So, it’s sort of like a puzzle.
You want to convey the information that your protag was, let’s say, orphaned at the age of seven and inherited a vast fortune. How do you do it?
TRICK QUESTION.
You do not want to convey information, you want to create curiosity and emotion and feelings of connection to the protag through the art of visual storytelling.
But how? How will anyone know what your story is about if you don’t tell them this incredibly important fact about your protag in the first ten pages?
TRICK QUESTION.
No one wants you to tell them. They want to see it and wonder about it and experience it. So. Do the work. Imagine a scene that will convey your protag’s state of mind, the state of his heart.
There are so many ways to go at it. Is he at a benefit, and the bad guy coerces him into a public speech, of which he is phobic, because “It’s what your parents would have wanted,”?
Is he sweating over a Habitat for Humanity project he’s really bad at, and the director pulls him aside and gently insinuates he should just write a big check before he hurts someone?
I don’t know. It’s your story, but I can absolutely guarantee that if you show me a reporter on a TV screen saying “Mr. Pro Tag, who was orphaned at seven years of age by a tragic air disaster and inherited over fifty billion dollars…” or, the ever popular, “Hey, Pro, remember when we were at your parents’ funeral and you inherited fifty billion dollars?” that this is how I will handle it.
