Urban fantasy & character bloat

Through a chain of recommendation coincidences that aren't particularly important to my point, I just topped up on the library's collection of Ilona Andrews's Kate Daniels series, one of which was a novella in Hexed, which is a sampler collection of novellas out of four different urban fantasy universes. And having finished the Ilona Andrews story, I tried reading the others, and didn't get more than a few chapters in to any of them. The last one was all written in present tense narration, and the other two were variants on just too much series backstory/worldbuilding crammed into a quarter of a paperback. (The Ilona Andrews story had some of that too, but a) it wasn't as much, possibly by virtue of being light on minor characters with lots of series backstory, and b) I could skim all that, since I've already read the series.)

swan_tower had a post a while back about failure modes of many-book epic fantasy which included a bit on character bloat: in that context, it's mostly the two-fold problem of slotting in hordes of minor characters for POV bit parts, and then getting attached to some of them enough that you then need to expand to follow up on what happens to them, diverting the narrative from where it was otherwise supposed to be going.

The intersection between these things has got me contemplating character bloat as a function of the urban fantasy-style series.* What I see is this: you begin with your loner narrator. S/he has a few ongoing relationships and some worldbuilding knowledge, all of which get summed up as they become relevant, which is the normal course of things. But by several books into the series, the important characters have accumulated a great deal of complicated back-story which gets info-dumped in far too little space, even when their changing status isn't in any way relevant to the story being told. And then various minor characters get a line or two of back-story intro to remind the continuing reader of their previous adventures or alert the new reader that there were such.

There's some justification for continuing reader cues and a little orientation for someone starting in the middle. And there's a certain amount of realism to the idea that as you spend time in a certain context you accumulate history with the other people associated with that context, be it social circle or work contacts or just geographic closeness. But there's the proverbial fine line between (say) explaining that you're bringing your competent young werewolf employee along vs recounting the backstory of his previous relationships with you and how he used to be gorgeous and why he isn't anymore when none of these things are in any way related to the story you're currently trying to tell. Multiply that by seven or eight characters, plus a few places or organizations and your worldbuilding recap, and that's a sizeable chunk of not-story taking up space. Worse yet, an impatient reader will find it either redundant or extraneous, depending on whether they're familiar with the information already.

I'm also wondering about this in audio-visual media (and I'm going even more out of my depth here, as I've really never watched TV and rarely do movies either.) No unifying thoughts, but two points:

a) Does the character re-intro info dump happen in long-running TV series? Or are we assumed to get it from context & remember based on visual cues. The visual aspect does remove a little of the burden of name-recognition from the viewer; in a world where you've build up a lot of minor characters there's always the difficulty of ensuring the reader remembers which one you're talking about.

b) There's a franchise version of character bloat-- working cameos of episode 4-6 characters into the earlier Star Wars movies, for instance-- that seems like sort of a mid-way point between this and the epic fantasy version. Still extraneous, but by virtue of being a movie it doesn't take up as much room as the roaming POV problems.

----
*Disclaimer: this is not my genre. I've read half a book of the boy-type Dresden files, Laurel K Hamilton's Anita Blake up to the book about Edward's past (after which I gave up in disgust b/c the woman couldn't make up her mind what she wanted from life; also that was over a decade ago), the first of Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye books (which didn't irritate me, but I haven't gotten back to them, either) and the Kate Daniels books up to Gunmetal Magic. Oh, and most of Raymond Chandler, which is a bit of a godfather to Dresden at least, and which I seem to remember doing better by this particular complaint. I've also read a bunch of things other people had to say about UF, but if I'm wildly overgeneralizing, do please say.

Urban fantasy & character bloat

Through a chain of recommendation coincidences that aren't particularly important to my point, I just topped up on the library's collection of Ilona Andrews's Kate Daniels series, one of which was a novella in Hexed, which is a sampler collection of novellas out of four different urban fantasy universes. And having finished the Ilona Andrews story, I tried reading the others, and didn't get more than a few chapters in to any of them. The last one was all written in present tense narration, and the other two were variants on just too much series backstory/worldbuilding crammed into a quarter of a paperback. (The Ilona Andrews story had some of that too, but a) it wasn't as much, possibly by virtue of being light on minor characters with lots of series backstory, and b) I could skim all that, since I've already read the series.)

swan_tower had a post a while back about failure modes of many-book epic fantasy which included a bit on character bloat: in that context, it's mostly the two-fold problem of slotting in hordes of minor characters for POV bit parts, and then getting attached to some of them enough that you then need to expand to follow up on what happens to them, diverting the narrative from where it was otherwise supposed to be going.

The intersection between these things has got me contemplating character bloat as a function of the urban fantasy-style series.* What I see is this: you begin with your loner narrator. S/he has a few ongoing relationships and some worldbuilding knowledge, all of which get summed up as they become relevant, which is the normal course of things. But by several books into the series, the important characters have accumulated a great deal of complicated back-story which gets info-dumped in far too little space, even when their changing status isn't in any way relevant to the story being told. And then various minor characters get a line or two of back-story intro to remind the continuing reader of their previous adventures or alert the new reader that there were such.

There's some justification for continuing reader cues and a little orientation for someone starting in the middle. And there's a certain amount of realism to the idea that as you spend time in a certain context you accumulate history with the other people associated with that context, be it social circle or work contacts or just geographic closeness. But there's the proverbial fine line between (say) explaining that you're bringing your competent young werewolf employee along vs recounting the backstory of his previous relationships with you and how he used to be gorgeous and why he isn't anymore when none of these things are in any way related to the story you're currently trying to tell. Multiply that by seven or eight characters, plus a few places or organizations and your worldbuilding recap, and that's a sizeable chunk of not-story taking up space. Worse yet, an impatient reader will find it either redundant or extraneous, depending on whether they're familiar with the information already.

I'm also wondering about this in audio-visual media (and I'm going even more out of my depth here, as I've really never watched TV and rarely do movies either.) No unifying thoughts, but two points:

a) Does the character re-intro info dump happen in long-running TV series? Or are we assumed to get it from context & remember based on visual cues. The visual aspect does remove a little of the burden of name-recognition from the viewer; in a world where you've build up a lot of minor characters there's always the difficulty of ensuring the reader remembers which one you're talking about.

b) There's a franchise version of character bloat-- working cameos of episode 4-6 characters into the earlier Star Wars movies, for instance-- that seems like sort of a mid-way point between this and the epic fantasy version. Still extraneous, but by virtue of being a movie it doesn't take up as much room as the roaming POV problems.

----
*Disclaimer: this is not my genre. I've read half a book of the boy-type Dresden files, Laurel K Hamilton's Anita Blake up to the book about Edward's past (after which I gave up in disgust b/c the woman couldn't make up her mind what she wanted from life; also that was over a decade ago), the first of Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye books (which didn't irritate me, but I haven't gotten back to them, either) and the Kate Daniels books up to Gunmetal Magic. Oh, and most of Raymond Chandler, which is a bit of a godfather to Dresden at least, and which I seem to remember doing better by this particular complaint. I've also read a bunch of things other people had to say about UF, but if I'm wildly overgeneralizing, do please say.

Xposty from dreamwidth.

the elderberry bush is finally happy with life, and now it is eating the bird feeder

*We moved the crib into the Megatherium's very own room on Sunday (and lowered it so she won't be able to get out on her own until she's got both standing up and climbing covered) which is working just fine so far. She has also got her very own ceiling fan, with rocket ships on. This is very exciting. Well, except for the evening of waking up and sort-of-fussing until I got up & staggered into sight at which point she went right back to sleep.

*Current failure mode seems to be that I'm fine, up until something weird and minor happens, and then I'm completely unable to cope.

*Yesterday's something that happened involved our mortgage holder being run by mad computer overlords who recently deployed a new system which appears to search the internet for ways to "helpfully" update your account info to an address and phone number that is 15 years out of date. Best guess is that they also broke the account password, which would be why we discovered this. Still waiting on the appraisal, but I'm starting to think it'll be worth refinancing even if it comes out too low for the rate we want, just to switch to a saner bank. Ugh. (ETA: appraisal=SUCCESS!!! Yay!)

*I remember hearing people make in-passing comments about not wanting to join the SFWA due to [sketchiness of some sort] years ago-- does anybody know if this was a precursor to the current nonsense, or something else? I need another pro-rate sale before this is particularly relevant to my life, but I'm curious how many kinds of worms this can contains.

*My mother is now sending me garden porn: Insect "hotels", from which I wandered off and now regret our high water table and the fact that there's no good place on the property for one of these. I want the one with the music studio, only with more plants. Also maybe a house built into a hill (but with dormer windows for cross breezes) or maybe just a building like the gorgeous stone church on the way to the library. Oh well.

*As of last weekend, I own more firearms than grauwulf. (This is not hard: half my grandfather's antique pistol collection (3 guns), plus a black powder pistol reproduction that my mother didn't want to keep in the house.) None of them take ammo that's been manufactured within my lifetime, so MD doesn't appear to care that I have them, though grauwulf looked them up and their credentials are somewhat impressive. Also two of the three antiques aren't functional. I'm ok with this; they're going on the wall somewhere, as people (sadly) tend to get upset if one uses such things as costume pieces.

*This baby makes the most ridiculous noises. Hee. She's also learned to corkscrew by rolling from her back to side to back again. There will be no more leaving her unattended on the couch.

the elderberry bush is finally happy with life, and now it is eating the bird feeder

*We moved the crib into the Megatherium's very own room on Sunday (and lowered it so she won't be able to get out on her own until she's got both standing up and climbing covered) which is working just fine so far. She has also got her very own ceiling fan, with rocket ships on. This is very exciting. Well, except for the evening of waking up and sort-of-fussing until I got up & staggered into sight at which point she went right back to sleep.

*Current failure mode seems to be that I'm fine, up until something weird and minor happens, and then I'm completely unable to cope.

*Yesterday's something that happened involved our mortgage holder being run by mad computer overlords who recently deployed a new system which appears to search the internet for ways to "helpfully" update your account info to an address and phone number that is 15 years out of date. Best guess is that they also broke the account password, which would be why we discovered this. Still waiting on the appraisal, but I'm starting to think it'll be worth refinancing even if it comes out too low for the rate we want, just to switch to a saner bank. Ugh. (ETA: appraisal=SUCCESS!!! Yay!)

*I remember hearing people make in-passing comments about not wanting to join the SFWA due to [sketchiness of some sort] years ago-- does anybody know if this was a precursor to the current nonsense, or something else? I need another pro-rate sale before this is particularly relevant to my life, but I'm curious how many kinds of worms this can contains.

*My mother is now sending me garden porn: Insect "hotels", from which I wandered off and now regret our high water table and the fact that there's no good place on the property for one of these. I want the one with the music studio, only with more plants. Also maybe a house built into a hill (but with dormer windows for cross breezes) or maybe just a building like the gorgeous stone church on the way to the library. Oh well.

*As of last weekend, I own more firearms than grauwulf. (This is not hard: half my grandfather's antique pistol collection (3 guns), plus a black powder pistol reproduction that my mother didn't want to keep in the house.) None of them take ammo that's been manufactured within my lifetime, so MD doesn't appear to care that I have them, though grauwulf looked them up and their credentials are somewhat impressive. Also two of the three antiques aren't functional. I'm ok with this; they're going on the wall somewhere, as people (sadly) tend to get upset if one uses such things as costume pieces.

*This baby makes the most ridiculous noises. Hee. She's also learned to corkscrew by rolling from her back to side to back again. There will be no more leaving her unattended on the couch.

Xposty from dreamwidth.