Critique Technique, Part 36 — “As You Know, Bob…”

Whenever characters speak, they’re transmitting information, to one or more other characters and/or to the reader. That information can be truth, lies, or something in-between; it can be emotional (a state of being or feeling) rather than factual; it can be directive (an order or warning) or informational; it can be direct or indirect; it can be any combination of these. This is nowhere near a complete list.

It can also be boring as hell.

What happens is that sometimes, with the best of intentions (or maybe just not knowing any better), an author will use a character to dump information on the reader, rather than doing it himself through narrative. No matter how it’s done, info-dumping isn’t a good technique.

This problem usually happens in one of two ways:

• Characters make speeches or give lectures;
• Characters tell each other things they already know, which is called the “as you know, Bob” problem.

Speech-Making

Now, to be clear, sometimes a character making a speech is fine. In one of my books, that happens three times. To make sure I didn’t put the reader to sleep, I broke up each speech repeatedly with one or more of these techniques:

• Interruptions by a disruptive audience member, or simply audience reaction;
• Weather or some other kind of external event interrupting the speaker; or
• The behavior of the speaker, including meaningful gestures or movement around the location.

In each case, I took what could have been long blocks of sleep-inducing monologue and turned them into active, action- and tension-filled events.

“As you know, Bob…”

Sometimes, too, it’s just fine for one character to remind another of some detail:

Alice: “Wait, didn’t Jackson have a history of going off his meds?”

Bob: “Right! How could I have forgotten that?”

Boom! Done!

But what if the conversation had started this way?

Alice: “As you know, Bob, our files contain a series of cases, from January 1982, October 1994, August 2000, and March 2004, in which Jackson went off his medications, particularly his Prozac, properly known as fluoxetine, for extended periods of time. As you further know, failure to maintain a prescribed regiment of Prozac at an appropriate dosage can result in a wide range of adverse events, including….”

Bob (and the reader): “Zzzzzzz.”

The good news, at least for you as a reviewer, is that both of these problems are easy to spot. When it comes to speeches, you’ll find long, uninterrupted blocks of monologue. I’ve seen them go on for pages. Ugh. Even if the speaker is telling a story, this isn’t the best way to do it because the story is being told second-hand. That creates an emotional distance that blunts the story’s impact.

“As you know, Bob” incidents will often involve just that phrase (unless the character’s name isn’t Bob, of course), or one much like it: “Let me tell you, Bob, in infinite and excruciating detail everything there is to know about this situation” (or piece of equipment, or whatever). That’s a nice big red flag for you.

Helping the author fix the problem may not be quite so straight-forward but is still very doable. You can:

• Ask him whether the information is really necessary right now. His first reaction is likely to be that it is, which should then lead to the discussion of how much the reader truly needs to know at that moment. The answer, 999 times out of 1,000, is a lot less. You can then discuss how he can spread out the key details and drop them into the story at the points where they’ll have the most impact.
• Discuss with her other ways to present the information.
  • In the case of the character telling a story, for example, she could shift into a flashback, so the story becomes the immediate scene.
  • In the case of Jackson going off his meds, Alice and Bob could quickly call up his data file and refresh their memories with actions and snappy back-and-forth conversation about how Jackson did something worse each time.

Note that in both of these examples, a key element of the fix is to get all of the characters in the scene active. When monologue turns into dialogue, when characters’ statements are interrupted by their revealing, contradictory, or reinforcing actions, or when the speaker’s words have an effect on his listeners, and vice versa—in other words, when the characters themselves are engaged in the story—the pace and tension will pick up and the reader will be engaged too.

When a character makes a speech or one character tells another something she already knows, it’s a good bet the author means well but just isn’t clear on the best way to present that information. You have a great chance to help make the story—and the writer—significantly better.

Questions For You

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when you run across situations like these.

• If a character is making a speech.
  • Are they doing it where making a speech, giving a sermon or lecture, etc., is natural?
    • If so, suggest how the author could break it up with actions, audience reactions, external events, etc.
    • Consider whether the speech is really necessary, or if the effect the author is trying to achieve could be accomplished in other ways. If it could, suggest them.
  • Are they doing it where it’s not natural?
    • Explain why speechifying is ineffective in that situation and suggest other ways the author could achieve the effect she wants, or why the speech might not be necessary at all.
• If a character gives an “as you know, Bob” info-dump.
  • How much of that information does the reader really need to know at that point in the story?
  • How else might Bob and that character deliver the information that is needed, and where?
  • Suggest to the author how he could pare the information down to just what’s needed, what he could do with the rest of it, and how he and his characters could keep the story moving forward.

As you know, Dear Reader, any kind of verbal info-dump, delivered by a character, runs a real risk of killing the pace of a story and causing the reader to skip ahead, or worse, stop reading. Have you seen these kinds of problems in other writers’ work? How did you help them overcome them? Go ahead: say as much as you need to in the comments box below.