Jami said about Theresa's great post:
Thank you for this post. My question is - how can a writer tell when they've put the "right amount" of information in? Since I know the whole story, it's hard for me to know if I'm including enough information for the reader to draw conclusions. I want my story to have to make the reader think things through and not just spoon-feed it to them, but how do you find that happy medium?
I feel like I've been going back and forth on a teeter-totter with this issue in my WIP. Take for, example, facial expressions. In real life, you can't know why someone makes the facial expressions that they do, so I often try not to include an explanation. I'll state that the POV character notices someone's eyes narrowing, but I don't say "in anger" or "in confusion", etc. But feedback readers have told me to add more to that to explain why the other character is doing something. To me, that seems out-of-POV and spells things out too much. Is my approach right, wrong, or just confusing? :)
I know you're going to tell me that to have that deft balance of revealing/concealing, it takes a skill or talent or experience or something that I just don't have yet, but any pointers would be helpful. :)
Jami, I'd suggest thinking about how the narrator/POV character interprets this... esp. if the interpretation is wrong. Let's say she sees that he's turned away from the sight of the body, and she jumps to the conclusion that he's grossed out by the blood (a perfectly sensible interpretation). But in fact, though the POV character can't know it now, it's guilt that is making him turn away.
That is, she can interpret the body language or expression, but HOW she interprets it should tell more about her (she's always giving people the benefit of the doubt, or she's really proud that she's tough and doesn't have to turn away from the gore, maybe) than it tells about the "target" character.
The point of POV is to reveal what this viewpoint character sees, but more important, how this POV character feels and thinks about what she perceives. This way you get both-- the narration of the world around her, which the reader can make use of, and also the thought/feeling that reveals more about the narrator.
What do you think? It's a pretty subtle way of adding another layer of characterization... but also I think draws the reader in and makes the reader work a bit-- "Okay, that's one interpretation of what he's doing, but..."