In fiction, there seems to be an instinctive belief that anything mentioned by characters in dialogue is automatically rendered casual or unobtrusive – that the puppet strings of authorial intent are rendered invisible by speech. I say instinctive because, of all the problematic stories we receive for consideration at LabLit, informative dialogue is the biggest offender. Here is a genuine example of a passage in a piece we had to reject (with animal and transgenic product changed to protect the innocent):
%{font-size:7pt}Scientist A: “Have you cloned that gene yet?”
Scientist B: “What, you mean that little piece of DNA, which is a string of chemicals that serve as the body’s blueprint, that we’re using to make a protein so that our genetically engineered chickens will express chocolate eggs? No, not yet.”%
This exchange is unpleasant in at least two ways. First, it is an example of informative dialogue: in real life, scientist A would know that Scientist B knows exactly what a gene is, and A’s question also betrays that she already knows what the project is about too, so being fed it again is tedious. Second, the scientific explanation is long and clunky: what is known as exposition or, more colloquially, as an infodump.
A better way to treat the same information might be:
%{font-size:7pt}Scientist A: “Have you cloned that gene yet?”
Scientist B: “No. It’s really frustrating: I’m sure I’ve got the chocolate gene working, but I can’t get the chickens to express it in their eggs.”%
It’s true that in this example, if you didn’t know what a gene was you’d be none the wiser. But does that really matter? The passage gives you everything you needed to know for this story: the ultimate goal of the project, and the emotional aspects of its continued failure. Letting go of informative dialogue is a way of forcing yourself to simplify, which is always a good thing.
But what if you really do need to transmit what a gene is? Ignorant characters are very useful, but you need to beware of those Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto, you’re beautiful moments: the lofty scientist lecturing to the lovely young assistant. I like to use this device in small doses, and I like to use more than one character over time: the student; the husband; the pub mate; the colleague who isn’t a specialist, all providing a sounding board and a slightly different angle. The scientist should never lecture the ignorant character; it should instead be a lively exchange of science and non-science. You can also use radio broadcasts, newspaper clippings and snippets from fictional talks to slip in information en passante. If you have spent some time delivering complex key information in a scene in this piecemeal fashion, it can help to gently reinforce any key messages near the end with non-pedantic, unobtrusive summary.
Once you free yourself from the curse of exposition and informative dialogue, an entire world of possibility opens up in the form of metaphors, analogy and similes. I think one of the best parts of writing about science in fiction is the chance to view the profession through a more poetic lens by comparing it to the everyday. Here’s a more light-hearted passage from my first novel, in which the protagonist is frisking the baddie’s office for clues:
I have always prided myself on my steady hands. After all, I was a man who, fuelled only by vending machine snacks, could go for two nights without sleep and still operate a pipettor skilfully enough to string together chains of DNA into bold new configurations. Yet as I looked over my shoulder at the closed door, went around to the other side of the desk and crouched there opening one drawer after another, my hands were shaking uncontrollably, fumbling and dropping things like the greenest undergraduate who ever decimated a lab’s supply of glassware.
And here’s one that’s more serious, from my second novel, in which the protagonist is thinking about why she became a researcher:
Claire could still remember the first time she saw living cells under the microscope, in her introductory undergraduate biology practical. Textbook photos had not prepared her for the reality. How could this strange carpet of luminous bubble-wrap equate to the smooth surface of someone’s skin, or the curve of a heart or the cornea of an eye? It was as if she’d walked on the featureless expanse of the beach for years before bothering to kneel down and notice that the sand was actually a chaotic mix of impossibly tiny rocks and shells and bits of organic matter, as rugged as a boulder scree to an insect struggling across it. It was this miracle of scale that had grabbed her by both shoulders, shaken the sense out of her and made her fall in love with biology. With the vast and unknowable beauty of life, if she was honest. Corny and romantic, perhaps, but she didn’t care
Only a few more weeks now until Experimental Heart is published. Next time I’ll talk about some of the barriers to getting a lab lit novel published, and a possible way around them. In the meantime, you can pre-order the book now!
From the publisher
(If you register for free as a Gold Member, the fine folks at CSHL Press will give you a 10% discount)
Egg hunt clue: vlqpss
Jenny, I sometimes wonder if part of the reason too much exposition gets put in dialogue is because we (even someone as old as I am) have been brought up on TV, where this is often necessary.
Think, for example, of that most superb TV show Buffy – they often had to resort to a scene in the library where Giles expounds on the relevent magic (equivalent to science here) so they/we understand what’s going on.
I seem to remember that Joss Whedon said that’s why they destroyed the library circa season 3 – he was so fed up of the exposition there. But it still had to be done somewhere.
In writing we have many more ways of doing it, but I wonder if exposure to the visual media does make it more of struggle to avoid it.
Yes, TV is terrible for this sort of thing. CSI does it all the time. Which in some ways is odd — if you have a visual medium, you have great ways of transmitting information that a novelist can only dream of.
Yes and no. Taking the Buffy example, how do you visually put across ‘My goodness, this is the Cllucthlu Codex, which once opened presages the beginning of the Apocalypse. The only way to counter it is to…’ – substitute a science example to taste – the fact that it is a visual medium means you can’t put this sort of ‘scientific facts’ exposition subtly across in surrounding text the way you can in a book, you almost have to do it in dialogue.
TV can do (say) location setting a lot more easily/quickly than a book, but it struggles with exposition. As far as I am aware, that’s the main reason (apart from human contrast) that the Doctor in Dr Who always has a companion, as a recipient of verbal exposition.
Good points, Brian — I see exactly what you mean now.
Some of the best science transmission I’ve ever seen on TV is in Waking the Dead?. It’s primarily in dialogue but I don’t think they’ve once violated the rules. And they slip in the most amazing amount of information via sarky humor — exactly the way a real scientists banter — non-linear, frequent interruptions, stupid puns.
But an exception to your TV limitations…and speaking of the late Michael Crichton, I think the film Jurassic Park made PCR more understandable than the book because of the animated cartoon that the fictional museum was using to explain its methods. It may have been cheesy, but it was a lot clearer, and for the kids, it was probably more effective.
@ Brian: The Cllucthlu Codex is a manual of poultry keeping, as any fule kno. What you really mean is The Cthulhu Codex. Possibly.
@ Tutti : we’ve discussed this topic a lot in other contexts. Something you wrote recently, Jenny, is to the effect that scientist readers probably worry about the intelligibility of the science more than is justified, because non-scientists take it on trust that something important is happening without having to know the details.
When we discussed my book By The Sea at the RI Fiction Lab on Monday, the need to describe scientific facts and protocols accurately was hardly mentioned at all. Even the scientists in the audience were more concerned with conventional novelistic topics such as characterization and motivation.
Rather than concentrate on specific details, I think that novels featuring science will be more successful if they convey the overarching sense of wonder and the unknown that motivates scientists, rather than concentrating on specific details (the latter which, to me, gives a sense that the writer is an outsider, looking in, rather than a ‘genuine’ scientist).
Given that we’re into this sort of thing, I shall quote an example from By The Sea (assuming Jenny’s permission, of course).
A reason soon suggests itself, however: with modern laboratory science, there is no aspect that cannot be regulated, controlled. At its basics, though, biology is no more than a journey of discovery, and one cannot know what one might run into around the next corner. Alex soon realizes that the world is immensely, perhaps unknowably vast, against which one’s own self is infinitesimally small, weak and powerless.
And here’s another, from my substantially unbought novel Siege of Stars –
And yet in the heat of this never-ending battle with the unknown (and at her kitchen table, no less!) she and Avi had fused his talent as a data wrangler with her ability to slice through a problem like a hot knife, and in so doing, they had created a new approach: what a commentator in Antiquity had called ‘analytic archeology’ and hailed as something that might one day become a potent force in their field, for those adventurous and gifted enough to unlock its potential. When asked to define analytic archeology, though, Jadis had always demonstrated her own agenda. “I prefer to call it ‘evidence-based’ archeology,” she’d said in an interview with veteran science writer Marcel Montgolfier in Paris-Match, the one accompanied by the unintentionally sexy photographs that always made Jack laugh. “We see what’s there,” she’d said, her words printed opposite a moodily lit photo of a dark-eyed, wild-haired siren she would never believe was actually her, “and we tell it like it is. Not how we think it should be, or how it ought to go. Just what’s there. That’s much harder to do that you might think. For you can bet that whenever someone holds too closely to their assumptions, these will be the first things to be proven wrong.” She liked to think that these were the precepts she held most dear – and that she would never have come to these conclusions without having Jack to hand, whose grasp of landscape was wholly instinctive, and had forced her, as if in opposition, to think harder and more logically than she might otherwise have done. Working with Jack is like wrestling with fog, she thought. And she loved him for it.
Now, this business of ‘analytic archaeology’ is a front. No such field exists. I used it as a vehicle to say something about the characters and their interrelationships.
I like your use of the interview. That’s a good device.
My own experiences lead me to nod knowingly at Jenny’s examples and the ways around problems. I also set a goal to keep any paragraphs with explanations as short and pity as possible. If things started to go more than a few lines, I found a way to cut them off. Also, varying sentence length helped. (Both of these are brilliant insights I am patenting.) And there’s the obvious decision to place explanations within a wider context, and to have a lot of non-explanatory material between them. (Stories are about people, and they must have a plot with a beginning, middle and end that has little to do with technical details.)
I also used other techniques Jenny has mentioned, like reiteration and clueing in the reader that they don’t have to understand everything said (at least right away). Action sequences should not be slowed down by new explanatory material, but briefly reiterating a key fact may be helpful to the reader.
I’m really looking forward to Jenny’s next blog post on publication.
(With Jenny’s permission, no offense if deleted), below are three brief examples of the above discussion from Rad Decision: A Novel of Nuclear Power, based on my years in the US industry. (While nicely commented upon at its website, it has been “substantially unbought” as Henry would say.). I apologize for my limited formatting skills:
__________
“Where were you anyway?”
“Down by the VEPI pumps. Can ya get it off? I’d like to get outta here.”
“We’ll try again.” Carol reached for the duct tape. There were several possible explanations for the worker being contaminated. He might have followed all the rules and still gotten crapped up. It happened sometimes. An area that should be “clean” could have a bad spot. Or perhaps he had ignored one of the safety ropes, maybe just for a second, in order to get a job finished. That happened as well. People got in a hurry or just didn’t care. Even Gary did it from time to time, Carol knew. She wished he would be more careful. Fortunately, everyone coming out of the power block had to pass through sensitive monitors. Her current client was a good example of why.
_______
Now”, Tarelli said, “if you remember one thing, it should be this: the safety of our plant is all about water.” He pointed to the drawing. “Without water to cool them, those little uranium fuel tubes can get so hot they’ll split apart. They even melt after a time. Then, basically, you have a puddle of uranium sloshing around the bottom of your pot. It might even burn right through. That’s the famous ‘meltdown’. Nasty stuff. Of course, a lot of things have to go wrong before a meltdown happens. A lot of things. So let’s cover some of those. We’ll start with the high pressure systems. Technically speaking, those are…”
Tarelli charged ahead, adding layer after layer to the drawing, gradually quickening his delivery. Paul tried to keep up, but thirty minutes later, the dazed look he feared was in his eyes had finally been noticed.
Heh, heh.” Tarelli chuckled and set his pen aside. “Anyway, Paul, we’ve got a lot of safety systems.”
Paul nodded. “You seem to.”
__________
“What’s torus temp?”
“About 105. Not too bad.”
“Drywell?”
“230 and rising. Getting hot in there.” Too hot. Christ. The drywell cooling system was without power, and heat from the reactor vessel was now raising the air temperature inside the cavity. The concrete and steel shell could withstand up to 300 degrees. Above that, it would begin to weaken.
“Control! DeMira!” the man at the diesel generator called over the radio.
_______
I read Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (the med lit novel I mentioned before) on the bus to Ottawa last week. It is full of medical terms, and some biology at the start (when the main characters are still trying to get into med school) but it’s mostly not explained anywhere other than in the glossary at the very end. The glossary is quite funny at time, where the author added an “author’s note” after a definition. (For example, after the definition of “crash cart” it goes on to say that one of the wheels is usually jammed and the right size equipment is often not on there.)
In the text things are only explained further in the teaching scenes.
I left the book in Ottawa (on purpose, at a friend’s house) but I copied my favourite sciency passage:
Many readers wouldn’t know what phosphorylation reactions are, but it’s clear from the context that it’s something that students need to know about if they want to get into med school. Plus, the main point of the sentence is to explain how these people met each other. (And phosphorylation was in the glossary in case anyone really cared.)
Heh. It ties in with the discussion at Ian ‘s place:
You must be this smart:
_________________
to read my novel.
Eva, that’s a perfect example of what I’m on about. I also love the use of the word ‘murmur’ – it’s a great show-not-tell moment, only hinting at the developing intimacy. And also a touch of humor – very classy.
James, good stuff. I like your third example best – very pacy and the information delivered neatly and not too scarily. (If I may point out, your ‘heh heh’ and ‘chuckle’ is a so-called ‘show-and-tell’ – you only need one or the other.)
Thanks, Jenny. The “Heh, heh” is a verbal tick of the character and I think this is the first time I introduced it. I wasn’t sure if it would be understood to be a laugh (versus sign of annoyance, etc.) so I included the “chuckle”. It appears I wasn’t giving enough credit to the reader. Fortunately I didn’t make a habit of it for the reason you suggest. Good catch.
Sorry for picking on you, James. It’s just after being force-fed The Da Vinci Code (on a bet, since you ask) I am extremely sensitive to the verb ‘to chuckle’, which on one page of dialogue he once used five times!
I don’t blame you. I listened to the full book during a long drive, and I heard “the sacred feminine” about a thousand times too many. (At least come up with alternate ways to say it once in awhile!) And the explanatory dialogue got rather out of hand as well.
The rarely seen character “Chuckles the Clown” was at the center of one of the most beloved US TV sitcom episodes, so whenever I see the “chuck” word, I’m reminded of how he marched in a parade as Peter Peanut and was shucked to death by a rogue elephant. So I try to avoid it, along with chortle and guffaw.
The Podiobook I finally gave up on was awful for infodumps…vast 5-10 minute long blatant speeches about developmental biology that added nothing to the plot, but were, I think, meant to A) make the author look clever & B) make the situation “sciencey”
My first crush in elementary school was on a boy named Chuck. We once held hands in the roller disco, and he broke my heart soon after.
Hey Ian, does that mean LabLit has just lost a review? 🙂
Heh. That reminds me. The film I’ve been meaning to review for LL has no blatant infodumps at all as far as I remember. The few technical details necessary to the plot are handled exceptionally well.
Do tell! In 1500 words or fewer!
Oh, I will! The DVD is on my disk, glaring balefully at me…
Excellent…
Sounds to me as if what Dan Brown lacked is an editor (five times chuckles) 😉
Returning to post and first couple of comments, in the years-ago time when I watched TV, this happened all the time in history dramatisations. Someone would enter and say “hello”, and someone else would reply, “oh hello Henry, it seems to have taken you ages to have got back from
NatureBosworth, when you killed that mean guy Richard who killed his nephews and nicked the throne after his brother died of a surfeit of lampreys, how are you?”I believe, in fact, that even one W. S. was inclined to do this sort of thing on occasion.
Do you think that’s because, actually, W. S. wasn’t very good?
Could be, Richard – this might explain why nobody has heard of him these days or performs his plays any more, I guess.
giggle
But seriously, do you think that he was (and is) only so popular because there were essentially no other playwrights that wrote in the demotic? And let’s face it, it’s pretty bawdy stuff in places. I don’t know how they get away with teaching it in schools.
Perhaps Marlowe would have been bigger had he lived?
I think it was the style in those days, to provide these explanations (from the varoius contemporaries I have seen/read). Then gradually writers got more sophisticated as well as wanting to experiment with the medium. So it became more usual for the reader/audience to be able to assume things, via subtle ways of providing contextual information without being pedagogical about it. The better writers, that is 😉
(Of course there are other schools of writing where, for example, contextual information is deliberately not provided; I’m writing here about the type of writing in which the author wants to convey background (or technical) information – and realises that being didactic puts readers off or bores them.)
Duh. Maxine, I honestly thought you meant W. S. Gilbert until later comments… It is Friday, I suppose.
Sorry, Brian – I guess sometimes one just has to provide sufficient detail 😉
Heh. I think that all readers/audiences become more sophisticated with time. I can’t stomach Hollywood films from decades ago, for example — all that stilted dialogue and melodrama. And Henry and I were speculating that Melville couldn’t get away with all his whaling infodumps today.
I suppose the reducto ad absurdum of that is when you get these “Bible in 30 mins” or “Complete Works of Gilbert and Sullivan (whoops!) in half an hour” shows.
I know just what you mean, it is amazing how deadly dull and slow old movies are, especially when one remembers enjoying them tremendously when a child.
Perhaps I just watch a different kind of old film (mysteries & action vs. melodrama and stage plays on screen), but I’ve found many of the Hollywood (and some British) products I’ve seen from the 30s – 50s are actually much “tighter” than todays films. Often things are left unsaid or to be worked out in viewers head (and not always just the sex parts.) You can’t leave the room for a few minutes and then quickly catch up. My girlfriend and I often comment after one of these films that if it were made today it would be much longer – due in part to special effects, etc.,and in part to the need to make sure every plot point is detailed and explained. (And, indeed, todays remakes are longer.) There are notable exceptions to this, but we’ve found it to be pretty accurate on the whole. We have noticed films lengthening and slowing down as you get into the 60’s, for whatever reason.
Obviously, books are a different matter – in the days before film, TV, widespread photography, and vacation travels, Melville’s lengthy descriptions were all most people had to go on. No way you could do that today – unless you’re already a brand name author, then you can try it one or two times.
_ but I’ve found many of the Hollywood (and some British) products I’ve seen from the 30s – 50s are actually much “tighter” than todays films. Often things are left unsaid or to be worked out in viewers head (and not always just the sex parts.) You can’t leave the room for a few minutes and then quickly catch up. _
Oh, that is exactly what I have found too*. The movies are a bit shorter but more… hmm.. demand concentration? The intrigue is more “not told to A to B” under the breath but more of ‘real’ movie for the lack of words. (it is Friday after all).
*due to coincidence and chanceI have watched more b&w movies from 1940-1960ies the last couple of months than in the last couple of years 🙂
At the moment I am annoyed with the enormous amount of “explaining in absurdum i.e. spelling it out to the audience” that I have seen in most of the tv shows I have seen lately. Not to mention silly action/horror movies 😉
And I loved reading this they often had to resort to a scene in the library where Giles expounds on the relevent magic (equivalent to science here) so they/we understand what’s going on. by Brian. Go Wheadon! And I think part of why I never found the library scenes annoying was mainly because they characters did ask Giles “what’s happening” rather than Giles stating what was obvious to everyone – as they do in many other series (Bones comes to mind since they share at least one actor. Although Bones isn’t too bad…)
With the teaser given above, is is possible we might see a serialization of Experimental Heart, perhaps on this very blog?
Ssh, Hilary. Plans are Afoot.
I’ve said too much already.
Hilary – the best I can do so far is a free extract, which is currently being prepared by the publisher. I’d also like to do a virtual reading, which we’re thinking about now. But giving away the entire content for free isn’t going to support the business model. The publisher needs to recoup its investment in me. And I personally don’t care about the money, but if I sell lots of books I am hoping it will be easier to get my second one published. The book is not that expensive for what it represents: five years of really hard work.
Please support the cause!
Ironically, in view of the mini-discussion-within-the-main-discussion above about old films, I saw part of a real dog last night. Friday night, tired after a hard day etc, etc, we picked up one of my many “£3 on Amazon but never watched” DVDs that lurk around our house – Paul Newman (bless him) in The Shadow Makers. We thought this would be a fascinating film about the Manhattan Project – but it was a load of tedious old tosh. However, it isn’t an old film, it was made in 1989, in line with Jim’s point. (Which incidentally, I think is right to quite a large degree – 1930s and 40s films that I’ve seen are on balance less tedious than 1960s and 1970s examples.)
Anyway, whoever made The Shadow Makers definitely did not know the lessons of this post, nor did they know how to make a movie. Everyone spoke with hindsight, everyone used exposition like mad, etc. I tuned out after a bit and did a Soduko or two. Then after someone injected some “drama” by having the handsome young scientist in love with the nurse accidentlly grabbing on to a piece of plutonium — I heard a click, the TV was off.
I think that film was called Fat Man and Little Boy over here. Saw just part of it, including grabbing the critical plutonium bit, which I guess was based on a true story (I don’t know about the nurse part.) I didn’t get overwhelmed.
I’d highly recommend Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb for a look at how it was done going back to Rutherford in the 1890s. (It won a Pulitizer Prize.) He did an especially good job painting quick but compelling portraits of a large number of scientists, which fiction writers can learn from. (Mr. Rhodes also has been supportive of my lab lit nuclear power novel, but that was after I’d read his book and loved it.) My own novel Rad Decision is available online in free serial and download format if you’re looking for that sort of thing – see my profile for the link. (My homegrown publisher agreed to do the print version at cost and I make nothing.)
BUT, Jenny is absolutely right about the normal business model not supporting a free book on the net. If you want to support scientific fiction being published in the traditional marketplace, the best thing you can do is purchase a copy of Experimental Heart (I just did and it is indeed very reasonably priced.) THEN, if you like it, don’t just tell Jenny, put a pithy review on Amazon and add some tags, mention it on other blogs, and generally get the word out. Perhaps carry a copy prominently when you rob a bank in full view of the security cameras. One happy reader is nice, but buzz makes money for the publisher – which is what is needed here. A first time author in the mainstream fiction marketplace – who doesn’t have a massive publicity machine behind her – really has to hope readers will help out. So please do if you want more books like this.
the handsome young scientist in love with the nurse accidentlly grabbing on to a piece of plutonium
Verisimilitude? Happens to me all the time, Maxine.
@James – I’d highly recommend Richard Rhodes’ “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”
I second that – fabulously told history!
And Henry and I were speculating that Melville couldn’t get away with all his whaling infodumps today
We sure were. And Poe. and Jules Verne. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea there are pages (and pages, and pages) where he seems to have swallowed a Field Guide to the Fishes of the Indo-Pacific Region.
But films are films, and books are books, and I remember reading an athology of SF from the ‘golden age’ of the 1930s and 1940s. Sparkling stories from Heinlein, Wyndham, Van Vogt, Bester and others at the height of their powers. Heinlein, in particular, told cracking stories in his youth, such as Waldo and The Man Who Sold The Moon, but fame and (self) adulation produced a certain, shall we say, middle-aged spread.
Hey Ian, does that mean LabLit has just lost a review? 🙂
Um…maybe/maybe not 🙂 I can do one, but it won’t be nice >:)
Do you think that’s because, actually, W. S. wasn’t very good?
Read a good Biil Bryson book about Shakespear/Shaksspere etc., while I was in the UK. His thesis, WS was very talented and very prolific. The fact he also acted in the plays he wrote (and thus had more control than most writers) and that they were one of the best known/patoned troups (“The Lord Chamberlain’s Men”, I think)of the era certainly helped too…so much so, that after his precipitous death his friends created “The First Folio” and cemented his place in posterity. But apparently even while he was alive he was very well known and respected.
…oops…exposition… 🙂
Sorry for what now seems like a ill-thought comment above – I certainly understand the need for your publisher to recoup the costs… The comment was somewhat inspired by hearing about the New York Review of Books’s serialization of Felix Feneon’s Novels in 3 Lines (via Twitter) and by thinking about the use of online technologies for enhancing the experience of novels. A virtual reading (perhaps via Second Life?) sounds like a great idea.
Jennifer,
I’m new to the Nature Network and there are lots of things I haven’t figured out yet, including whether the blogs support trackbacks. But in case they don’t, let me just notify you that I blogged about your interesting LabLit-writing posts on my blog because they resonate with my own opinions on science writing. If only there were room for experimenting more with these things in journalism as well!