Gatekeeping

Here we are with the second-to-last chapter in our Steering the Craft read-through, and it’s got us asking: Am I telling a story, or am I just chaining together plot points—and is it expository or engaging? Le Guin would have us know there’s a big difference between the reading experiences that come from a proper story (vs. only plot), and a lot of it has to do with how you, as a writer, pass along information to your reader.

Though I’m indicating there’s great significance between a story and a plot, the nuances and craft elements that add up to the difference may not be entirely obvious until you sit down and think about them. They may seem like understated pieces of the writing process or things that don’t necessarily jump out to a reader. Yet, without them holding arcs and threads together, there’d be no story. At least, not one that has heart and energy. 

So, what am I—what is Le Guin—talking about?

First, we need to make sure everyone’s on the same page about story and plot being separate things. Plot is a story device. Plot is action. Story is the environment and emotions and style by which those actions take place. Where there is a “limited number of plots…[t]here is no limit to the number of stories” (95). 

For example, the “Voyage and Return” (Odyssey, Homer), “The Quest” (The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien), and “Rags to Riches” (Cinderella) are all well-known plots with certain beats that are hit upon that make them distinct. The story emerges by all the details that you can change, as the author. The setting I would place my characters in, who I would even choose to be my cast of characters, how they respond to problems, the romance that might emerge, the talismans of home that turn into bigger symbols—these are but some of the elements that can be toyed with and make a story unique, though it falls under the umbrella of an already-known plot.

Which is also one of the great things about stories, that it can encompass, essentially, as much as your writer brain can come up with and imagine. A novel has a “many-voicedness…All kinds of people get to think, feel, and talk in a novel, and that great psychological variety is a part of the vitality and beauty of the form” (99).

Here’s the secret for how to infuse your story with all that vitality and beauty without overwhelming your reader with info dumps and keeping them engaged: Choose your gatekeepers wisely. 

This is actually a lesson I had to learn in undergrad while working on my thesis project, which was writing an original novel. My thesis advisor, a delightful and knowledgeable professor I’d taken a writing seminar with previously, brought this up fairly early on in my process. I wasn’t yet finished with my first draft, but it was very clear I needed to figure out by which means I was going to relay information to my readers. I remember she told me to be extra observant in my leisurely reading to notice how gatekeeping was done by writers who’d already done it. For the next week, that was my homework, and it was revelatory to analyze a story like that.

What I learned may seem obvious, once I write it out here, but I’d never picked up a work of fiction so I could treat it like a textbook before. The things I’d learned about the craft were absorbed subconsciously or learned in the classroom. I cannot recommend enough to treat your very favorite stories and authors as teachers and study them; they have so much to pass along that you may not be fully aware of, yet. Le Guin, too, is always providing excerpts from pieces she adored and thought were great examples of the craft. And, if you’re not reading but you want to write, well, you better start.

Anyway, there are a few ways to gatekeep your story information and be mindful of how you’re disseminating details to readers. You can choose to do a small tale within your story (kinda meta) or give your MC a unique role/profession that naturally opens them up to getting a lot of different glimpses into the world you’ve created or incorporate letters between characters that sheds some degree of insight.

The strategy that often is the most engaging and immersive is using a chief character or a few, well-positioned characters to serve as a guide, of sorts, to the MC (and, therefore, the reader). The most obvious example that comes to mind is in Harry Potter after Harry finds out he’s a wizard. Who’s immediately there to start answering his questions and introduce him to the wizarding world? Hagrid. By sprinkling world-building information throughout dialogue, you’re able to avoid great chunks of exposition that tend to drag the momentum of the plot. Dialogue can also present information in a more natural way than, say, stepping outside of a scene to just dump what background or insight a reader may need to know. By having two characters interact in this way, readers gather meaning about your story not only regarding the new world they’re entering but also about the characters themselves. The ways they talk, the mannerisms that happen during a conversation, help to paint a picture of who exactly you’re in the story with. 

Le Guin refers to the big info dumps as “Expository Lumps.” She also warns against passing along information to your reader by bogging them down with it. That’s not to say that all your gatekeeping must appear in the form of a character and the dialogue they engage in; you absolutely can have exposition that helps your reader orient themselves. Sometimes reading a few pages of well-done setting and atmosphere is just what I need to start feeling settled into a story. It’s just that writers who manage this well “break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with” (96). You’re not building a whole wall of story in one go on one page. You’re taking it brick by brick, little by little, which is also how your reader will absorb what you need them to know. 

Le Guin has a few exercises from this chapter, and I’ve pulled the one that works the most with dialogue. Seeing that that’s what I’ve focused on for today’s blog, it seemed fitting to drop in here for ya.

EXERCISE NINE: TELLING IT SLANT

Instructions: The goal of this exercise is to tell a story and present two characters through dialogue alone.

Write a page or two—word count would be misleading, as dialogue leaves a lot of unfilled lines—a page or two of pure dialogue.

Write it like a play, with A and B as the characters’ names. No stage directions. No description of the characters. Nothing but what A says and what B says. Everything the reader knows about who they are, where they are, and what’s going on comes through what they say.

If you want a suggestion for the topic, put two people into some kind of crisis situation: the car just ran out of gas; the spaceship is about to crash; the doctor has just realized that the old man she’s treating for a heart attack is her father…

It can be odd to write only dialogue. Maybe it makes your writing seem sparse and lacking the fullness it gets when you add descriptions or pay attention to scenery. Just remember that so much comes down to word choice. Choose phrases or vernacular that show who these characters are. You can still convey tone of voice. You can still reveal who these people are.

Also remember: a story is more than the action within it. Dialogue between two characters may not seem action-packed and exciting, but, in a story, there’s always more going on than what immediately meets the eye.

I wish you luck with this one, and I’ll catch you next week for the final chapter with Le Guin!