>Elmore Leonard wrote a well known list of 10 writing fundamentals. One of them was "Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip."
>
>http://melodygodfred.com/2011/04/12/elmore-leonards-rules-for-writing/

The rules in art are there to be broken or simply ignored by those who know what they're doing and have some idea why. These rules are all to be respected if you want to write like that guy Paige Turner :), but if you strictly stick to all of them, you're writing airport literature. If something has to be explained, well, take your time and do it - find a proper place and way in the story where to insert it - but don't omit it because it's a thick wad of prose.

A perfect example - I'm just re-reading Stevenson's "Snow crash", and he's actually got lengthy passages where the backstory is detailed... but it's done in episodes where the protagonist (named Protagonist :) hooks into his pocket machine and inquires his librarian (app) about what he's getting himself into. These episodes happen at his place (which is described, in some detail, as rented storage space), or when he's being transported (just hooks in when someone else drives) or when he's stranded on a dinghy. The physical descriptions abound too, it's just that they are apportioned in chunks - we get to know as much as the writer thinks we need to, when he thinks it's necessary. The main female character - we get to know she's a thin 15-year old, but the color of her hair comes to sight only after 2nd third of the book.

About the case at hand, it's not that Bajoran politics could be avoided - it's an essential part of the plot. It's the amount of time devoted to it, and I agree with Craig there. The episodes where Kira goes down to the planet and spends time rolling her thumbs, waiting to see this or that guy, were plain fillers and should have been zipped or even zapped. I'd rather prefer that something interesting would happen at Quark's during the time. And it's not even the rural setting that makes it boring (I'm spending some time in one regularly now, and it isn't boring), it's that they simply don't do anything there, just sit/walk and talk. Even some shed building would be better.

>>>DS9 spent too much time on Bajoran politics.
>>
>>If I had to debug it, I'd take those slow parts out.
>>
>>>>Probably the reason I couldn't watch TOS... tried a few times, didn't take.
>>>>
>>>>DS9, however, is almost serious. And has the prerogatives of a true SF work as much as a TV series can.