Writing in the Goldilocks Zone

We all know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This porridge is too hot, that porridge is too cold, but the third one was just right, and so it goes with Goldilocks indulging in all the comforts of the home of the Three Bears. Setting aside the question about bears being technically advanced enough to run a household, make porridge, and acquire bear-appropriate furnishings, our takeaway from this is all about finding something that is just right - not too hot, not too cold. Odd takeaway that it may be - a better lesson might be, "Don't take things that aren't yours, especially from wild animals," - it leads me to discuss some things about moderation in writing.

There is a very common tip offered to all beginning writers - "show don't tell" - which is ingrained into our being. In short, it means we shouldn't say, "The abandoned house looked scary" or have a character say, "Wow, that abandoned house looks scary" when we have the opportunity to describe it in a scary manner, such as, "The abandoned house loomed in the evening fog, the broken windows above the main entrance staring like dark eyes gazing down as the shadowy front entrance, doors broken from their hinges, gaped open as if uttering a terrible curse upon all who gazed upon it.". Descriptions help set moods and create atmosphere. However, it is too easy to start letting all our description start walking all over the reason our readers showed up - the actual story.

Have you ever been reading a story, and at a certain point the author breaks rhythm to describe, in intimate detail, the workings of an M-16A2 rifle, the protocol for using warp engines in interstellar space, or the taxonomy of a particular breed of dragon? Sure - with a book about war, space travel, or dragons (respectively), there's valuable information to be gained from this. However, when this is done at the expense of the story, it is called exposition - the introduction of information in the middle of a story, a.k.a. an infodump. This is too much information in one large chunk, and often a curse upon most works. However, the opposite of this is just the assumption that everyone just knows that the M16A2 was only adopted in 1983 as a response to the lessons learned from the M16A1's use in Vietnam, or that warp engines should be limited in use once the craft reached a solar system's heliopause, or that the scales of a blue dragon do not conduct electricity. We need to find our "just right" space where characters show these aspects without telling them to each other in dialogue infodumps, and the reader deduces through actions and verbal cues all of this info. Balance is necessary to keep the flow of the story continuing.

Another need for moderation comes with dialogue. As I have mentioned before, plenty of our spoken words are grammatically imperfect, our spoken sentences incomplete and fragmented, and our trains of thought often sidetracked. To write dialogue accurately turns out to be a messy affair, and often makes people sound far less literate than they actually are. However, if dialogue is written to grammatic perfection, it doesn't sound right. It sounds rigid, stilted, and frankly all the characters start sounding the same because nobody really speaks that much differently than the other." Moderation cleans this up to where a little stuttering, one character using works such as "like" and "kinda" and "y'all" suddenly makes all the difference. We need to moderate our writing between the perfect and the good.

So, where is the ideal point of moderation? Well, that's why we write - we experiment, we discover, and we bring new ideas to the table. Try out different styles, run sections past other readers, and listen to how other people discuss certain subjects. We only find out through trial and error whether the porridge is too hot or too cold, which often means putting your writing out there for others to critique. Then and only then will you find your feel for what is "just right."

And hopefully you do not get torn apart by bears, who are at their core, wild animals that will kill you and eat you without a concern about your opinion about their porridge.