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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20559
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This is a complex question. The business of balancing information and story is always tricky.

One good approach is to give minimal information, then bury further descriptions in the course of the story. Tolkien often works like this. He offers a brief description of a character's appearance, and other details appear in the course of the story. He does the same with magic. At one point, Gandalf uses his fire magic to burn wood, but when the wood has gone, so evidently he can't create fire from nothing. This is important in the story, but the facts aren't set up in advance and don't need to be.

A related but more deliberate approach is to withhold information and make a virtue of the mystery.

> I saw Virgaz in the marketplace. Fortunately, he didn't see me. I crushed a seed between my finger and brushed my sandal against the ground. Moments later, a horrified crowd was forming around his fat, dead body.

This might be better than describing the wonderful magic system I have just invented.

> I saw Virgaz in the marketplace. Fortunately, he didn't see me. I carefully took a Mesher seed from the pouch at my belt. I looked at it. Within this tiny seed was an infant demon. If the seed was crushed or broken, the demon would be released, and its first task would be to feast upon a human life. A rune, drawn into the ground with finger or even foot, was sufficient to protect me from the demon's hunger, and, if I concentrated my thoughts, keeping Virgaz foremost in my mind and suggesting him as a target, the demon would follow my instructions...

We writers often overexplain in this way. What might be seen here as vital information is boring and probably unnecessary. In a fantasy novel, it can easily turn magic into a mechanistic and rather un-magical routine.

Original score: 5