How do I write my story so that there's less stuff I need to explain? (Answered by myself)

[JoshRaed]

I have successfully made the events not confusing. They are as follows.

To understand the main character you have to know about the chosen one and how he alone can defeat the dark king and how his power is to cancel out his dark magic.

The reason it's so important that he can do that is because if he doesn't, it renders buildings unlivable, and that that the dark lord is evil.

It is also important to understand that there is a separate faction called the Arcanum which are to be considered the enemy, and everyone is scared of and hates them, even their children. Because this stuff matters to the conflict later.

It is also important to understand that save for a few soldiers sent through, the light zone has seen neither heads nor tails of the dark zone in ten years after the creation of a magic dome, which means nothing gets in or out even basic communication.

This is necessary to the plot past chapter one.

By chapter two, you need to know that it is physically impossible to reject a prophecy. If you are prophecized to eat an apple, trying not to eat that apple will end in a storm breaking your windows and a strong wind shoving that apple into your mouth.

[wolflu66]

Many world-building details about the story's setting should not be crammed all at once for readers at the beginning, as most people won't have the patience to read through it all.

The information readers need to know should be conveyed naturally through the storyline, allowing readers to understand gradually. From my perspective, most of what you mentioned in your article can be accomplished this way.

If you absolutely must explain so much in the first chapter, otherwise the second chapter becomes unreadable, then you might need to adjust the entire structure and sequence of your story.

[JoshRaed]

The concept of the Arcanum has to be understood before one of the two main characters can be introduced, otherwise their appearance will have no meaning. The very first plot point in the narrative is related to the chosen one stuff, so without understanding the chosen one stuff the reveal at the end of the chapter means nothing.

[LunarScyphozoa]

If the only way for a story to make sense is if there’s an exposition dump at the start, you’re heading into the plot too fast. Try and start off slower and introduce these ideas organically while getting the audience familiar with the status quo and protagonist.

[JoshRaed]

I've been trying that, but the story ended up feeling too dense with new information anyway. All the dark magic and prophecy and Arcanum stuff are necessary to understanding the two main characters and their motivations and situations.

This is not even accounting for the fact that the place the main character lives in is extremely densely packed with people because so many of them have been displaced from their homes, causing the people to start building floating islands on chains. That's not a necessary plot detail to establish early on, but it's always present in every scene because it's literally how the world of the series looks, floating houses and restaurants held down by chains and connected by tube trains, stairs, and ladders, so this is not information that can be saved for later. The fact that the world is like this is clear from scene one. So that's more information to keep track of.

[ShidoDraws]

Exactly what I wanted to say, the only thing I would add to this is that this advice is not for everyone. As apparent as it already is. Certain people already know what they want, they already wanted to write the way that they did. Doesn't matter if someone else gives a million-dollar advice, it's not going to stick and probably won't ever.

[faisalhussein394]

Well, someone gave a simple advice: Read what you wrote, and search your feelings whether some parts are not to your liking, and you would later remove it. Authors are readers too.

Don't let the details be an entire page or two.

[merakiconstellation]

That's a lot of information, indeed. And I get your frustration. The earlier reply was right: don't info-dump everything in one go.

Since the world-building itself is complicated (it takes time for me to digest your whole story), you have to separate it into bite-sized information. If possible, use scenes, dialogues, whispers/gossip to deliver the information.

Here's how you can include major plots without info-dumping:
1. Create a scene where the Dark King is claiming a territory. (how the dark magic works)
2. Create a scene of the MC venturing into a barren/destroyed land. (what happens if light magic is used to fight the dark magic)
3. Show fear of Arcanum through NPCs, where they talk amongst themselves. (this matters later anyway, so no need to go deep dive into it right away)
4. Dark zone's isolation should also be shown through NPCs, perhaps nosy commoners or someone claiming to have a soldier relative and gossip about the latest news.

Don't do the above things all in chapter one or in several chapters in a row. Incorporate information as scenes or dialogues for easier digestion.

I suggest opening the chapter with MC 1's magic poisoning. Or if this is still a secret, you can open the chapter with the nature of prophecy stuff. How MC 1 was prophesized to go somewhere, but they refused to follow, and what happened to them as a result. Like your examples—turn them into a scene for the MC.

Readers want to see your MC—I want to see your MC. If this is still too difficult to achieve, perhaps you have to restructure your story. Maybe make the MC unaware of themselves being the chosen one, so he'll learn about it with the readers.

[mohdadeebace]

just don't write it.... leave some holes. therefore you will have room to expand on those holes when you need it.

[JoshRaed]

Huh? I don’t know what this means.

[EncryptedWriting]

I mean, you don't need to explain all of this in one go. You can break it up through chapters/episodes. A block of text talking about the basics and all of that is just not preferred.

[mohdadeebace]

what i want to say is that, too much of a detail in a story restricts you to expand the story the why you think is good for it... suppose 2 situation -
A) you've planned your story from A to Z with every details and all... you write it with all the details you think is and will be necessary at the beginning and start uploading it.... now suppose, whatever you planned, at some point you realize that it doesn't help you and you know you can make it work out but tweaking or changing it... but you can't do it because of those details you've already mentioned. (now you've to maintain it's continuity)
B) You've planned you're story from A to Z with every detail... you write it with what detail is needed only and at some point you realize some detail that you though of is not working... you can simply tweak and change it because you havn't put it out yet...

in your situation, you need the readers to know all these details before entering the second act of the story, but why can't you give all these details when you really need them to happen in the story, like in the second act of the story.

OR (This can be a simple solution)

One way to get through with this is you become an unreliable narrator of you story.... just say that some details is a lie or something that the narrator doesn't understand but then when it reveals, narrator is as shocked as the audience. (That way you don't need to change the excessive details of the story, and it would make the audience to make assumption that anything can happen in the story because the rules are not clear)

It's just some advice and I am really bad when conveying my thoughts, so please don't get angry

[jwabeasley]

Alright. You have a lot going on in your story - maybe too much. However, based on your descriptions, I don't think everything really NEEDS to be told at first. Further, while you gave a lot of worldbuilding information, you didn't tell me much about thse lead/chosen one people. What are their personalities? How are they interesting for a reader to engage with?

It's also important to know about the main character having magic poisoning, because it's how the real chosen one is revealed, who is the other main character.

My advice is to focus on this second real but unknown chosen one (if you must have chosen ones at all) as your protagonist, someone who doesn't know he's the chosen one but does want desperately to help the displaced people in his land. Maybe he lives alone because his family was killed by the dark magic. Maybe he has a secret hideout where he experiments on some dark magic-infused objects, trying to purify them. Maybe he spends his days working in a menial job which imparts skills that will be relevant to purification later (salt maker? thief? candle maker? gardener?). His most important character attributes could be his compassion for others and his persistence to help people, and his personality could be relentlessly cheerful and optimistic to inform the dichotomy of lively light vs cold death.

Then the ruined former chosen one with magic poisoning can be this somewhat older, famous "chosen one" that the population trusts and whose magic poisoning is a state secret. You can now work all of this into later chapters as our hero navigates the world.

the place the main character lives in is extremely densely packed with people because so many of them have been displaced from their homes, causing the people to start building floating islands on chains. That's not a necessary plot detail to establish early on, but it's always present in every scene because it's literally how the world of the series looks, floating houses and restaurants held down by chains and connected by tube trains, stairs, and ladders

Just show that the world is this way, and don't explain it! It'll look cool and be fun. You can explain it later.

The other elements - how prophecy works, what the Arcanum is, how dark corruption works, that there even is a demon king, and so forth - can also all be introduced later, one at a time, as our protagonist learns about the world outside of his humble refugee camp.

With the first chapter, you need to establish ONLY these things:
1. Who is the lead character, and what are they like?
2. Why do we care?
3. What is the main draw of the story?

The setup for anything else shouldn't be more than a throwaway line or an image here and there at this point. I bet you can build a good opening chapter with no prologue for this story, if the lead is solid enough.

[NickRowler]

If you are worried there is too much necessary details, maybe cut back on what is needed for the story.

I would also recommend reading books in the same genre and see how other writers handle it. I feel a lot of them start with a naive hero who befriends someone who helps explain things to them through out the story.

[moontokkym]

As others have said, you don't need to reduce the detail of your story just rework it. Take a look at what your story needs to know right now in act 1 and explain the bare minimum details of what needs to be known for the upcoming chapter.Through character dialogue, character non-verbal interaction and attitudes you can get a lot of info.

Sometimes an ATLA-style info dump at the start can work out, but it needs to be well written, easy to follow and most importantly: hella short. A short paragraph max with at most 1 jargon word (and that word has to be EASILY DEFINABLE within the paragraph), and the visuals if in comic form have to also reflect what is being said in the paragraph. Though it can seem simpler, it's actually a lot harder to make intriguing.

Ok so I'm going to give an example from my work because it's what I know and it's one of the things readers have praised so far.
My story starts with a short 4 page intro to the world (page 1 pictured here), it sets the scene for chapter 1 and gives people the absolute barebones info on what's going on so that the reader can understand the immediate stakes of what happens directly afterwards, i.e. there's a truck giving out water that the MC is going to miss if they don't run now to catch it. It's immediately relevant information so i made the compromise of shortening the intro to get to the action and work out a narration-style intro that shows off the world while the MC finishes work and goes home.

However, cloning is a really important part of my comic. The main character is a genetecist who specialises in cloning, many characters are clones themselves, a huge point of tension in the plot is how the clones are percieved and how they fit into the world. I have an 11 page document on different cloning methods that the MC is intimately familiar with, the history of cloning, the big innovators of the field, the fight for justice in history, the works. They are arguably more important than the setting itself.
The clones are not mentionned explicitly until near the end of chapter 1, 30 pages in. And even then, only a single line of my notes made it in: that the mc has trauma that is used as an excuse for their prejudice that is common enough to be somewhat brushed off, though not entirely socially acceptable.

None of this is stated directly, it's all in subtext. Not always subtle subtext but subtext nonetheless. Other details like how clones are made exactly, life expectancy, human genetic modification laws, clone usage in labor forces, etc... All are important aspects to understand the stakes of where I'm going with this story as well as multiple character arcs, but they will be introduced when they need to be, because dumping what is essentially a lecture on the subject at the start is going to push readers away. I didn't make the story less complicated, I made it more digestible. You can too.

Also important to know: I am not at the second act yet, and I'm 80 pages in. I've got another 5 chapters before i'm there, and I've already been able to build on the barebones explanations I gave in the intro. Just because the second act is coming and you need readers to know these things first, doesn't mean you have to stick it all in the first 10 pages and then once we've done our homework the action can start.

[JoshRaed]

The character of fake chosen one literally only goes on his quest because he is magically compelled to and wants to get this over with, so i’m not sure what kind of protagonist he’ll make. Also we still need to understand dark and light magic to understand the chosen one.

Orion being chosen one but not knowing about the dark lord is harry going to wizard school and THEN learning that magic exists. It’s fundamentally wrong continuity. There is no chosen one without the dark lord.

I feel like you only skimmed what I wrote. No one is a former chosen one, there’s no demon king, and all of this information is fundamental to knowing what the stakes and conflict are. Why things need to happen the way they do, why our protagonist makes the choices he makes.

[JoshRaed]

I did cut a lot of stuff. The main character doesn’t even know what an Arcanum is and doesn’t care to know, because said information can be pushed aside to later as long as we understand that the true chosen one being an Arcanum soldier is very bad news and no one can know, so that at the very start of the quest the main character can keep that a secret. As for dark magic I’ve turned the rules over in my head a dozen times.

If dark magic cannot claim light territory the conflict is meaningless. If light magic can claim said territory back the conflict is also meaningless. If the two function fundamentally differently than the entire big reveal this story is leading up to later will not make sense.

[JoshRaed]

The secondary main character is an arcanum so he can’t be introduced if we don’t know what that is otherwise it’s meaningless. I did leave a hole of not explaining what an Arcanum is, just that no one likes them for some reason we’ll know later.

The idea of concentrated dark magic being able to overtake light magic and this claiming territory for other side is necessary to giving the narrative stakes and a sense that something bad is happening here that needs to be stopped, otherwise the world could just continue forever like this.

But also the light zone can’t have an effective way of taking it back otherwise the conflict is gone as well. It has to be only the chosen one that can do this, even though light and dark magic can both overpower each other.

There are two major plot points that rely on light magic being able to overtake dark magic, so I can’t cut that detail, so in the end there has to be some cost to it, and that’s concentrated/mixed magic.

[KevinReijnders]

I know better than to actively engage with your questions, lest I tumble down a frustrating rabbit hole.

Instead, I'm linking a writing lecture series by Brandon Sanderson and you do the work yourself

[JoshRaed]

I actually wrote this entire post working backwards from your questions.

We need to know who the lead character is, and how he’s been told he’s the chosen one his whole life but his powers have still not manifested.

We care because without his powers, the dark zone is claiming more and more territory and if the light zone tries to take it back without him the result will render people homeless, so he has to be the one to do it.

The main draw of the story is his relationship with the real chosen one, having to fake being the chosen one and hide his existence as Arcanum so he doesn’t get killed.

So that’s basically every story detail I listed.