Sunday, April 22, 2007

Don't Do This!

Does anyone else read Erfworld: The Battle for Gobwin's Knob?

Is anyone else really ticked off with it right now?

Skipping time, I can deal with. Skipping a battle, I can deal with. It was obvious what was going to happen; it didn't need to be shown.

What I can't deal with is this "Charlie" nonsense.

Creating suspense by arbitrarily hiding things from the reader isn't cool. Unless you've got an in-text reason for why the reader doesn't know everything (significant) that the character does. (i.e., the unreliable narrator)

Unless, of course, it's not going to be important. We never hear about Charlie again, so why waste a page showing who he is? This, I somehow doubt, because if it wasn't going to be important it wouldn't have come up at all.

Plus, it'd edge dangerously close to telling, rather than showing. The characters talking about how unreasonable Stanley is, rather than showing how unreasonable he is.

Upshot: Irritating. I like Erfworld, but this sort of thing had better not happen on a regular basis.

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