Last week, I had trouble staying awake during the Illuminati meeting. We'd already decided the winners of the new hockey season (spoiler: not the Leafs) and had agreed it was time to change the chemtrail flavour.
While the High Muckimuck was arguing with the Lesser and Intermediate Muckimucks about the upcoming bake sale, I found myself thinking about controlling the world. Obviously.
I was thinking about how an author controls their world, and how that controlling should be done behind the scenes, out of view.
When you spend a lot of time building a world and laying out its moving parts, there's a very strong temptation to tell the readers all about it. There's an impulse to share everything you've created, to say "look at this thing I made". But unless the character is a member of the Illuminati, the moving parts of their world are invisible to them.
I've been doing some freelance editing, and have come across some manuscripts where the author gave in to the compulsion to share. The characters had the weirdest conversations, where the author shoe-horned in a discussion of their world-building. I mean, I've never once sat down to lunch with friends and discussed the foundational structure of our system of government, or reviewed the dominant creation myths of our culture. Heck, no; we save that for the Illuminati meetings.
While I give some thought to my votes for next year's Oscars, I'd also like to mention that the second book in the 'Hybrid' series, called Coreward, will be out before the end of the year.
