Too much ambiguity?

Share your work (aka, workshop it).

That's a tough one. I agree with ambiguity. I tend to believe that readers are as smart as me, even more so. Reading is an intellectual practice, one that stimulates the old bean, so why is it so hard to throw out a generalization?

Look at the great eps of Twilight Zone, where we fell into a strange world and loved/ hated the characters fighting to understand what the hell was going on. There was rarely an explanation as to "why" things were happening, just a thrill ride watching how the MC's struggled to get back to their reality.

My guess is if we cast characters that people fall in love with they'll follow them with few questions, as long as we don't abuse the Willing Suspension theroy. Toss out some morsals, some nugets that lead them thinking in one direction. Treat it like foreshadowing; giving out just enough details to wet their appetites but not enough to spoil dinner, so to speak.

Pike

Jcomp said:

The thing is, how do you know if you're being a little too ambiguous? How do you know if you've given so few hints and clues that you've cheated your audience instead of giving them something to think about? When is it okay to info dump? Is it ever okay?

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I think there are four things you're playing with here: character stakes, tensions, plots and thematic implications. Some quick, rough working definitions below:

Character stakes: what the main characters want and why they want it

Conflicts: what opposes the character stakes and the implications of that

Plot: how and why the stakes and conflicts came about, the options explored for resolving the tensions and how they finally resolve

Themes: what impact or meaning the attempts to resolve conflicts may have on us as readers

What follows is my personal opinion, but I'll try and justify it where I can.

Character stakes: You need these in detail. We have to know or be able to guess what all the main characters want

Conflicts: You need these in detail. We have to know or be able to guess who's worried, concerned, upset, desperate, furious, astonished, outraged, crushed, elated and why.

Plot: The reader needs to understand at least in sketch form what's happened and why. Else the tensions and outcomes may seem arbitrary.

Themes: I think that they should be clear in your head by the time you've finished your first draft, but you don't need to spell them out for the reader at all.

Since horror is about creating suspense and discomfort in the reader, it sometimes resorts to stinting a bit on either plot justification, or describing final outcome. This creates a cognitive dissonance that can suck the readers in, and also make them uncomfortable. That can be a win!

Horror can get away with this far more often than many other genres - romance or detective fiction for instance almost always spell out justifications and consequences in full.

My rule of thumb is that you can remove plot justification or outcome only if it increases the suspense or discomfort for the reader, and doesn't damage your conflicts or themes. Else you need a good way to spell it out. (More on that in a minute).

Classic horror has fabulous themes. They're rich with symbol and import in the reader's mind. The Hellraiser series for instance, constantly plays human desires against the price of forbidden knowledge, and frequently plays sacrifice against fear. The desire might be ambition or curiosity or loyalty or love - depending on the particular story. Each Hellraiser story features a diabolical puzzle-box, but often the history of the puzzle-box is almost irrelevant to the story. The box acts primarily as a symbol of forbidden knowledge and its mystery only helps increase the suspense.

On the other hand, in each story there's someone who falls afoul of the puzzle-box, and how and why they do are critical to both the suspense and the themes. The how and why link stakes you see - and both conflicts and themes rely on stakes.

How do you explain plot or backstory without infodumping? My suggestion is to tie the information directly to either a difficult action or a dilemma. In other words, weave the tension and character stakes into the way that the information is imparted. Here's an example.

Suppose you need to explain to the reader that although they're thought of as gods, the Great Elderly Ones are actually aliens from a distant star-system.

You could write it in italics author-to-reader, or do it in 'As you know Bob' format, or have some villain gloat about it, or have some clever scientist explain it at the end.. But I prefer to have the main character beat the information from the bloody lips of an evil scientist say, who refuses to give the information up. Try to force or trick the information out of a reluctant villain and I believe that readers will hang on every word.

Or... you could spring the information on the main character at a time when he faces a dilemma: to get this life-saving info to the heroes who have prepared ineffective magical godstopping rituals, OR try to save his girlfriend from the human collaborationists masquerading as cultists... The information then becomes a source of tension itself. Its own value creates a dilemma. Audiences will weigh up the dilemma and in doing so, absorb the information to decide what the main character should do. Cunning, huh?

Hope this helps!

This all hurts my little head. But I love Pike's and Ruv's responses, and they make a great deal of sense to me. At the same time, that's too much for me to try to think about while I'm writing. So I opt for Deacon's answer.

As writers, we are usually too close to the story to make that kind of judgment accurately. Besides, we know what's supposed to happen, so perhaps we assume others must as well. That's why having a good beta or three is so beneficial.

Y'know, that should have dawned on me. We (I-cough) do tend to forget that we have the omniscient view of our world. We know the who's and why's so it's easy to forget if we've laid out enough ground work to draw the reader down the same conclusions. It's not easily mastered nor do I believe that there is a writer out there who can say they hit that mark with every story without another's insight. Betas are the catch-all.

Pike

Jcomp, SYW is password protected, so someone can't google and come across your work. It's pretty safe there.

If you're really, really paranoid (you write horror, don't you? ), then simply post an excerpt of the troubling bits, with a bit of explanation at the top if you feel readers will need it to orient themselves.

Info-dump okay in that instance. LOL

Jcomp said:

My beta moved to Vegas and never has time for me anymore, alas!

I suppose that's why I come here, but I haven't shared my work in a while. I read somewhere that posting it online qualifies it as "published," and while I doubt a mag would actually hunt it down to the AW forums and then tell me, "Well we liked it but you already published it here, so we'll pass," I'm patently paranoid about such things. Guess I just need to get over it.

Thanks for the responses all.

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What Cranky said. Almost all pubs make exceptions for crit groups, and that's pretty much what SYW is. And the password protection means the nasty old bots won't be able to see it.

Paranoid. Much loftier sounding than scardey-punk.

Not as funny, though, I'll give you that.

P.S.

Post a link if you decide to put it up, and I'm sure we'll come take a look. I know I will, if it's got the regenerating zombies in it. For some reason, that concept just really grabbed my imagination.

Like a fish-hook in the brain, yes, but grabbed nevertheless. I'm really curious.

It really depends on the book, the author, and the reader. There is no one size fits all answer.

Take Brian Keene's novel, The Rising. A lot of readers hated the ending. They said it seemed like he just stopped writing, and left everything unresolved. I shared their opinion at first, but as I thought about it, I came to really appreciate the ending, because I felt like enough clues were given to support a satisfactory conclusion to the novel.

But largely because of the fan pressure to continue the story, Brian wrote a sequel, which drastically changes the original "hinted to" ending, and I'm glad that he did, because City of the Dead is a great book, too.

So it really all comes down to personal preference and individual skill. As good as The Rising was, Brian wasn't quite able to pull off the ambiguous ending, though I imagine he would be able to if he wrote it today, as a more experienced and confident writer.