"The flux capacitor--it's what makes time travel possible." When to keep world-building explanations short
Gosh, I really think I'm quite clever sometimes. But what about those situations where the readers (audience) can be told, and they feel completely satiated and entertained by not going into the nuts and bolts. There are tons of examples: How about all the James Bond gadgets? Especially the fireball-shooting pen (Never Say Never Again, I think). And then there's the opposite, like the information dump from Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix. I ate them both up.
Why? What made me want to know everything in one situation but tune out the rational part of my brain in others? More importantly, how do I know when to keep world-building explanations short versus totally geeking-out?
I believe this is a writers question rather than a world builders since I'm not asking HOW to build a world.
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I think there are two basic reasons for describing anything in fiction.
One is to give sensual pleasure in its own right. There are all sorts of sensual pleasures that prose might convey, from the erotic to the gastronomic to the social. Tom Clancy's loving descriptions of really big machines with really big guns are designed to titillate those of certain tastes. The depiction of suffering and injustice in the works of more liberal minded authors is designed to give a frisson of self-righteousness to the reader. Harry Potter depends heavily on the child's pleasure in the fantasy of being special and powerful, of being rewarded for extraordinary gifts where others would be scolded and sent to bed.
The sensual appeal can be very strong, but it is also very individual. What entrances one reader will repulse another.
The other reason for description in literature is to support story. This is about what we need to know to follow the story and to feel fully immersed in the story.
The reason backstory dumps are so often a problem for writers is that they often come before the reader cares about them. Unless they are well enough written to give sensual pleasure, and the reader is receptive to that particular brand of sensual pleasure, then the description is tedious if it is not relevant to the story as the reader is currently experiencing it.
Back to the Future is a fish out of water story. How the flux capacitor works is not story relevant, and would not give sensual pleasure to most of the intended audience, so it is not detailed in the movie.
The Matrix is a much more philosophical movie. It deals with the ancient philosophical question of how we can know if anything is real. Contemplating this question gives us the pleasure of feeling clever and feeling superior to the lesser minds who go around blissfully believing everything they see. It is also relevant to the story at the point it is given (as best I remember) because Neo needs to know the nature of the thing he is fighting.
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I feel like the conciseness of the explanation of the Flux Capacitor was to point out both characters' personalities and the mysterious nature of the device.
Here we have Marty, who really doesn't have much of a head for science, despite hanging out with the town's resident mad scientist. Then we have Doc, who is established as an unstable, but more importantly, misunderstood scientific genius.
And lastly we have the Flux Capacitor, a device which did not emerge from carefully-developed theory but from head trauma. While Doc presumably spent a lot of time developing the device in the thirty years between his rather appropriate clock-hanging accident and the completion of the Time Machine, it would seem the basic theory came from the head trauma. As with many time travel stories, the time travel mechanic is mysterious in nature and almost feels brought about by destiny itself (which is a theme in the story).
It was important for Doc's explanation of the Flux Capacitor to be unsatisfactorily brief in order to accomplish all of those goals:
- Marty doesn't really care how it works, and wouldn't understand if Doc tried. Hence his not asking for further clarification.
- Doc remains misunderstood, as we aren't allowed to see any line of reasoning that brought him to the invention of the Flux Capacitor. In fact, there is no line of reasoning, which confirms the suspicions of the principal, Mr. Strickland.
- The Flux Capacitor remains a mysterious device resulting from a freak happenstance rather than something rational that the audience can understand.
Compare and contrast with a scene from Batman Begins:
Lucius Fox: [Bruce Wayne is recovering after being poisoned by Scarecrow] I analyzed your blood, isolating the receptor compounds and the protein-based catalyst.
Bruce Wayne: Am I meant to understand any of that?
Lucius Fox: Not at all, I just wanted you to know how hard it was. Bottom line, I synthesized an antidote.
This scene also accomplishes the goal of making Fox's procedure sound beyond comprehension, but establishes Fox as extremely rational and competent instead of unstable.
So it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Think about what it means for the explanation to exist, what it means for a character to say it, and what it means for other characters to hear/react to it.
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Do you build on it?
Sometimes the device is something your story needs, but doesn't need to dwell on; sometimes the story revolves around it as a central conceit.
For example, let's take the power requirements of the flux capacitor in Back To The Future. The plot arc of the first film revolves around its staggering requirements -- the uranium leads to Doc getting shot in 1985, strands Marty in 1955 with only one shot at returning to his own timeline via a lightning strike. So much information, which is directly driving the plot.
In the sequel, it's completely resolved -- Mr. Fusion provides all the power the flux capacitor needs; briefly displayed occasionally but otherwise entirely irrelevant and no longer requiring the audience's attention.
We need to know about the power requirements to comprehend the plot and the issues are front and centre, brought up early, foreshadowed; but when it is no longer plot relevant we place a fig-leaf over it and no longer draw attention to it.
Explaining the limitations and requirements of your time-travel solution are critical, especially if you want to play with them later; 88 mph is established early on, and only really becomes relevant in episode 3.
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It's a Your Mileage May Vary situation, but I think there are two good rules of thumb:
1) Explain only as much as you need for the story to make sense. This will vary depending on your audience, but roughly, anything specialized to your world or your story will need a minimum of explanation. Your readers are, at a baseline, familiar with 2017 (today's) technology. Anything set after that (or before it) will need to be accounted for. Today, if Person A wants to contact Person B, s/he pulls a cell phone out of his/her pocket. In 1942, you had to find a physical phone. In 1895, you had to send a telegram or a letter. In 2060, we might have data transmission chips in our heads, so you only have to think the message.
You need to explain what the chip is, and that a message sent from one chip to another is called a shunt, or shunting. What you don't need to do is explain is how the chip actually works. You have to establish that your character has a chip which can send and receive, you need to run through the procedure of Activate Chip — New Message — Address Book — Compose — Send or however it works the first time, and then that's it. Don't belabor the details. After that, it's "Betty sent a quick shunt to Carl about dinner. He shunted back //sure, sounds fine//, so she made the reservation for eight."
2) Explain only what matters for the story. Your alien city may have a magnificent monorail circling it, and in your worldbuilding backstory you had a whole two-year political fight about getting the permits and securing the space and protests and jobs and pollution and people buying and selling land and so forth, but if the only time the character sees the monorail is on approach... you don't need to tell the reader any of the backstory. It's not relevant. The only details you need to share are the ones which affect plot and character.
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