Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
[...]He said, "Tell only what they absolutely need to know. If they don't need to know it, don't tell it, period, no matter how awesome you think it sounds. If it's not directly relative to the story or the narrative, it's dead weight." I forget what the guy's name was, but at the time he was on the NYT best seller list, so I listened. ^_^
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I've read this advice before from several sources. I think it is good advice, except for the fact that it's not literally true - is it? Or not in any simple sense.
I mean, if you told only what was absolutely necessary to reveal a story, then most books would be over very quickly indeed - and no one would bother to read them. An author tries to put character, scene and plot together so that the reader will care about the story they are trying to tell. It is not a simple matter of picking what is absolutely necessary, it is a subjective process of picking what best supports the overall intention: enough to make it work, not too much, but not too little.