How much text on one page? to explain background info

[Wp]

I've reached a point where I have to explain background information in a story comic. I can spread out my text and illustrate each sentence of it, or I can just plop down a short paragraph and get it over with.

Because of time constraints, I'm just going to land a big paragraph down. I just want to know how abhorrent that "technique" is to a comic reader.

[Joel Fagin]

It's not nearly as simple as the poll requires it to be. The very best way to manage it is, yes, to show, but not in a flashback. You show in the normal course of things, gradually if necessary - much like Anne McCaffrey did in the Pern books. Implication and closure are your friends here.

I put an example in my comic not a great length of time ago. The science fiction world in question has unemployment problems, due to the fact that artificial intelligences and robots are being used to automate everything. It's revealed gradually and the first step was an exchange between two security guards searching camera footage for a thief loose in a building.

Guard 1: "This is sort of job an AI would be good for."
Guard 2: "Don't even joke about that."

Just a hint so far but with strong implications that will connect up to others later and give the reader a clear picture of what's going on.

That said... Webcomic readers will generally accept all sorts of things, knowing full well that we are generally amateurs in both the art and writing departments.*

Basically... Just don't delay the reader too much. Flashbacks and other deviations from the plotline can be frustrating and lots of text can be boring. Keep this stuff short and to the point.

- Joel Fagin

* Okay, not because they know this at all. Actually because they don't know any better than any other non-writer.

[Duralict]

There have been comics that had art styles I very much enjoyed and premises that totally fit what I look for in a webcomic that I haven't read past the first page of due solely to the presence of huge essays on the world. I'm not going to remember any of it anyway this early on, so why not just tell me what's important immediately and reveal everything else as the plot develops?

I think you can get away with it MUCH more easily a ways into an established comic, once people have figured out what the questions they want answered are - if you're really at the point where it's necessary to fill in a lot of exposition, then chances are your audience has picked up on what information they're missing and have developed some interest in it. But even then, if it takes longer than a paragraph or two you're going to need to break it up with some visuals.

If you try to cram too many words into a panel, you'll end up with a really unpleasant break in the flow of your story - slow moments in comics usually have more time represented per panel (imagine that, huh?) and high-energy moments tend to be split into many more panels, so when you have a whole bevy of big paragraphs you're basically pausing the action to deliver it. I've seen a lot of tricks to circumvent this - Alias and Invincible (print comics) both made heavy use of copy/pasting the same panel repeatedly to extend the time of the pose and the scene without breaking the rhythm, and webcomics like Call of Whatever sometimes included fake letters and advertisements. The letter idea is my favorite way of getting out exposition for a number of reasons - it's directed toward a reader, but doesn't break the fourth wall; it can be long and specific without breaking the rhythm of the story, because dialog in the real world almost never has unbroken paragraphs but letters, articles and ads always do; and because you can use it as a way of showing the flavor of your world at the same time as getting out the exposition, drawing the reader in more. Narration that takes paragraphs should be avoided if at all possible, because it'll do the opposite of all of those things - it breaks the rhythm to have big chunks of text, it pushes the reader out of the story by acknowledging their ignorance of the exposition you're delivering, and it sacrifices a chance to show what you're expositing, even if that's only through such subtle measures as the headline of an article.

The rule of thumb is simple: if it takes longer to read the exposition or narration out loud than it takes to read the dialogue on a normal page out loud, then you've said too much and should break it up over more pages. Another trick worth trying is cutting up the exposition into little chunks and delivering them as inner monologue while a character has a conversation or does something in the foreground - think Calvin & Hobbes' wagon strips. Wordy, yes. Rhythmic? Absolutely.

[Moonshadow]

So far the approach I've been using (well, more specifically, my writer has been using) is to have one of the characters do a short narration each time something requires any amount of lengthy exposition. While she does it, the scenes change to illustrate what she's explaining, and for the most part it's happening at times where either the action is paused, or we deliberately chose to interrupt it for some reason. We're still trying to keep the exposition short and infrequent, but when necessary, it's been a "show and tell" approach.

Not that I know if it's actually WORKING, mind you, it's just what we're doing.

[Oualawouzou]

There's another point you have to consider. You said:

I've reached a point where I have to explain background information in a story comic.

The question is: do you have to explain that background information? Or are you just happy with telling the readers what backstory you've come up with for your character?

Do they need to know right here, right now that character X comes from city Y to accomplish quest Z because he promised to A that B would give him C if he could get to D in time? And that he doesn't like that other character from city E because countries F and G were at war 50 years ago over issue H that was never quite resolved?

I ask because writers (me included) often get so involved with crafting a nice backstory for their characters that they become unable to consider said characters on their own. In fact, when someone does include an exposition-fest at any time other than at the very beginning of a story (and even then, the exposition ought to be quick and to the point), it gives me vibes of: "I *want* you to know all this, but I can't distinguish between crucial and trivial information and I can't find a way to include these info in the story, so here's everything, sort it out yourself."

Here's a related example: the mother of all lenghty exposition novels, The Lord of the Rings, was made into movies. How much exposition made it into these movies? Barely any. But people aren't stupid. They can accept that Elves and Dwarves hate each other because of some unfinished past business, or that Elves are leaving Middle-Earth because they have the blues, or that Gandalf will not face Sauron himself though he is extremely powerful, or... Do not underestimate your readers' ability to fill in the blanks by themselves. Not all blanks in a story are evil blanks.

[Wp]

Very insightful comments. I think I will chop the paragraph in half and try to weasel in a few extra comments throughout the next chapter.

[Glambourine]

You never, ever need a big ol' paragraph of exposition. Whenever I'm reading a new fantasy comic and the first comic in the archive is a big ol' paragraph of exposition, I skip ahead until I get to actual comics. I have never run into any problems as a result of this practice.

What Joel F. said: introduce things gradually, avoid big expository sections, and you'll find that your comic is more interesting to read and that your backstory gets brought out at exactly the moment it needs to be brought out, no sooner, no later.

[Allan_ecker]

...for certain values of a big ol' paragraph.



I'll always recommend more artwork because if you've got exposition to do concerning your world you might as well get in the fun of showing it happen, too.

Also amusing is how long the responses in this thread seem to be, given the subject.

[Biev]

I'd say it's best to avoid giving everything away all at once. When I read a story, I want to receive the information one drop at a time so that a sense of mystery remains.

When I use flashbacks in my story it's because the characters are either talking about something that happened, or actually reliving it. But I'm hoping the flashback will raise about as many questions as they will answer.

[P-Frank]

For simple text on a page, I use the Stan Lee rule. 30 words per panel maximum. I used to break it, but that's just too much bullshit, especially in a single-page-serial environment like webcomics.