I read a story, one scene taking place in the Syracuse, NY bus station. Now, I have actually been in the Syracuse bus station. I have been there dozens of times, in fact. I've eaten at the Subway there, smelled the coffee from the Dunkin' Donuts. I've stared at the arcade consoles and pinball machine, which is next to the men's room. I've looked up at the TVs running CNN on mute with subtitles and I've seen the monitors showing arrivals and departures, wondering how accurate those times actually are.
Any story taking place in that location need only give the most simple of detail and I will see it in perfect clarity.
If I read a story that took place in a random bus station in Nebraska, the same details would be nearly meaningless to me. I wouldn't see with any kind of clarity the way I would in the Syracuse station. My mind would create a structure that would have all the things that the text mentioned, but it would be a guess at best.
And of course, for anybody who has never been to the Syracuse station, they would have the same experience as me and the generic Nebraskan station.
My initial reaction to this realization is that we are in an unfixable bind. On the one hand, somebody who has not been to the place you describe will need much more detail to see so sharply the picture. On the other hand, people who have been there would grow bored from such excessive detail.
I sat and pondered this for a moment before the realization came to me: the clarity doesn't matter. If, in the story, the character kills time by playing in the small arcade, you don't need to see the alcove; you don't need to know what the games are; you don't need to know what color the floor tiles are. Neither the knowledge nor the ignorance of those facts adds or detracts from the story.
A reader who has actually been in a described location may have a special understanding of a story, but the rest of the readers should not feel left out. Details that matter should be in the text and details that don't matter should be dropped. If your story comes across as an inside joke or a "you had to be there", that is a problem of the author, not the reader.
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This is what I like about sci-fi.
ReplyDeleteNo one has ever been to the Andromeda galaxy or, even much closer, Alpha Centauri. Your free to create your colony on Alpha Centauri and no one, not you or I, will feel left out or part of the special group who gets it (like the people who watch the Hitman movie and have played all the games). Everyone is equal and the scene you paint comes down to pure skill.
I know sci-fi gets a bad rap. But that's really the problem with people not seeking out the good stuff from authors/directors who did their research and actually cared about what was going on and tried not to rely on too much handwavium (why was firefly such a great hit? here's a hint: No FTL)