Posts Tagged With: creative-writing

There are dozens of articles online about “how” and “when” to use backstory.

In addition, some will say never use backstory.

Huh?  

I’ve read enough manuscripts and novels and nonfiction books over my many years of teaching and coaching writers to know there is definitely a time to use backstory, and that can be anywhere you need it! Including page one. (Gasp, I know. So be it.)

What matters is that information about the past ENGAGES the reader and helps underpin or make believable what’s unfolding on the page.

Revered authors such as James Lee Burke will use backstory on the first page and ensuing pages to set up a novel or character. (See The New Iberia Blues.)

Other authors will feed readers backstory via a nugget or sentence at a time throughout a novel.

Still other authors bring in backstory information at the famous and common “Fatal Flaw” areas of the Midpoint Crisis and/or the Climax/Resolution. I agree that those are important places where backstory fits well and is usually accepted well by readers. Backstory can fill in the “why” of things happening.

As a writing coach, I say this:  Anything can be edited. If bringing in backstory on page one or any page helps you “feel” the story or “find” it, use backstory. Later, you can pare it back, move it, edit it for style, or drop it.

Don’t let “rules” and “advice” about backstory make you pause too much.

Keep your creativity cooking. Sometimes using backstory to “find our story” is helpful in early drafts.

Sometimes action for the sake of action is so dry as to be a “pass” by readers who might also be your agent or publisher. A car chase on page one is a ho-hum affair unless we have a hint as to why this may be important to somebody. Are these drivers old friends? Enemies? Why? Sometimes one pithy sentence about the mysterious backstory will make us laugh or gasp and turn the page. I don’t mind that sort of sneaky backstory. And of course sometimes that sort of thing isn’t backstory but just a needed fact. Don’t agonize over its label; keep writing the story!

It’s true backstory can stop the story’s plot progression if the writer gets sidetracked with it or over-writes. Be judicious.

Backstory is a tool. Much of it might go where its name implies:  in the “back” of the story. Or no place at all. You choose.

If backstory gets you into your story and it helps you find your “voice,” go for it.

Write. Okay? Just write. Find the story.

Anything can be edited and changed.

Critique partners, workshop buddies, professional editors, beta readers can help you gauge your usage of backstory.

Keep writing and enjoying the journey.

At a recent library presentation I showed attendees my very messy notebook page (8.5×11 inches) scribbled with the beginnings of a new novel plot. The entire novel was on that messy page.

I had scrawled a line across the 11 inches and added marks to represent the must-haves in structure:  three acts and Midpoint Crisis. White space on that notebook page contained scribbles of characters and names, relationships to the suspect, a possible motive, places for bad deeds, and notes about possible serious actions.

That messiness is familiar to most writers.

Now transfer “being messy” to your key characters. Characters who get themselves into a mess and then get out of it are the stuff of great stories.

As soon as we see a messy situation on a page or in a movie, we’re hooked. How will the character get out of the MESS?

Messiness gets you out of a rut with a dull character or plot or chapter.

Messes lure us. Messes mean multiple issues or problems happen at once or are compounded.

It takes work to create character and plot messiness and resolve messes, but we live messy lives and we love witnessing how characters get out of messes.

The best writers in all genres create a character in the middle of a mess of some sort from the start and add to it certainly at the Midpoint Crisis and Climax.

A story might start without a mess, but readers seem to want to see a mess unfold within only a few paragraphs or pages. Give us a mess as the hook, then even more of a mess for your cliffhanger.

Here’s an example of revising for messiness:

Consider the classic scene:  A driver with an urgent need to get to a hospital to see a buddy has to suddenly stop for cows or sheep crossing a road. You could have your character wait (maybe even impatiently) and your character gets around the sheep and zooms onward to the hospital to visit their friend.

Boring. Seen it before.

What if you revised for messiness? Give readers more entertainment that will sell your book or script.

A mess is more than just pausing for sheep. Messiness is created by a series of problems and decisions that often go wrong quickly.

As an example of a revision, the scene is now a sequence of scenes:  Your character stops for the sheep, but this time is more impatient so your character decides to turn around and take a different road, BUT that delivers him to an encampment with people who steal his car and take his shoes and phone. THEN, he decides to walk a certain direction and that’s a mistake and he becomes filthy, and then he hitches a ride with a minister who is late for a funeral so NOW your character has to ride along before getting shoes from the church donation box and FINALLY your character in a hurry begs for a ride in the now-empty hearse and gets an interesting driver in the bargain to give him a ride to the hospital.

Messiness gives us a glimpse of how DETERMINED your character and YOU can be.

Messiness is usually more ENTERTAINING and SELLABLE than the opposite of it.

That’s a good notion. With multiple interpretations of course.

Writers who are introverts may already be running away from this post. Wait!

This post is not about us as people, but about how to IMPROVE our WRITING in general to impress readers.

How do you inject personality without going too far?

I recently attended an in-person conference where not only the agent panel talked about “looking for personality” in your query and writing, but panels of authors, contest judges, poets, and others boiled things down to “personality.”

Personality sells. It’s a tool to improve your writing project, even making it seem easier or more satisfying for you.

Even social media are important. Agents said they look at social media to see if you are “lifting up people” with your messaging versus otherwise.

Let’s stick with personality in the writing project in this post.

We know we shouldn’t be dull. Let’s get more helpful for techniques you can apply right now.

The dictionary gives small clues. “Personality” means the PATTERNS and the QUALITY of the behavior as expressed by physical and mental activities and attitudes. Right there you have a handy list of several things to use to develop a new character or to massage a character that isn’t yet capturing reader attention.

The conference “horror workshop” gave another clue for building better personality in all types of stories. Horror relies on EMPATHY for the character. That’s true of any type of story, whether romance, thrillers, general fiction or even memoirs. How soon do we learn three important things about your character that will draw us into the story? I advise writers strive to have those three things on page one or somehow hinted there.

At this conference keynoter Christina Clancy said she works on “personality” in her prose in other ways.

“You always remember the vibe of a book even if you forget the story.”

Wow. VIBE. What is the vibe your pages are giving off to readers?

Again—what is the personality?

Clancy also mentioned a practical technique: When you get stuck on page 72, go back and think about why you wanted to write the story.

Her advice holds true for poems or anything—remember why you started your project in the first place. Re-capture your vibe—the PERSONALITY you so loved in the beginning.

In the picture book workshop, the same sentiment came out this way:  “Lean into your weird.”

Figure out what makes your project WEIRD in the sense that it’s truly YOU. Is it the character? Structure? Voice? Word choice? Emotion? Action? Objects? Your weird makes you unique and worthy to readers.

Our own personality drives our writing. “Remember in the middle you are OPTIMISTIC,” Clancy said. “Editing is an act of optimism.”

A conference poetry session gave us this exercise, and it’s a good one for a writer OR YOUR CHARACTER to complete.

“I knew I was ____________________when __________________.”

My character knew X when…?

I knew I was a writer when…

…When I was inspired to add more PERSONALITY to my writing.

(The conference referred to is an annual autumn one sponsored by Wisconsin Writers Association.)