: Re: What's the rule on revealing something to the audience, but not the characters? This is a common problem I have writing fantasy. Most of the trouble comes from revealing a monster, but for

@Kevin153

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The answer to this depends on your narrative point of view. If you are writing 1st person, or 3rd person close, you want the reader to experience the world as the character does. So you don't want to describe the monster in ways that the character wouldn't have access to, because it would move the reader out of the character's head. On the other hand, if you're writing 3rd person omniscient, you'll most often describe the monster directly to the readers in terms they'll understand.

The key here is understanding what function your descriptions are serving. For close perspective, the objective is to make the reader identify with the character's experience. Using terms like "minotaur" will not help with that goal (unless minotaurs are something the character actually is familiar with). But if the perspective is omniscient, you're trying to give the reader the big picture perspective, watching from the outside.

If you're trying to give the inside view, and it's getting clunky and awkward, or repetitive, consider that might just be a symptom of a deeper problem. Maybe you don't need to give a play-by-play of every battle after all. If it's not interesting to describe it from the character's point of view, maybe you just need to skip over it.

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