everything needs to be fast and action based.) I like to leave the reader wondering what a character really meant when they said something, or if the reason they gave for an action was truly their motivation.

I'm interested in hearing other's thoughts on this article and how it relates to your work, or works you enjoy.
 
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MineOwnKing

Maester
I agree with your style.

I'm not in the boat that every tidbit needs significance.

Sometimes it's nice just to look around the room.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
The way I think about things is a scene can do at least one of three things, move the plot forward, develop character, and expand the world. An adequate scene does only one of those things. A good scene does two. A really good scene does all three.

Not all scenes need to be really good. But if the scene does none of those things, it probably should go. If it only does one, it's a candidate to be edited out or merged with another scene.

With that said, there is obviously room for scenes that don't advance plot.
 
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Gryphos

Auror
I follow the basic philosophy of '(almost) everything should be foreshadowed, but not everything should foreshadow'. If everything foreshadows, if the most seemingly meaningless action has to hold some kind of later plot significance, then you're ruining any chance you have to genuinely surprise your reader, because they'll suspect that that meaningless action wasn't so meaningless after all, and so they'll be ready for the 'Aha!' moment. But if just once a fencing lesson is just a fencing lesson, then when it turns out that the sculpting lesson wasn't just a sculpting lesson after all, the reader won't have seen it coming.
 
D

Deleted member 4265

Guest
I thought this was a really interesting read. I actually really love books that do this and keep you guessing about what is actually going on. Of course, it goes without saying that it needs to be well executed, if done poorly it can really ruin a book. Adding insignificant moments can really mess with the pacing sometimes if you add them too late in the story.

I'm okay with taking detours and getting side-tracked in the beginning, it gives the whole story a sense of mystery (again if done well) but once things really kick into high gear and you know what's at stake, having the characters go off and do something completely unrelated really destroys the sense of urgency.

I think, as with many things, there needs to be a middle ground. I don't want to read a book that's predictable and I'm not much into YA literature for similar reasons as you, but at the same time I don't want to read something that feels like its mostly filler with the plot being an afterthought or something that's too obscure for my understanding (I have much respect for Danielewski, but I'm pretty sure if I tried to read House of Leaves I'd end up tearing my hair out).
 
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