Crafting Your Best Story - Writing Tip #17 - Back Story, Flashbacks and Foreshadowing

Back story is the story that happened before your story starts. As the writer, it’s good to know the history of your characters--what brought them to the place they are now, and how those events have shaped them as characters.

But what you don’t want to do is give the reader all that information up front. This is an error that many beginning writers make. There’s a belief that if you don’t tell me everything about the character and what led up to “where they are now at the beginning of the story”, that somehow I, the reader, won’t “get it.”

A story that is front loaded with back story is boring. If you need the back story to be part of the story, then start your story at the beginning of the “back story.”

Think of back story like salt. You shake a bit on your story as you go along to add flavor. Too much in any given spot ruins the taste.

Let’s look at CLOCKWISE. I start the story when Casey is fifteen, watching a football practice at the school. Every thing before that is back story. How would the opening have worked if I’d spent the first chapter explaining when she started time traveling and how often it happens, and that she accidentally took her best friend back once, all before she jumped and caught the ball? Snoozeville. It’s all interesting information that needs to be told, but sprinkled throughout the story.

Or with TWILIGHT, Edward could’ve sat Bella down and explained the whole history of his life and the vampire clan in the first chapter, just so she’d really understand what she was getting into, but that would’ve made for a dull story.

Likewise with HARRY POTTER. If JK Rowling had started the first book with Voldemort killing his parents and leaving the scar on his forehead as a baby, that would’ve probably been interesting to read, but then we’d have ten years of his life to go through before being called to Hogwarts, and that wouldn’t have been so interesting.

Flashbacks should be avoided. Stories are interesting because they are happening to the character as we read it. Reading about something that has already happened, not so much. It takes a lot of skill as a writer to sustain tension and suspense while writing about something that has already happened (and obviously the character having the flashback is okay.)

Foreshadowing is an important writing tool. You’ve probably heard it said that if a gun shows up in chapter three, it better go off sometime before the end of the book. Likewise, if you want the reader to believe that your character would do something courageous at the climax of the book, you need to show him being courageous in the beginning. In my book PLAYING WITH MATCHES, I wanted one unlikely character to do something heroic that would cost him his life. He wasn’t the hero type but I knew I needed show him facing a fear, so I had him accomplish a scary test of bravery he had to perform for his Hitler Youth group.

In TWILIGHT, we hear about the bear attacks at the sport shop (Mike’s, I believe), before we know for sure it wasn’t the bears.

Foreshadowing is important to help the reader suspend disbelief when the twist happens.

Any questions about the above points? Let me know in the comments.

Crafting Your Best Story - Writing Tip#16 - Chapters & Scenes

If you’ve ever read a book you’ll know that a novel is a series of scenes strung together to make the whole. These scenes are often grouped together to make chapters. So how does a writer know how many scenes to include in any given chapter? How long should a chapter be? What should be in it? If you’re like me, you kind of just go by your gut. I think the chapter should end here. Or here. Or maybe here.  But maybe I should add some more—is it long enough? Or maybe it’s too long? Or????

I had an epiphany a while ago on how to write a chapter. I’m not saying it’s an original idea, just that it was the first time I’d thought about it. It came while reading The Art & Craft of the Short Story by Rick DeMarinis, while simultaneously reading The Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Here’s the epiphany: Chapters are short stories.

A short story is a fictional telling that runs between 500 and 2500 words.  It has a beginning a middle and an end. The beginning, as Rick DeMarinis teaches, drops the reader into a situation that has a history. A chapter has a history (unless it’s the first chapter). The history lies in all the chapters previous, and also in things the writer knows about the back story of the character and situation. And according to DeMarinis, the ending has to illuminate all that has gone on before.

I couldn’t really encapsulate what he had to say about the middle but I’ll say that the middle is comprised of well crafted tension, conflict and detail that propels the reader to the ending.

As mentioned, I happened to be reading The Atonement at the same time, and it occurred to me that McEwan’s chapters are exceptionally well written short stories. When strung together they made a bestselling novel. I took this approach to chapter writing while working on my latest wip. With each new chapter I’d think about the character involved and what was to happen. Like any good short story it must have a creative, intriguing opening line. The middle must be rich with detail and build tension. It can’t have a limp ending.

The beginning of a chapter must hook and the middle go “up hill.” The difference in a chapter ending and a short story ending (or novel ending, unless you want a cliff-hanger), is that you want to stop at the top of the hill, at the height of the tension, if you want to the reader to turn the page and start reading the next chapter.

One chapter ends and the next begins at the top of the bell curve.

I came across this graph from the crafty writer, who drew this to illustrate how to write short stories. I think it works to illustrate how to write chapters as well. 

She describes short stories as a slice of life that when strung together make the whole life story, or in our case, the whole novel.

Of course there will be some story styles when short, more dramatic chapters work, but this is a good principle to keep in mind when crafting scenes and chapters.

How about you? Do you have your own approach to chapter writing?

Crafting Your Best Story - Writing Tip #15 - It's All in the Details

Details make the difference. When I make a second, third, fourth, etc pass on my ms, I'm always on the look out on how I can add details to add dimension. Details are what help to keep our characters and settings from appearing flat and two dimensional.

To demonstrate I'll use THE CAY as an example, re-writing the first two paragraphs here, first without the details, and then again with the details the author, Theodore Taylor, provided.

Like sharks that swim in the sea, the German submarines arrived at night.

I was asleep in our house in Willemstad, on the island of Curacao, the largest of the Dutch island just off the coast of Venezuela. I remember that, in February 1942, they attacked the Lago oil refinery on Aruba, the island west of us. Then they blew up our lake tankers, the ones that still bring crude oil from Lake Maracaibo to the refinery, Curacaoshe Petroleum Maatschappij, to be made into gasoline, kerosene, and  diesel oil.  One sub was even sighted off Willemstad at dawn.

You get the picture--you can envision this, right? The scene is set accurately. But the author wasn't satisfied with just accuracy. He wanted to paint a picture. He wanted to add depth. So he wrote this:

Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness of the sea, the German submarines arrived at  in the middle of the night.

I was asleep on the second floor of our narrow, gabled green in our house in Willemstad, on the island of Curacao, the largest of the Dutch island just off the coast of Venezuela. I remember that on that moonless night  in February 1942, they attacked the big Lago oil refinery on Aruba, the island west of us. Then they blew up our small lake tankers, the ones that still bring crude oil from Lake Maracaibo to the refinery, Curacaoshe Petroleum Maatschappij, to be made into gasoline, kerosene, and  diesel oil.  One sub was even sighted off Willemstad at dawn.

 This version as found in the book tells us all the same things the first version did, but the details added entice the reader, helping him or her to really see it and want to read on.

Here is a scene from THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX with the details removed.

I wonder how Lily knows a priest in a mission so far from Boston. We reach the end of the cemetery and come to the wall of the church that borders it. Lily pulls open a wooden door, and  we slip inside. My eyes adjust and I see a domed ceiling and then a crucified figure. Christ. Yes, Christ. I remember. 

Now as the author, Mary E Pearson, wrote it:

I wonder how Lily knows a priest in an ancient mission so far from Boston. We reach the end of the cemetery and come to the great wall of the church that borders it. Lily pulls open yet another large wooden door, and this time we slip inside into cool blackness and the sweet smell of burning candles, mustiness and age. My eyes adjust and I see a domed painted ceiling and then a guilded crucified figure. Christ. Yes, Christ. I remember. 

Ms Pearson's use of detail in this passage not only permits us to fully see/smell/taste the setting, it enlists our emotions--we feel Jenna's emotional process of remembering.

Please note that I'm not saying you should just add a bunch of adjectives and adverbs to your text, though some of those may be useful. The point is to create depth and emotion by adding worthy details--details that enhance the writing, not bog it down.

Stay tuned for next week's post on Chapter and Scenes.