Backstory Backups
One real chapter and two mushballs slowly taking shape. I’ll git ’em. One page at a time.
I’m having a problem introducing characters. On one hand, I can’t introduce backstory on 10-15 characters in the first chapter, because then no action will happen. On the other, I’m finding myself writing badly when a new character enters, like:
Our cousin Bob came through the doorway. Oh crap, you don’t know who Bob is, you don’t care about him. Uh. Uh. Bob was an elephant hunter. Bob was 42 and a Lysol addict. Bob was tall. Once he bumped his head on a door. Yada Yada WAY TOO MUCH BACKSTORY ABOUT BOB.
Bob finished coming through the doorway. God that took forever.
Bob sat down next to me, tall-ly. “Got any Lysol?” SEE SEE I HAD TO TELL YOU THAT, NOW YOU GET IT.
So, yeah, that’s not very good reading. I think the answer is to drop a clue as to their existence before their entrance, then dial back the exposition and fill it in as actual action happens. And substitute backstory with action, too.
I don’t actually know what I’m doing, folks, I’ve never written a story longer than 6,000 words, and now I’m going for over ten times that. You’re watching me fake my way through it. Whee.
I so laughed at that. (Spending way too much time at the computer here) All over my manuscripts are things like: TKTHIS IS CRAP BUT I HAVE TO GET MOVING fill it in laterTK
(TK is journalistic lingo for To Kome. It doesn’t occur in English words so you can search for it easily later. )
I do this with facts, too. TK LOOK UP THE REAL NAME OF THIS TREE TK and I keep a bunch of post its around with scribbled things on them like, “who is the leader of the ute nation? pres? chief? council?”
Novels are so much bigger than short stories that it’s impossible to keep it all in your head, so we all end up with little weird tricks. Enjoy thinking yours up.
i’m just curious … i’ve got a penchant for organization and all that, but do you ever try to write out a chart/timeline/other organizational device to help structure your stories, or to get a better sense of the “big picture”? (personally, i think it’d be fun to paint the walls with chalkboard paint, and then diagram everything right there, on the wall.) 😀 keep up the great work!
ooh, I LOVE that TK thing and I’d never heard of it. Going to try it out.
LM, I definitely don’t write out anything like that. The only thing I’ve done is to write a lot of bullet points of random incidents and details that I think are going to come up in some order. This is also because I don’t write plot-heavy stories (like mystery, for example) that get too complicated. The characters are the main thing, and so I’m trying to let them wander around.
For this book I did a chapter by chapter list of bullet points that covered about the first seven chapters, and I’m already off it 🙂
interesting! i guess creativity can only endure so much organization and structure before it finds its own path. 🙂