The Curse of Knowledge (and why it hits SFF writers hard)
You probably know the feeling. You finish a scene and read it back to yourself, and it all makes perfect sense. Your geography is clear, the magic system fires smoothly, and your protagonist’s motivation is obvious.
But the dream ends when your friend reads the passage and says they had no idea what was going on.
Welcome to the ‘Curse of Knowledge.’ If you write speculative fiction, that curse already lives in your manuscript. You just can’t see it (and that’s the curse part).
What is it?
The term has been borrowed from economics rather than from writing. People were asked to tap out a well-known song, such as Happy Birthday. (No words, just their finger tapping a table). The tapper was asked to guess how often listeners would guess the tune.
The tappers predicted around 50% would guess correctly. The actual hit rate was 2.5%.
The tappers could hear the melody in their heads, but the listeners only heard a set of taps. Those tapping away couldn’t unhear the melody, and couldn’t realise how little they were communicating.
That’s the Curse of Knowledge. Once you know something, it can be tricky to imagine not knowing it.
Why this spells trouble for SFF writers
Imagine you’re writing non-SFF fiction, and you say a character wanders into a kitchen. Your reader can fill in the gaps, and their picture of a kitchen will be similar to yours. Countertops, an oven, a sink, and maybe a window beside the sink. Your scene and the reader’s vision marry up.
Now imagine you’re writing speculative fiction. If you say your character wanders into a preparatory chamber, your reader can’t imagine anything. You’ve created a blank space and derailed your story.
Frank Herbert knew his world of Dune deeply; so deeply he added a glossary at his book’s end. Some readers struggle to get through Dune’s opening chapters because the book assumes readers will know what’s going on with the spice and the Great Houses. The novel ultimately works brilliantly, but that early friction is the Curse of Knowledge at work.
Tolkien is a counterexample. The Professor had mapped out entire languages, genealogies, and mythologies before publishing The Lord of the Rings. But the novel works because Tolkien held most of that material back. We can feel the depth, but we don’t drown in it. We’re exposed to the background data on a need-to-know basis, and critically, Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth feels a lot bigger than the story. That’s a great backdrop for any piece of speculative fiction.
The Curse of Knowledge isn’t just about info-dumps, though. A skilled writer can choose what to give and what to include. N. K. Jemisin in her The Fifth Season gives enough for readers to follow the action, but also leaves readers with work to do.
Jemisin drops us into her world with almost no hand-holding. Words like ‘orogeny’ and ‘comm’ appear without definitions. The Stillness is mentioned, but not explained. Readers will be slightly off balance and will need to piece everything together.
But that confusion is deliberate. Our author controls what is clear and what isn’t. The world-building is mysterious, but all emotions are clear. We know what Essun feels, even when her world is chaotic.
Jemisin avoids the Curse of Knowledge; she knows what to withhold. She controls the confusion and creates a world where the characters face unparalleled challenges. A writer under the Curse would not know their readers were confused.
Four Ways to Fight the Curse
Here are four tools you can use to avoid this Curse.
- Leave the draft unread for at least two weeks. You won’t completely forget what you know of the scene, but the emotional side will have faded. And that fading can let any gaps show. Re-read your scene. Does any part of it confuse you? If so, suspect the Curse of Knowledge.
- Read your work aloud, or have someone else read it aloud (and that someone can be a computer). Hearing it read aloud can force you to process it sentence by sentence, as a reader would. Do you struggle to make sense of the scene? Do you find yourself mentally inserting information that isn’t on the page? If yes, the Curse of Knowledge is present.
- Ask your beta readers (or friends reading your work) the right questions. Avoid bland queries like ‘Did you like it?’ Veer towards probing questions such as ‘Tell me what’s happening in this scene’ or ‘Describe this room to me.’ If there’s a gap between your imagination and their words, you’ve found the Curse. This goes double for action scenes. Spatial confusion is a common problem in battles or escapes. It’s also a serious problem for world-building passages. You often accidentally assume the reader already understands how things work.
- Ask yourself one question during every editing pass you do. What do I know about this scene that isn’t on the page? The answer will often be ‘rather a lot’, and that may well be fine. Not everything needs to be stated. But make sure you’re deliberate when you’re withholding a piece of information. Have a reason for including or excluding a setting or a clue.
And there’s good news.
The Curse of Knowledge isn’t a talent problem. It’s a craft issue. And craft can be learned.
Do you struggle with world-building clarity? If so, The World Builder Workout was written to tackle this issue. It gives you a structured system for deciding what your reader needs to know and when. No more guessing.
Are your action sequences giving you trouble? Does your geography go fuzzy and do your readers lose track? The Battle Blueprint walks you through a step-by-step system for making everything clear.
Those two guides, and the four steps I mentioned above, will catch most of the Curse. The Curse can only win if you don’t know it’s there.
This guide lets you find it.
Kevin Elliott
Writer’s Secret Toolkit
