Dramatic Gaps in Prose

So, a couple of weeks ago I was under the weather, but I got better! And then the pollen hit, and I’m back to coughing like I’m sick. Other than that, I’m feeling okay, though. Finished Star Wars: Cestus Deception, and my favorite character was the snail lawyer, and presently working through Andor.

Monday, there was an event at the library about illuminated manuscripts, and we watched Secret of Kells, which is a fantastic movie. Because of that, I almost made this Note about Vikings again, but I think I have railed about them enough? I think?

This subject’s been coming for a while.

Dramatic Gaps in Prose

A couple of years ago, I re-read The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica by James A. Owen. The first book in the series is my favorite of all time, but even in that book, Owen has this habit that I find a little annoying, and incredibly annoying as the series goes on: he’ll put dramatic gaps in the writing.

Okay, so, in prose fiction, it’s fairly common for authors to have a couple of spaces between paragraphs to show a change of perspective or to illustrate that a passage of time has occurred. That’s okay, though I know some people probably feel differently. The difference here is that sometimes, no time has occurred, Owen’s just changing the subject. It’s not always bad, but…

Okay, let me give you an example. 

In Chapter Four of Here, There Be Dragons, titled ‘Avalon’, they talk about arriving on an island on the Archipelago’s border. The section ends with a quote that says, 

“I don’t know what it was originally called–the professor could have told you, John–but for the past thousand years, it has been known as Avalon.”

Then a gap in paragraphs. Like this:

And then the next paragraph tells us that they’re still some ways from Avalon itself. Now here, for fans of folklore/mythology, that’s a very cool way to end a paragraph! It tells you something new about the world while also giving the reader something to look forward to. Avalon! The magical isle from Arthurian folklore! That’s amazing, right? And yet, there’s no actual reason for this gap. If the next paragraph was them landing on Avalon, it would make more sense, because it would illustrate that some time after Bert makes this statement, they landed, and we can skip the reactions. Instead, the next paragraph, after the gap, tells us

“Aven estimated that they were still at least an hour out from Avalon…”

Which means, we’re skipping the reactions of the main characters to the revelation that they’re visiting Avalon… for nothing. He told us we’re going to Avalon, and now we’re talking about the journey. Not the characters’ reactions, not preparing to land, just that they’re still sailing there. Okay, so what? There’s no reason that you couldn’t bridge this dramatic gap with some information about how people are reacting to this news.

Still, it isn’t too bad when stuff like this happens in the first book, because the reader is being introduced to this world, and to people like me, we absolutely love when you drop a lore bomb like that on us. But the series keeps doing this as it goes on, for seven books, in which the stakes are much higher, and we’re told that the space time continuum is about to collapse. There will be a dramatic gap like that, and then we’ll pick up, presumably five minutes later, for no discernible reason.

Cassandra Clare apparently does this, too? I haven’t read her books, but I remember one of the sporkings on Impish Idea was for Mortal Instruments, and it had a count for when this came up, referring to them as commercial breaks. Sometimes the sporker would post an actual video for a commercial in the breaks of text, too, to make the point.

I’m not saying that you need every book to be a continuous wall of prose, or that you can’t put gaps between paragraphs. But this notion that every time you make a revelation, or something, you need to put a gap so that your readers can gasp about the information you’ve just given them? No. You don’t need to do that. There comes a point where you have to count on your readers being able to realize that they’re being given important information. If they’re not paying close enough attention, that’s on them.

Examples like this make me think that the writer doesn’t want to get down into the actual development of the characters or what happens next, he’d rather move to the next set piece. Which again, isn’t too bad in this first installment. Owen later released a story in this universe, “The Thin Man and the Queen of Stars”, which tells a story that’s mentioned a lot in the backstory. When it finally appears on page, it’s really short, and does this same thing, but worse: dramatic gaps after revelations, then cutting to characters having already done the work they talked about doing and instantly solving the Plot. You can imagine how rewarding that feels.

It’s not that bad in Here, There Be Dragons, but it is a problem that grows larger as the series goes on. So! Take warning! If you’re going to put a dramatic gap in your prose story, think, really thing, about whether or not that’s a good idea, if it really advances the story and moves things forward, or if it’s just something there because you can’t think of what comes immediately afterward and want to skip ahead.

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