In Short, The Question: As an Urban Fantasy reader, do you prefer for quick exposition at the beginning so you walk into the story almost entirely informed of the world or do you prefer for the introduction to be slow, handing out hints here and there? Or does it depend? What books have you read that you think did an excellent job of seamless exposition? As a writer, how do you tackle exposition in your own work?
The Much Longer, "Why I'm Asking This Question" Part: The first chapter of my book was workshopped in a class a few weeks ago and I was appalled by the overwhelming response of "What is this and what does it mean?" True, I use a few terms throughout the chapter that don't get explicitly explained, only hinted at in context, and I'd decided I'd trust that the reader would either put the pieces together themselves or would wait for the semi-expo-dump a chapter later. It's starting to look like I may have trusted a little too much. However, the caveat is that the people reading and critiquing the manuscript are 1. not typically UF or Fantasy readers (I've got two YA UF ones, a YA SF, and someone else writing adult UF, but the only books I know he's read are Dresden Files, which isn't a bad thing, just a limited scope if that's /all/ he's read. The rest are literary fiction with the occasional smattering of semi-magical realism and a few of them have never read a "genre" story in their lives) and 2. are required by the confines of the assignment to write "X" number of pages in response in order to get credit, so it's questionable whether their critiques are to make the work a better piece of writing or to fulfill page count requirements.
Anyway, I wanted to get some other opinions on this from people who write and read in this genre, how do you handle world-building exposition in your writing? As a reader, what's too much information and what's too little? What books do you find have done an excellent job finding the balance? While I've got my own opinions on this topic, I'm interested to find out what all of you think of it (and, true, perhaps I'm fishing for some book suggestions while I'm at it).
The Much Longer, "Why I'm Asking This Question" Part: The first chapter of my book was workshopped in a class a few weeks ago and I was appalled by the overwhelming response of "What is this and what does it mean?" True, I use a few terms throughout the chapter that don't get explicitly explained, only hinted at in context, and I'd decided I'd trust that the reader would either put the pieces together themselves or would wait for the semi-expo-dump a chapter later. It's starting to look like I may have trusted a little too much. However, the caveat is that the people reading and critiquing the manuscript are 1. not typically UF or Fantasy readers (I've got two YA UF ones, a YA SF, and someone else writing adult UF, but the only books I know he's read are Dresden Files, which isn't a bad thing, just a limited scope if that's /all/ he's read. The rest are literary fiction with the occasional smattering of semi-magical realism and a few of them have never read a "genre" story in their lives) and 2. are required by the confines of the assignment to write "X" number of pages in response in order to get credit, so it's questionable whether their critiques are to make the work a better piece of writing or to fulfill page count requirements.
Anyway, I wanted to get some other opinions on this from people who write and read in this genre, how do you handle world-building exposition in your writing? As a reader, what's too much information and what's too little? What books do you find have done an excellent job finding the balance? While I've got my own opinions on this topic, I'm interested to find out what all of you think of it (and, true, perhaps I'm fishing for some book suggestions while I'm at it).
