There are several reasons why a fiction writer might initially deprive readers of information. The most common is that the story is being told in chronological order - the reader knows as much as the characters as they progress through the story. But there are other reasons -
- In a Whodunit the reader's not usually aware of all the past events. There are reasons why some characters keep secrets, and reasons why some other characters (who are representatives of the reader) want to know those secrets.
- There may be a delay giving information to the reader because the Point-of-View character may not consider the matter of any immediate importance. In a first-person piece, it may not pass through the character's mind that they're (say) called Sue, that they're a white woman (rather than a cat), aged 53, living on Earth (rather than Mars) in 1980 and they're childless. Such details often become clear later, indirectly.
Do such delays matter? Without an initial infodump they're hard to prevent. Sometimes the punchline of a story works by revealing that the reader's assumption about a detail is wrong (e.g. the person's actually in a wheelchair) causing the reader to re-interpret the story (ah, so that's why they never went upstairs).
First-person pieces in particular are prone to such delays. They can be irritating - rather than guess the gender, age etc (by default giving the persona their own traits), readers may suspend judgement, keeping multiple possibilities laboriously in mind. If readers guess too early and later find out they guessed incorrectly, they can lose their sense of immersion. - In some books I've recently read there's an info-dribble rather than an info-dump - at the end of chapters a new piece of biographical information is revealed. Sometimes in a first-person narrative the details are increasingly embarrassing, so it's understandable why the info was withheld. More often it comes over as an authorial ploy.
- The withheld information may be in the forefront of the main character's mind - e.g. we're told that they're on the way to a funeral, but we're not told whose; the character tells us that they've just made a huge mistake, but we're not told what.
It's a standard literary trick to add suspense, but unless it's psychologically justified (perhaps the persona's desperately suppressing the info) it feels contrived to me, an attempt to make musings into a page-turner. - Information is often withheld because at the time of writing the author considered it irrelevant. However, to the reader the information may be crucial to the understanding of the piece. If, for example, readers don't know the era/setting of a piece, how can they interpret a character's casual use of the "N" word? This contextual information is often provided from outside the text.
A key issue is whether curiosity is incited, or indeed, whether readers even know that information is missing. Some readers want to know about the characters' appearance, the location, etc, and expect to be told the details sooner or later. But not all authors think such details are necessary. Not all first-person protagonists have names.
I stayed in a thatched cottage by Corfe Castle for 2 nights, visiting 2 old pubs. At night I took a photo of the standard jigsaw puzzle view.
The castle attracts artists and photographers. It's visible from miles away. It wasn't destroyed in a battle, it was deliberately ruined ("slighted"). 
It's common for National Trust places to have secondhand books. Inside the castle walls there's this hut.
A steam train from Swanage goes to Corfe, providing further photo-opportunities. We walked to Swanage on the hills and caught the train back. More books were available at the station.
We walked from Sandbanks Ferry along to beach to Swanage, seeing this seaside bookshop. We visited Brownsea Island too (a first for me). Red squirrels live there, and Corfe Castle is visible. We caught a ferry there from Poole quay where there was a poster advertising "Drag Bingo" - another first for me.
Using my free bus pass I went to nearby Wareham. "Anglebury House" is the pub where Hardy often wrote. Anglebury is what he called Wareham in his novels. On the side of the pub is a sign banning Traction Engines.
The bookshops that impress me have "Short stories" sections. They're mostly in Dublin, though the Amnesty International shop in Cambridge and Saffron Walden's Oxfam shop have story sections. The Oxfam bookshop in Islington doesn't have one, though it has a section for "Literary Magazines" - Acumen, Pennine Platform, etc.
Blackwells in Oxford has a "poetry pamphlets" section.
"Poetry" shelves often have an "Anthologies" section. The Islington bookshop has that, and also has a section I've never seen before - "Contemporary Poetry" - which includes pamphlets and many slim volumes. It makes sense to display the spineless pamphlets in boxes - it makes browsing easier, like fingering through LPs in the olden days.
Though September's supposed to be the quietest month, there was a decent audience for headliner Sue Rose. Several of her poems were about identity, using Hebrew letters as a way to delve into her Jewish roots. Among the open-mic pieces were translations from German and Chinese. Anne Berkeley, Jane Monson and Joanne Limburg were among the readers. The supposedly nervous first timers did the longest poems again.
At Burghley House the system of bells included bells labelled "Library" and "Anti Library". I know what they mean.
I keep books/magazines hidden away in the wardrobes - sections are: Prose magazines, Prose anthologies, Short story collections (maybe the biggest section), Flash collections, Novels (8 of them), Poetry magazines, Poetry anthologies, Theory, Magazines I'm in.
Here's a rare sighting of one of my books in Waterstones, next to Christopher Logue. I saw my poetry pamphlet in an Edinburgh secondhand bookshop once.
I don't know why the Ely Oxfam shop had this label on the bookshelves - Tim's Literature Labyrinth".
I used to borrow from Cambridge University library. I miss it. It's a copyright library so in theory there are millions of books to choose from.
Fair enough, but I think circles have problematic connotations too. The word still puts off ambitious writers. To me, the word brings to mind a circle of chairs with their backs to the outside world. Artists groups have similar issues. The cliché about village Artists Circles is that they focus on portraits, landscapes, and still lifes as if Art ended at Impressionism. Members paint for themselves, and join a group so that they can paint for themselves better. Each year they exhibit their work in the village hall. When challenged, members (who aren't young) declare that they might not know much about art but they know what they like. This is an unfair description of some groups I know, but that cosiness/isolationism is always a risk with local creative groups, and difficult to reverse. The membership numbers might not decay, but the group members get ever fewer successes, and budding, prospective visitors won't come again.
I visited Glasgow a few times during the Commonwealth games. The traffic cone hat has become a Glasgow symbol. The statue where it all began is outside the Museum of Modern Art
The cone idea has spread. This is Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The clouds were there all week. Each day it rained while Cambridge baked. It rained so hard at the athletics one evening (we were in an uncovered stand) that they offered us free tickets for the next day
I saw signs of several cultures. These images of Morocco - Marrakesh/Marrakech, Rabat, Tangier, Casablanca,Fes - were nostalgic. Scottish versions of pizza included haggis. Licensed breakfasts were served from 9 am.
And there are many murals. I liked this one on Hope Street.
So another Flash Fiction Festival is over. On the way to Bristol I popped into Tewkesbury and Chelmsford, both for the first time. As ever, there was a mix of first-timers and old-hands, of barely published and heavily published authors, all happy to talk with each other. Many countries were represented. Jude Higgins and her many helpers deserve all the praise they get for organising, and for setting the tone.
The headliner Ellen Renton comes from Edinburgh with an MA in Creative Writing: Poetry from the University of East Anglia. I liked many of her pieces, including phrases like "there's no chorus to this song, or if there is, the music never reaches it". Among the open-mic contributions there was an Italian poem translated, and some poems translated from an Ethiopian language for which 2 translations are needed: one a plain translation and another conveying the deeper meanings. There was a witty, rhyming poem about bees that I liked. Overall it was one of the most interesting CB1 evenings.
I recall trying to make the kink near the top of the male figure on the right look both like a mouth and a neck
Battersea power station
2 pictures (at least one of Venice) interleaved
Bristol, traced from a photo of course
Here's a painting of the same scene
A fired maquette in the style of Henry Moore - a reclining figure
Here's where old punts end up, submerged under a bridge on Coe Fen.
The Milton society had a yearly ritual of burning Eliot's works.
The seasonal wheel is caught being half-dismantled.
A sign telling people not to park their bikes.
Until recently the engineering department still used chalk-and-talk - lots of serious maths.
A sign from the engineering department.
Another engineering department sign.
From the Zoology department. Ants communicate using body fluids.
This is "Cupid and Psyche" (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) by Jacopo del Sellaio, from about 1473. Fifteen scenes from the same story are merged together, Psyche appearing 11 times. A tree in the foreground of one scene may form the background of another.
I've seen many public artworks that are big heads. I've seen several that are faces (or masks, or even deathmasks I suppose). My favourites are like this one that I saw last weekend in Burghley gardens, with holes instead of eyes.
Here's what goes on behind the mask. Depending on the light conditions you can see another face.
This is in the middle of Krakow. It's called "Eros bound" - the face has bandages around it. Two people can put their faces in the eyeholes and be photographed.
The headline act was 
2nd May - Poet Ross Ayres, poet Philip Dunkerley, and novelist and short-story writer Helen Claire Gould, plus panel chair columnist and broadcaster Pete (Cardinal) Cox discussed some of the many self-publishing options available. The meeting was in the Art Room, which had an interesting set of drawers - I was tempted to look at the unclaimed pieces.
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
