Allusion Versus Specificity

As I’ve started working on a new novel, my first in several years, I’m remembering a few challenges that writers always run in to.  First, how much description do you give versus how much do you leave to the reader’s imagination?  Second, how much do you reveal versus how much you elude to.

Let me tackle the first one first since it’s the easiest to put into words.

There are certain elements that are concrete when we read a story, but how much of that is from description, and how much of that is from what we as readers fill in?  When I envision a starship, for example, I have a specific picture of what it looks like, and that image stays intact in my mind unless the writer gives a specific description of his or her own.  The same goes for all kinds of stuff, from rumpled old professors to plasma rifles.  That said, imagining everything can be exhausting.  I want to fill in gaps rather than start from scratch(otherwise, why am I getting the story from the writer instead of just creating my own?).  Striking this balance is a lot harder than I remembered, and it leads to several drafts before I’m satisfied.  Above all, it requires patience, which isn’t one of my strong suits.

The second question is a bit more stark – how specifically do you reference the rules of the world in which the story is set?  In my newest novel, a sci-fi/fantasy mashup, magic is governed by a definite set of rules.  I could make the story so much easier by just laying them out, perhaps on a piece of parchment tacked to the wall of a wizard or something.  However, letting the reader discover them during the story, more through what is and what isn’t done, has greater potential.  It grants tension to the story, and it leaves open the possibility of adding or adjusting, in accordance with consistency, as things unfold.  It also requires me as the writer to trust my readers to figure them out.

The problem with laying them out straightaway is that it removes the mystery and lets trolls nit-pick about following them.  But the temptation to not doing so leaves open the garden of rules and allows for the potential to grow wild and out of control.  I think I’m going to stick with alluding to them, but, as above, that’s going to require patience, which I’m almost never good at.  I have those rules written, and I find myself wondering if the story will allow all of them to come out, and if not, is that good thing or a bad thing?

Enough of my rambling.  Basically, this stream-of-consciousness is about the dilemmas writers face when telling a story, and I’m working through it as I type.  Maybe it makes sense to you; maybe it doesn’t.  I guess I’ll let the story decide.