/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19008152]

I need help carrying a piece of omitted exposition through a story. I want to research this through google, but I'm having trouble even finding like a trope name for this, so you don't have to spoonfeed me; just a name is fine.
I need my characters to occasionally reference, vaguely, The Bad Thing that happened to a character who dies because of it, without ever actually explaining what The Bad Thing was. It's not rape, but the character dies because of it, so it's clearly still fucked up.
Eventually, towards the end of the story, a relative of the "victim" takes revenge for it. The revenge does lots of damage to property, should come as a surprise to the reader and by the end of the story feel at least somewhat justified. The thing is, it's really important to me and the "tone" I'm going for, that I never explain what the original bad thing was.
It's mostly written already, but I don't have an editor, so I can't know if the lack of exposition on The Bad Thing is frustrating or makes the revenge insufficiently satisfying.
I'm sure this "omitted exposition" trope has a name, but I don't know what it is! I'd love to not have to bother y'all about this if I just knew what to googlefu. But, if you've read this and want to go a step further, I'm happy to take advice or book recommendations where this is done well. I want to do as much research on this as I can to really nail it, I just have to know what to look for.

[Anonymous No.19008297]

>>19008152
reference it through a date, or a place.

[Anonymous No.19008326]

>>19008152
>it's really important to me and the "tone" I'm going for, that I never explain what the original bad thing was

[Anonymous No.19008438]

Name the event (standard in sci fi)
Replace with symbolic stand-in (magical realism, surrealism)
Literally have characters say they can’t name it, but let them talk about how it felt in great detail (several murakami books; often combined with symbolic stand-in)

[Anonymous No.19008474]

>>19008152
Thinking of things as tropes generally yields unsatisfactory results, you have a problem, you need a solution, not a trope. You have two common ways of dealing with such vagueness, you either incite the readers imagination about it or you make into something which the reader project what ever bad thing they want onto it. The former is usually accomplished by showing the outcome and or information/misinformation, so you can start the novel with the death or the funeral and never mention it beyond that, let the characters fill in the gaps through how they deal with it. The latter is accomplished by only giving information about it which is vague and can apply to many different bad things.

[Anonymous No.19008521]

>>19008326
Not op but go fuck yourself you miserable piece of shit. You’ll never make friends if you project onto people like that

[Anonymous No.19008644]

>>19008297
I've referenced it through how people feel, but I didn't ever use a place; I'm grateful you suggested that. I think at least one or two references to where would be great. Thanks.
>>19008474
Thanks for the advice. I don't disagree about tropes, but the term was convenient for 4chan's confrontational, breakneck speed, and would serve as a jumping board for me to novels that use it. Tropes are convenient for exactly what I need right now: a way to describe an idea so I can research it.
You actually got pretty close to what I did. It's about a week after the death when the story starts. The first scene is fairly noisy with characters meeting each other and trying to be at their best, but it's clearly in the air. I have one reference in the scene, with the relative, but the victim isn't named, and then the bad thing doesn't come up again directly until the revenge.
I do have other characters reference how the group, and especially the relative, is feeling, including once by the relative themself making a bitter smile when asked. The smile is the only reaction I give from them on the subject, it's the main foreshadow for the revenge, and otherwise the narrator only ever makes them seem like they're handling the loss well. It's tough to find a balance between giving a breadcrumb to the revenge but not telegraph it.
>>19008438
I try to bring up how people felt about it a few times because that seemed useful to acknowledge it happened and gives the reader more information about my characters, but I also want to avoid melodrama, so I don't let those parts of conversations go on too long.
I've only read Kafka on the Shore and it made me dizzy. I've been told that was a bad first book of his to read and would be an unfair first impression of his. Can you recommend a second of his to read? It doesn't even have to necessarily have this omitted exposition problem, but cool if it does.
>>19008521
I respect you.

[Anonymous No.19008661]

I literally can't think of an example but I guess pull fiction did it with the briefcase. Sorry, I'm too midwit.

[Anonymous No.19008785]

>>19008644
>You actually got pretty close to what I did.
Ok, then I would say you need to avoid even mentioning the bad thing in anyway, just show it through the characters actions and thoughts, their loss and anger. Don't make the revenge explicit, just leave the trail of breadcrumbs so the reader can put the pieces together, have the person seeking revenge obsess, mainly show their evolution from what they were into what they became. So you can have the revenger become increasingly angry and consumed by other bad things, a story on the news, something someone tells them about something they saw etc, this will keep the bad thing vague and allow you to avoid mentioning it but give the reader a trail to follow. Show, don't tell being the cliche. Make every encounter the reader has with the revenge seeker demonstrate their growing obsession in some way, even if it is a tiny hint, have it cause them to become isolated from the other characters which removes any anchor they had to stability allowing them to feed into their own anger.

I think you would be better served by researching actual cases of revenge than tropes, do a search for something like "true crime novel revenge," should yield some results. Learn about how it actually works in real life.

[Anonymous No.19008853]

>>19008785
>Make every encounter the reader has with the revenge seeker demonstrate their growing obsession in some way
I have two scenes that have nothing to do with The Bad Thing that clearly show the relative setting up for the damage she causes. They're made to look like she's setting up for what is essentially religious fireworks for a specific upcoming yearly event, it's a mundane setup and that she's done it before and is good at it. Then she burns the village down.
>I think you would be better served by researching actual cases of revenge than tropes
Again, I don't care about tropes; I used that word so you would understand what I'm looking for and so I can find stories that use the idea.
My question is really about revenge where the spark is never actually explained. I've definitely made revenge a focus of my reading of late in pursuit of this, but if I can laser-focus on this specific kind of revenge, I thought it would be a better use of my research time.
I will say that I hadn't looked into real world revenge so much, more revenge in fiction done well, and I feel kind of silly about that. That'll be a focus for me now, assuming I can't find any specific examples of this trope to read on, anyway. Good advice, again.

[Anonymous No.19008898]

>>19008853
>Again, I don't care about tropes;
I know, I was pointing out that you were asking the wrong question. Finding a trope that you can search for will result in a great deal of garbage to sift through because most results for a trope will be things that fit nicely into that trope, not things that handle the topic well and give good insight into how you can deal with it.

[Anonymous No.19008955]

>>19008898
Alright, I think I understand what you mean, now. Although, at this point I seem to be having enough trouble finding this idea that any trope on the subject would have so few examples as to include any or all of the good ones!

[Anonymous No.19008976]

>>19008152
>I need help carrying a piece of omitted exposition through a story. I want to research this through google, but I'm having trouble even finding like a trope name for this, so you don't have to spoonfeed me; just a name is fine.
I need my characters to occasionally reference, vaguely, The Bad Thing that happened to a character who dies because of it, without ever actually explaining what The Bad Thing was

Closest I can think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

[Anonymous No.19009146]

>>19008955
Researching through tropes will not add depth or make things more realistic even if you do not want to use the trope explicitly, they are a simplification. Learning to ask the right questions is the key to research which starts with identifying the problems. Your issue with how to be vague stems from not knowing what you can be vague about, not the vagueness itself, you need to understand the topic more so you can identify what is important and what is not, the trope will not help you with that. Once you understand the topic better you will be able to ask more fruitful questions regarding the vagueness itself, if needed.

[Anonymous No.19009236]

What's wrong with just vague language?

>when *it* happened
>that day...
>what happened with Johnny
>these things

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouKnowTheOne
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTropeWithoutATitle
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoNameGiven

[Anonymous No.19009302]

>>19009236
>What's wrong with just vague language?
Because it's actually more complicated than I'm letting on, and I thought this conversation would be more useful to me (and more likely to produce examples) if I left some of the detail out. Details such as the narrator being the dead character, so they can't be referred to by name.
I'm grateful for the links.

[Anonymous No.19009379]

>>19009302
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadManWriting
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadAllAlong

that does make it different. i'm not sure what to say without seeing a concrete example of a passage you are stuck on.

[Anonymous No.19009550]

>>19009379
Well, the narrator being dead isn't really something I'm having trouble with selling to the reader. I'm happy with how it's revealed and when. I've tried hard to make it my own thing and not just something I've read from another book (or seen in a movie..) and I think it'll be satisfying.
The topic, and my insecurity, is directed at the act of revenge by the relative. I want her setting up the revenge, making sure most of the village are at the ceremony out of town, and executing it when everyone can see it all come off as sufficiently well foreshadowed without being expected. But vastly more important than even the revenge foreshadowing, however, is that by the end of the story the reader sympathizes with the relative for what she did even if they don't agree. I want the reader left in that narrow, satisfying grey space but not know explicitly how the narrator died/was killed.
So we're talking about two (admittedly inextricably linked) reveals, the narrator being dead and the motivation for burning down the village, but I'm only really concerned about my execution of one of them. It's why I really did appreciate the advice about researching real world revenge; that's a good lead for me.
I'm already going deep on this, so: she burns the village down because she blames the people of the village. The issue is I specifically don't want to say why she blames the village, because that would mean explaining how the sister died. I absolutely will not mention this in this story. And that's my problem: I can't tell if I've left the reader frustrated or confused by this motivation not being explained.
If there's still interest in this, I can go over what the reader does and doesn't know until after the village burns and then after the culprit is found, if you think knowing would help you help me, but I'm already very appreciative of the advice and links, so thanks to everyone so far.

[Anonymous No.19009576]

>>19008152
Don't know the name, but do read the beginning of the Anna Livia chapter in Finnegans Wake.

[Anonymous No.19009605]

>>19009550
is the motivation never explained at all? even after the burning and reveal that the narrator is dead? that does sound potentially frustrating.

thinking about this scenario i can imagine time skipping could be used to hide things. you could also change narrators at certain points, like in pedro paramo. those are big structural changes though, nothing easy and simple.

[Anonymous No.19009695]

>>19009576
I read Finnegans Wake in highschool twenty something years ago, I can't recall what you might be referring to off the top of my head, but I suppose such a good book is worth rereading now that I'm far more emotionally mature. I won't even pretend I understood it at the time; the way it used English was vastly more complex than I was capable of handling. But so was anything by Melville and now he's my favorite author, so..
I'll make it a point to read it again soon. Thanks.
>>19009605
>is the motivation never explained at all?
Affirmative, it's never explained. When the reader learns "S" was who burned down the village, they also learn it was because she blames the village for "M" dying - but not why. Learning it was because of M's death is also the reader learning M is dead at all. M already knows, she doesn't feel the need to mention it. I don't hide that S blames the village, it is explicitly stated by her, I just don't explain why.
>you could also change narrators at certain points
So, the story does have another narrator. They aren't used as much. It's the antagonist of the story, and I give them the limelight when they're not with the rest of the group as a two-birds stone to explain where they were and also help endear the reader to them somewhat by hearing their thoughts and motivations.
I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't read Pedro Paramo and this is kind of a callout for me, so I'll get on that soon. It does sound relevant to the conversation going off the synopsis, though! Whose narration are you suggesting I switch to, and how would I skip time? Right now the antagonist narration is sort of a time skip, because each time it happens it's right after he returns to the group, but I don't have any in media res or anything like that.

[Anonymous No.19009710]

>>19009695 (Me)
Actually strictly speaking I suppose I do have in media res by skipping over M's death (the "start"), I forgot that narrative style doesn't only mean things being rearranged, and I should have just said that.

[Anonymous No.19009803]

>>19009695
>Affirmative, it's never explained.

[Anonymous No.19009835]

>>19009695
skip time just by doing that. skip. move from before the town is burned, to after, and again, maybe even before the town is formed. voices to switch to...anyone involved, the murdered, the avenger, the murderer, the murderer's wife, the innocents who died with the town

i'm thinking a lot about pedro paramo here, so just read that. if that style is useful to you, you will know it. it's a very short novella.

[Anonymous No.19009847]

>>19009835
I'll do that this week, thanks.

[Anonymous No.19010153]

I'm not left wanting, but I likely won't get to see the topic again before the archive without a bump as I'm about to clock out for the night, so here's one last bump with a thank you to all who chimed in.

[Anonymous No.19011575]

Cask of Amontillado by Poe does this. The narrator seeks revenge for "the bad thing," although it is implied that "the bad thing" was either petty in nature, or completely imagined by the narrator to justify him seeking his "revenge." Very effective at maintaining an extremely uncomfortable tone throughout the work. Read it if you haven't already, its a fairly short story.