I is for Interview

A problem for all writers is that we need to tell the readers some background material - and we often attempt to do so by subtle reveal, rather than a lengthy, detailed and possibly off-putting explanation of why our characters are acting in the way they are.   If we don't want to have great chunks of explanatory text, then the only real technique is to break it all down into manageable bits.    Not giving the reader any idea of what going on is an alternative, but not one that seems to have any merit.

A trap I think we discussed in a previous post is to put such information into statements made by one or more of  the characters in our tale.   The first problem with this, is that we have one person tell another something that the listener already knows:  "Hello Mister Brown, famed harpsichordist".  And the second is that unless we are careful, they say to each other words that would never get spoken in real life.   An extreme bad example goes along the lines of "Hello my beloved wife of fifteen years of often tumultuous marriage who was recently unexpectedly promoted to office manager at the chagrin of her bitter rival - how are you on this morning, one on which a crucial meeting is planned to take place?"   This is an example of an excessive use of a variation of the too much information syndrome.

So now where do we go?    Having one character "interview" another character might be worthy of your consideration.

Consider:

"Here, I've made you some tea."   He handed her a small tray holding a delicate china cup and saucer, the cup almost overflowing with her favorite Earl Grey.   She sat up in bed to take the proffered cup,  She gave a grimace in the general direction of the sunrise taking outside their bedroom.

"What's wrong, petal?   You look out of sorts."

"I have a meeting this morning.    A planning meeting.   They can be very demanding."   She pulled the bed covers up around her bare shoulders and took a tentative sip at the hot fluid.

"You will have lots of meetings now you are in management.   You've never had a problem with them before you got promoted."   He brushed the fringe from across her forehead so that he could look into her deep blue eyes, almost as if to work out what was wrong simply by staring into them.

"Janet will be there.   She expected to get my job.   She is out to make trouble for me.   Nothing is more certain than that."

"Janet?   I never thought she was cut out to be management.    Is she off her rocker?"

 "Actually, she was favorite to get it.   I was the dark horse.   She was not happy that it was me, of all people."

"She has never liked you, as she?"

 "Not since the petty cash incident.   And that really was not my fault..."

"So - what are you going to do?"

"I shall have my wooden hairbrush in my tote."

"?"   Not so much a question as one eyebrow raised in a quizzical way.

"If I sink her without trace during the meeting, afterwards, in private, I will put her in her place once and for all, for all time.  And if it goes bad for me ..."

 "If?"

"Then vengeance will be wreaked in a way she will never forget."

"You sure are still my feisty hellion..."    He smiled.

 "And I shall always be."   She put the empty cup and saucer on the bedside table.   "And now a shower and then my sharpest business suit.   I've got a battle to fight..."   She swung her long shapely legs out of the bed and set off towards the bathroom.

Now that passage is not presented as a masterpiece of literary excellence, but simply as a case study in how to get your reader set up without a lecture of one sort or another.   All relevant facts were revealed, without once going into anything like lecture mode.

Show rather than tell is the soundest advice that any spanko writer can be given, and dialog is one form of show.   When that dialog is set out as an interrogation, or, more politely, an interview, we can show our reader exactly where our tale is likely to go.   All quite painlessly - and that cannot be a bad thing.

But of course - there is a caveat.   Don't start every tale you write using this technique, or it will become hackneyed from over use.   (I shall talk about the slow reveal, and its usefulness, in some other post).