: Re: What is the balance between 'stating a problem clearly' and Hemingway's literary iceberg? At a writer's critique group, one piece of feedback to me was: people didn't understand where I was

@Yeniel532

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It's very difficult as the writer to set something up in the perfect amount of detail, whether that's a twist, an exposition or even just a character description.

I once read a series of 5 novels where there was an important plot point that the main character had red hair, but because the author didn't make it explicit enough in the beginning my idea of the MC was with brown hair, and as the image was cemented in my brain right at the start it was very difficult to shift.

When writing your own story, obviously you know all the information already, and drip feeding it to the reader at the correct rate is a delicate balance. You can never really tell whether you're giving away too much information, or not enough.

You don't want to shove every bit of information that the reader needs to know right into their face, as it is not enjoyable to just be told things outright. At the same time, they don't want to have to remember every minute detail in case it becomes pertinent later in the story, and yet they want to have the option of being able to figure it out on their own.

I always refer back to Fight Club when faced with a dilemma like this. All of the information was there right from the beginning to figure out the twist, but it required putting it all together to figure it out before the reveal at the end. On a re-read, everything seems super obvious, but the problem was you missed the signs, because you didn't even realize that they were signs.

But you still need the iceberg to look like an iceberg if you're expecting the readers to understand that there is more going on beneath the surface. You can't expect readers to be shown a rock and figure out it has more to it, they need to be given a chance to know that there might be something else to it.

And of course, even if you get the details perfect, you will still come across both the very observant and really unobservant: some will feel like it's too much and others won't think that it's enough. I'm guessing that even Hemingway couldn't account for that. But if literally everyone agrees, as in your case, that there was not enough information to see it coming, I would probably throw in a little bit more.

Ultimately it comes down to a personal judgement call. Like I said at the beginning, as the writer already knowing everything beforehand, it's almost impossible to not be able to put it all together. I find that putting my work aside for a while, and coming back with fresh eyes to see if I can understand what is going on is very useful.

I feel like this answer that I gave in another question treads similar ground, but it is more about longer pieces of work, so it might be worth a read.

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