Bad Writing Technique #1: Too Much Information Part 2
For TMI in Character Renderings, click here.
Settings
Example: Mike walked through the golden field, the smell of wheat filling his nose. The wheat made hissing noises beneath his feet as he traveled. He watched a dragonfly buzz through the azure sky before it knocked into his ear. He swatted it to no avail. The deciduous trees in the distance rustled when the wind blew. Thirty minutes later, he reached his destination.
Well, that was completely useless. Invoking the four senses before Mike is not even at his destination is a big no-no. And even worse, it's a wheat field. Two words are all that's needed to trigger the reader's memory of what the setting looks like. If Mike walked through a wheat field for thirty minutes to get to his destination, the reader can use his mental smell-o-vision to fill in the blanks without the extra "assistance."
How to fix it: For commonplace settings, if you can describe them in five words or less, do it. Your reader will figure the rest out. Don't try to channel Charles Dickens; he was paid by the word for his work, so being verbose meant he could afford dinner. You, my Internet publisher, do this for free so you have no excuse.
Besides being verbose, TMI in settings can also be redundant. The pet-peeve I shake my head at most is the phrase, "the green grass." What else is the grass supposed to look like? Purple?
How to fix that: Unless anything in the setting does not look like its default image, throw out the adjectives. If adjectives are needed, don't repeat them.
On the other hand, TMI may seem like the only way to communicate your setting. In this case, details are necessary, but may cause your explanation to be convoluted. When writing an unfamiliar setting that is heavy on visual explanation, simplicity is important. As long as there you build understandable structures as the foundation of your setting, details can be better understood. To know how to simplify your setting so that it’s recognizable to the reader, start describing it exactly the way you can’t write it--nonverbally. Draw it, map it, and/or use your hands to gesture shapes of the stuff in it. That way, you literally see in front of you what you want to tell your reader. So if you have drawn a platform like a giant sand dollar, you can be just as straightforward in your writing.
Emotions
Fleshing out emotions with TMI, specifically in dialogue, is a mistake I make most often out of habit. I commit the TMI offense when I stop relying on the dialogue to show the character's emotions, instead opting to add unneeded adjectives at the end of dialog tags ("he said, she said"), like so: "'Stop it!' He shouted angrily."
*facepalm*
Some writers may also do this to break the monotony of the dialogue, suspecting that if they fail to mention the emotions, the format will be flat and boring, like a electronic ping pong session. But that's just the format. If the reader is engaged in the dialogue, leaving it alone turns the format into the last ten minutes of a final match between world renowned, very attractive tennis players.
How to fix it: Your dialogue and characters' body language should be the indicators of emotion, not your dialogue tags. Of course, when the meaning of the dialogue can be misconstrued, like when a character uses sarcasm, you can say so. Still, be careful about sarcasm. If a character is sarcastic by nature, then pointing out that their remarks are indeed snarky more than once is TMI. This applies to any other character attribute.
Summary: In most cases, your reader's brain will do the work for you. TMI insults the reader's brain. You want to tease the brain, not insult it. So don't give it anything it doesn't need to store in its memory and don't mention again what it has already stored, and please for the love of television, do not go into your character's toenail cleaning ritual. Just don't.
Settings
Example: Mike walked through the golden field, the smell of wheat filling his nose. The wheat made hissing noises beneath his feet as he traveled. He watched a dragonfly buzz through the azure sky before it knocked into his ear. He swatted it to no avail. The deciduous trees in the distance rustled when the wind blew. Thirty minutes later, he reached his destination.
Well, that was completely useless. Invoking the four senses before Mike is not even at his destination is a big no-no. And even worse, it's a wheat field. Two words are all that's needed to trigger the reader's memory of what the setting looks like. If Mike walked through a wheat field for thirty minutes to get to his destination, the reader can use his mental smell-o-vision to fill in the blanks without the extra "assistance."
How to fix it: For commonplace settings, if you can describe them in five words or less, do it. Your reader will figure the rest out. Don't try to channel Charles Dickens; he was paid by the word for his work, so being verbose meant he could afford dinner. You, my Internet publisher, do this for free so you have no excuse.
Besides being verbose, TMI in settings can also be redundant. The pet-peeve I shake my head at most is the phrase, "the green grass." What else is the grass supposed to look like? Purple?
How to fix that: Unless anything in the setting does not look like its default image, throw out the adjectives. If adjectives are needed, don't repeat them.
On the other hand, TMI may seem like the only way to communicate your setting. In this case, details are necessary, but may cause your explanation to be convoluted. When writing an unfamiliar setting that is heavy on visual explanation, simplicity is important. As long as there you build understandable structures as the foundation of your setting, details can be better understood. To know how to simplify your setting so that it’s recognizable to the reader, start describing it exactly the way you can’t write it--nonverbally. Draw it, map it, and/or use your hands to gesture shapes of the stuff in it. That way, you literally see in front of you what you want to tell your reader. So if you have drawn a platform like a giant sand dollar, you can be just as straightforward in your writing.
Emotions
Fleshing out emotions with TMI, specifically in dialogue, is a mistake I make most often out of habit. I commit the TMI offense when I stop relying on the dialogue to show the character's emotions, instead opting to add unneeded adjectives at the end of dialog tags ("he said, she said"), like so: "'Stop it!' He shouted angrily."
*facepalm*
Some writers may also do this to break the monotony of the dialogue, suspecting that if they fail to mention the emotions, the format will be flat and boring, like a electronic ping pong session. But that's just the format. If the reader is engaged in the dialogue, leaving it alone turns the format into the last ten minutes of a final match between world renowned, very attractive tennis players.
How to fix it: Your dialogue and characters' body language should be the indicators of emotion, not your dialogue tags. Of course, when the meaning of the dialogue can be misconstrued, like when a character uses sarcasm, you can say so. Still, be careful about sarcasm. If a character is sarcastic by nature, then pointing out that their remarks are indeed snarky more than once is TMI. This applies to any other character attribute.
Summary: In most cases, your reader's brain will do the work for you. TMI insults the reader's brain. You want to tease the brain, not insult it. So don't give it anything it doesn't need to store in its memory and don't mention again what it has already stored, and please for the love of television, do not go into your character's toenail cleaning ritual. Just don't.