It Takes a Genius

[ysabetwordsmith]

I got my copy of the comic Genius #1 today, from Top Cow's 2008 Pilot Season. The rest of it lives up to the sample pages. There are some beautiful and subtle artistic renderings in there -- the watermarked equations, the chalky play-by-play diagrams, the tiny emblems tagging different narrators' speech boxes. How do you show the inner workings of a brilliant mind, through illustrations? Like this.

I'm also thrilled to discover that Genius is one of the two winners to be extended into a full series! Yay, yay! I plan to follow it. The announcement of winners is here. Here's a message from the winning creators.

Genius provides many topics for possible discussion. I want to nab one that can be generalized beyond this specific work. The pilot opens with the killing of several police officers, with no setup. Some people's life experience is that cops are the enemy -- they'll go after you because of the color of your skin or simply the neighborhood you're in. Some people's life experience is that cops are protection from the enemy. The way a story is pitched can affect the audience it attracts: some people were turned off by that opening, because it didn't establish these particular cops as especially worthy of death -- they didn't show up yelling "nigger" or shooting unarmed characters, for instance. To some readers, that would have been redundant; to others, vitally necessary.

So, from the perspective of an author, which of the following is better?

Set detailed context for what happens in a story. This may widen your fringe audience by allowing more people to connect with your work. Conversely it may annoy or bore your core audience if they feel that you're overstating the obvious. It can also slow down the action.

Set minimal context for what happens in a story, leaving much unspoken or else adding it in snippets as you go along. This allows a much faster pace and shows readers that you respect their knowledge base. However, it may limit your potential audience to people who already understand all that unspoken stuff.

Discuss.

Comments

[dianavilliers.livejournal.com]

Number 2 for me, definitely. I like the challenge presented by someone who is writing slightly above and outside my experience. I get this from authors like Neil Stephenson and Umberto Eco. Hard work sometimes, but rewarding.

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I think that's a key divergence of reader taste: whether or not you enjoy puzzling out things in a story. If you don't get all the info up front, you can ask, "Why would this happen? What's behind this?"

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I think I tend to err on the side of more context, but I can saee either working in different stories. #2 seems to be working for Genius!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I was intrigued to see, deeper in the first issue, some hints of background. Frex, Destiny's porchfront speech is a brilliant condemnation of empowered America's construction and use of Bad Neighborhoods.

Actually....

[(Anonymous)]

I tend to think that the best authors are the ones who can work the necessary context in in such a way that those who have already read it don't mind reading it again. That said, the authors who give the entire back story of the series to date over and over again get sort of irritating after a while. As for the circumstances in which a story is taking place, always give enough context so that people who aren't familiar with the place will at least be able to make a stab at what's going on. It's not offending, it's setting the stage.

Re: Actually....

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I most often aim for that kind of balance. However, sometimes it's interesting to explore the extremes. *chuckle* That's how I wound up moderating a "living room" discussion at WisCon, between Mary Doria Russell (start slow and explain everything, so mundane readers can venture into SF) and Amy Thomson (dump everyone into an alien setting in media res with no backstory for several pages, make the readers run to keep up, and devil take the hindmost). I actually appreciated both of their styles, though of the two sample books, I preferred Thomson's The Color of Distance to Russell's The Sparrow.

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

It would largely depend on whether I planned to play on the ambiguity of the unexplained events. Differing and/or shifting perceptions tend to be one of my favored playthings.

[jazzerat.livejournal.com]

I'm voting for minimal context.
One doesn't have to be a minority to grow up learning a terror of police. Take my own children as example:
I'm caucasian and so are my children. We lived in Oregon where it is completely legal to carry a gun so long as you either carry it in the open or have a concealed carry permit.
My husband and I were going out target practice shooting and took the children out to pizza on our way, before dropping them off at the grandparents. They were ages three and five at the time, both adults now.
Since our pickup didn't lock and it was illegal to hide the gun under a seat (that is concealing), my husband chose to simply wear it into the restaurant on his hip, in the holster.
We ordered, sat down and ate our pizza, with the children. We'd been there 47 minutes according to the order check. There was one slice of pizza left on the platter and everyone was just taking the last bites when to our stunned dismay, we found ourselves surrounded by policemen. They had guns cocked and loaded, trained at us and were screaming, "Put your hands on the table and don't move!!!"
The rest is a short story. He was charged with "concealed weapon". The charges were dropped but not before it cost us nearly $800 in legal fees. And my children are terrified of police to this day.
I could possibly forget having guns trained on my family, threatening to murder us for eating pizza together. I don't think I could ever forget, let alone forgive having to spend years trying to explain it to my small children. I still hear their little voices asking me, 'Mommy, why did the policemen want to kill my daddy?"

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Because when a policeman views everyone as a threat, that makes him more likely to live longer. Trouble is, treating everyone as a threat turns a lot of non-threat people into corpses ... or threats.

[jazzerat.livejournal.com]

Sounds like excuse making for using fear as an excuse for Power Over and abusive behavior.
Sadly, I am quite certain it was really about harassing the armed populace because the police want to be the only ones with weapons. Best way to maintain their Power Over status.
If it had been just me, I could forgive it. If it had been just me and my husband, I could forgive it. But not with small children present and traumatized. They made it clear there was only one threat and they wanted to make sure we knew it.

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

It's a perfect illustration of the fact that violence is almost always a poor solution to a problem. It only works for solving certain types of problem, and if you apply it elsewhere, it does more harm than good. Violence remains attractive because, as solutions go, it is relatively easy to apply; and as long as you're behind it rather than in front of it, the negative effects are more likely to hit other people than you.

The underlying causes, and potential solutions, are far more widespread and complex and challenging. They could be addressed from farther up the line, at or near the starting points; but by the time they've rolled downhill to violent expression, they're past a point where violence is going to stop them.

People tend to do what they must in order to survive. A gun is good protection. Of course other people don't want you to have one.