: Re: How can I convince my reader that I will not use a certain trope? Imagine a fantasy story in which there once was a very powerful evil divine being, but it was defeated long before the beginning

@Jennifer354

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It seems you need to come out as an omniscient, reliable narrator and directly tell your audience the fact you want them to have no doubt about. One, often problematic, way to do this is in a prologue. But there are many more ways.

A compelling example that comes to my mind, to highlight the general principle, even though I don't think you could easily make it work for your specific example, is including a map in a story. Imagine you don't have a map, and your characters are talking about some lost, ancient city, which is in the middle of a vast desert, surrounded by literally thousands of miles of wasteland on all sides. Now the readers would have to assess whether this information is in fact accurate, or whether the characters are poorly informed, or exaggerating. Then you add the map, and you clearly show that this is literally true.

You might include a fable in the story itself about how the evil baddie was permanently destroyed, and then add artwork, which you then give titles as an omniscient, reliable narrator, showing the truth of the fable.

Or you could include a few lines at the top of each chapter, with comments about your world, clearly told by you, as an omniscient, reliable narrator. You could perhaps take a couple of chapters to establish the pattern: first you give an interesting factoid about a geographic feature, then some other worldbuilding, then by chapter 3 (presumably still early on in the story) you find an interesting way to point out the big evil baddie is truly, irrevocably done in.

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