Post History
Footnotes informing a reader of which previous work an event occurred in are ubiquitous in comic books, but I've never heard of them being done in a novel before, nor would I really recommend it. T...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:42:34Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48946 License name: CC BY-SA 4.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T13:14:31Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48946 License name: CC BY-SA 4.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
#2: Initial revision
Footnotes informing a reader of which previous work an event occurred in are ubiquitous in comic books, but I've never heard of them being done in a novel before, nor would I really recommend it. The general consensus on [another recent question about using footnotes in a novel](https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/48874/23927) was that it was a bad idea and would break a reader's immersion. > Or is it normally left to the reader to know and remember what volume 1 read? **Yes.** And of course, you can't rely on that. I read the second _Artemis Fowl_ book before I read the first one, and was relying on references to what happened in the first book in order to understand what happened in it and who everyone was. When I watched _Attack on Titan_ years back, I managed to completely forget that a specific character existed right up until his corpse was discovered. There's not much you can do to safeguard against this. If you spent too long explaining things that happened in the previous book(s) just in case people forgot, you're going to insult the intelligence of the readers who _do_ remember. Just mention as much as you need to mention, then move on.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-11-14T17:05:57Z (about 5 years ago)
Original score: 1