Writers in the Storm

Margie Lawson

Writers know the cautions about backstory. I’d bet every basic how-to book for writers warns against overwhelming readers with too much backstory.

Backstory usually kills pacing.

Backstory usually kills momentum.

Backstory usually kills your chances with an agent or editor.

What is backstory?

It’s story history that the writer needs to know to build their story. Usually the reader only needs to know some of that history. Usually the reader needs to know less backstory than the writer thinks they need.

Why avoid backstory dumps and chunks?

They are invitations to skim.

A lot of readers skim backstory. They may speed-read a word in every line, skipping down to where the story picks up again.

No way you want anyone skimming any of your paragraphs. That’s why you’re reading this blog.

I came up with the sentence below when I was teaching an Immersion class in Australia last month.

She hadn't been this tired since she drove across Australia from Perth to Melbourne, trying to get there before her father died.

What does that sentence accomplish?

1. We learn that she loved her father.
2. We learn that her father is dead.
3. Deepens characterization.

Today I’m sharing one rhetorical device that works well for finessing backstory. It’s called anaphora.

Anaphora -- Repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of three or more successive phrases or sentences. The first three must be in a row.
Using Anaphora to Slip in Backstory
1. The Woods, Harlan Coben

I’ve never seen my father cry before—not when his own father died, not when my mother ran off and left us, not even when he first heard about my sister, Camille.

Deep Edit Analysis:

Anaphora: not when, not when, not even when

The reader picked up four hits of backstory in one cadence-driven sentence.

1. never seen father cry
2. not when his father died
3. not when mom ran off
4. not when he first heard about Camille

That one sentence is so smooth and empowered, there’s no temptation to skim.

It worked well, right?

2. The Last Breath, Kimberly Belle, 4-time Immersion Grad

From the moment Cal arrived on the scene—before my father was a suspect, before he signed on as my father’s attorney, even before Ella Mae’s body had been photographed and bagged and carried away—his belief in my father’s innocence has been unwavering.

Deep Edit Analysis:

Anaphora: before, before, even before

Five hits of backstory in that empowered sentence:

1. Cal went to the scene of the murder
2. Dad was a suspect
3. Cal became Dad’s attorney
4. Ella Mae was murdered.
5. Cal fully believed Dad was innocent

Wow! Look what the reader learned. Impressive.

3. Red-Headed Stepchild, Jaye Wells, USA Today Bestseller

The paragraph below is the first paragraph in the first chapter of Red-Headed Stepchild.

Jaye Wells wrote this paragraph when she was in a full day workshop I taught for Dallas Area Romance Authors in 2007. I asked all the participants to write an example of anaphora.

Digging graves is hell on a manicure, but I was taught good vampires clean up after every meal. So I ignored the chipped onyx polish. I ignored the dirt caked under my nails. I ignored my palms, rubbed raw and blistering. And when a snapping twig announced David’s arrival, I ignored him too.

Strong writing!

Deep Edit Analysis:

Anaphora: I ignored, I ignored, I ignored

Three Humor Hits:

1. Digging graves is hell on a manicure
2. good vampires clean up after every meal
3. I ignored him too

What does the reader learn in those 53 words?

1. She’s digging a grave.
2. She’s a vampire.
3. She gets manicures.
4. She’s Goth.
5. She’s been digging that grave for a while.
6. She’s not concerned about David catching her digging a grave.
7. She’s not intimidated by David.

You can tell Jaye Wells had fun writing that anaphora.

In that one short opening paragraph, Jaye Wells deepened characterization, shared a strong and fun voice, and made the reader want to read more.

4. Fear No Evil, Allison Brennan, NYT Bestseller

From Chapter 1:

Fourteen years ago she wanted the exact same thing as Lucy--to get out from under her parents’ thumb. But that was before she'd decided to become a cop.

Before she realized how truly dangerous the city could be. Before she realized that justice wasn't always swift, that the system didn't always work.

That some murders would never be solved.

Deep Edit Analysis:

1. She and Lucy both wanted to get away from their parents.
2. She’s a cop.
3. The city is dangerous.
4. Justice isn’t guaranteed.
5. Some killers may never be caught.
6. Two anaphoras: Before, before, before; that, that, that.

Strong character. Strong voice. Strong writing.

5. Blinded, Stephen White, NYT Bestseller

My Sherry? After my heart attack she couldn’t wait to get the hell out of our house. Out of town. Screw Thanksgiving, screw my rehab, screw whatever this whole thing was doing to Simon. Screw our marriage.

Screw me.

Deep Edit Analysis:

1. He had a heart attack.
2. His wife left him after he had a heart attack.
3. He’s in a cardiac rehab program.
4. He knows his heart attack and Sherry leaving has to be tough on their son Simon.
5. He knows his marriage is over.
6. He feels screwed.

Another strong voice, but oh-so-different. Stephen White shared humor and heart and the POV character’s I’m-so-screwed attitude.

BLOG GUESTS: I’m curious. What scene elements do you skim?

Do you skim backstory? Setting? Thoughts?

Share your ideas!

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Instructor: Margie Lawson

Margie Lawson—editor, international presenter—teaches writers how to use her psychologically-based editing systems and deep editing techniques to create page turners. Margie has presented over a hundred full day master classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and on cruises in the Caribbean.
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Alex Bledsoe

World building is a common concern among fantasy writers, since so much of what we do depends on the reader believing IN the setting. You can have the best story and great characters, and torpedo them all with an unconvincing and inconsistent setting. Of course, you can also go too far in the other direction, adding needless details and descriptions that bog down your prose and make the reader skip ahead to the next bit of dialogue.

I’ve written eleven novels in three very different settings: an entirely fictional fantasy world, Memphis in the year 1975, and contemporary Appalachia. It’s safe to say that, for at least some readers, all three count as brand-new unexplored territory. So the challenge in each was essentially the same: create a world that supports the story and themes without overpowering them. In other words (and to paraphrase Elmore Leonard), don’t write the parts that readers tend to skip.

Here are some helpful guidelines (not rules, because there really are no rules) that I’ve developed out of my own process.

1. Decide how your characters relate to the world. Remember how Luke Skywalker stares around the Mos Eisely cantina? It’s all new to him, and when we see it through his eyes, it’s new to us. A few scenes later, Han Solo confronts Greedo, and it’s clear that for him, there is nothing unusual about talking to a bump-headed green alien. That’s two perspectives of the same world. Both are valid, and (an important detail) both scenes tell us about the world and the characters. It’s perfectly acceptable to describe a world omnisciently, if there’s a reason for it. But it’s often more effective to show us the world through the characters, because it does the double duty of establishing both settings, and personalities.

2. Keep it as consistent as possible. Was Dr. Watson shot in the arm or the leg when he served in Afghanistan? If you read Conan Doyle, it turns out to be both, because Doyle simply didn’t remember that he’d established it one way before describing it as the other. Remember the early Star Trek episode, “The Enemy Within,” when ineffective transporters trap Sulu and his landing party on a frozen planet? Why, you might ask, did they not just send down a shuttlecraft? Because that episode was written before they had established the shuttles.

There are lots of examples of this, particularly in the wild, untamed landscape of comics. A world, generally, isn’t developed whole and in detail all at once. It’s put together as needed, often in a hurry, and occasionally with willful disregard of what’s been established (see the long history of Doctor Who). That said, consistency is certainly the goal when inventing a world, if you want your reader to believe in it. So those examples are not excuses, and any mistakes are not the fault of your editor, your beta readers, or anyone else. After all, it’s your name on the cover. So make the best effort you can to keep your world consistent within the rules you establish.

3. The smell pass. I’m going to paraphrase a story I read about, I believe, the great western painter Frederick Remington (and it’s a paraphrase because I can’t recall the source). He showed his mentor a painting he’d done of some horses tied outside a saloon at night. His teacher said, “How long have those horses been out there?”

Remington was taken aback. “I don’t know,” he answered.  “A while, I guess.”

“Well, what do you reckon those horses might leave on the ground if they’d been there a while?”

So Remington dutifully painted in the manure.  His mentor then asked, “What’s the temperature like?”

“It gets cold in the desert at night,” Remington said.  “So I suppose it’s cold.”

“Manure’s warm.  What would happen to it in the cold?”

“It would steam, I guess.”  Which he dutifully added.

The point for all us writers is to remember that there are other senses than sight and sound that define a world. One of the last revisions I make is what I call a “smell pass,” where I look for moments where the odors of a given setting might register on the characters. It could be good smells, of course; but the ones that register on us are usually the unexpected ones. It’ll test your powers of description to convey it, but when you get it right, your world will have a new, vivid dimension.

4. Don’t forget the climate. Building on the smell pass, don’t forget things like the temperature, humidity, and season. There’s a tendency in fantasy to kind of default to a perpetual spring/summer setting, or to only mention climate when things are really extreme, such as storms or droughts. But everyone checks the weather before deciding what to wear, and we all bitch about the heat, the dry, the cold, or anything that’s not a perfect sunny day. Let your characters do this as well. Decide, too, what they think about the climate: do they prefer hot or cold days? Do certain types of weather bring back memories?

5. Go for the crucial detail, not the in-depth description. This is probably the most useful single thing I’ve learned about establishing a world, and I learned it by doing it wrong many, many times. As I mentioned above, pages of gray unbroken text will just have your reader skipping ahead to the next time a character speaks; they may be fun to write, but they’re death to your pacing.

The trick, then, is to find that crucial detail that conveys much more than it states. A smell can imply its source, the description of one fallen soldier is much more immediate than trying to describe a dead army, the way a word is said can summon up the whole backstory behind it. Of course, sometimes more detailed and vivid description is necessary; but using details also draws your reader in, forcing them to engage with your story in a more active way. Horror has always understood this: the monster you can’t see is always scarier than the one you can, because your mind supplies all the detail, and it’s specific to you.

As I said, these are guidelines, not rules. For every “don’t” warning, you can find a writer who “did” successfully. Rather, these are things I try to always think about when I’m starting a new work, whether in an existing world or a brand-new one. They’ve served me well, and I hope they’re helpful to you.

What guidelines/tips do you find helpful when world building?

About Alex

Alex Bledsoe was born in west Tennessee an hour from Graceland (home of Elvis) and twenty minutes from Nutbush (birthplace of Tina Turner). He's been a reporter, photographer, legal copy editor and Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. He now lives in Wisconsin.

Find Alex online at ...

• Website
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Brandi Megan Granett

In 1999, several factors conspired that caused me to walk away from writing for a very long time: my first novel was accepted for publication, my darling daughter was born, and the publishing industry imploded.  Combining the demands of new motherhood with diminishing ability to sell books and zero support from my publisher recently acquired by a big five house left a bad taste in mouth about the whole writing business.  So I walked away.  I started homeschooling my daughter.  I taught classes about writing instead of writing.

When my daughter decided she wanted to be an archer in the Olympics or a Renaissance faire, I did what any homeschool mother worth her salt would do; I bought her a bow and took her to the local archery shop. X-Ring, to get some arrows.  When the owner, Jon Bach said with a sly grin, “You know mom, women are better than men at archery,” he had my attention.  Soon I found myself signed up for lessons and hooked on archery the way I once had been on writing.

Little did I know that archery would teach me so many valuable lessons that would lead me back to writing as well!

So What if It’s Christmas

To say I was hooked on archery was an understatement. Just as I used to dream of getting a short story in the New Yorker, I not only wanted to shoot archery, I wanted to make the Olympic team.  But instead of just dreaming about it, I trained for it.  Archery taught me that to excel you need to work—every day.  It didn’t matter if it was Christmas.  your birthday, or you were tired.  I would find myself shooting at midnight if I didn’t have the time during the day.  I shot the morning of my wedding!  When the writing bug hit me again, and I started working on Triple Love Score, I knew I needed to apply this same discipline. I set myself a target of 500 words a day and wrote every day, whether I felt like it or not.  Writing couldn’t be precious; it just needed to be done.

You Need a Team

Archery, even though it is a solo sport in most cases, benefits from a team approach.  I found such a supportive community from coaches to other archers.  Asking for advice, seeking out examples of other archers in person or online, attending seminars, and sharing knowledge I gained in return became the cornerstones of my development as an archer.  Without my tribe of archers, this sport would be damn lonely and extremely challenging; it is difficult to learn everything on your own!  Writing is no different.  This time around I found myself seeking out other writers.  I friended them on Facebook.  I attend conferences like the Key West Writing Seminar and the Yale Summer Writing Conference.  Most importantly, I joined the Tall Poppy Writers, a collective of women fiction authors who pledge to support each other through marketing and the sharing of resources and advice.  Without archery, I never would have learned the value of forging so many connections.  An archery coach I am fond of, Jim White, teaches that relationships determine results.  I can’t thank him enough for sharing this key insight with me.

Thoughts are Things

My personal coach and biggest cheerleader, Len Cardinale, teaches the powerful mantra, thoughts are things.  If you step up to the shooting line and think, “I will never hit this target,” guess what?  You just sabotaged your chances.  The same thing is true as you face a writing project.  If you look at every pitch or query and say they’ll never like this, you are just setting yourself up for failure.  In both writing and shooting, I try to keep a positive focus; after all, in both games, my thoughts are just about the only things I can control!

Sometimes You’ve Got to Put it Down

Learning when to walk away or when to start over is one of the hardest lessons I’ve faced as an archer. When an injury sidelined me, I struggled for months still trying to shoot despite the pain and frustration.  Likewise, we sometimes find ourselves writing a project that isn’t a good fit or that isn’t working.  Even though we may be 20,000 words in, it may be that the project needs a break or to be scrapped altogether.  Sometimes stepping away and coming back with fresh eyes enables us to see things in new ways, but stepping away can be extremely difficult.  After I stopped shooting and took a break, I came back and tried compound archery instead of Olympic style.  While I was afraid to try something new, the same way we are afraid to start a new writing project, I soon found myself enthralled with beginners joy.  Soon after that, I was able to apply all the things I learned as an Olympic archer to this new discipline.  As with writing, each piece of writing we do, whether it ever hits the shelves. the pages of a magazine, or someone else’s computer screen, teaches us something about writing that can help us to move on and try something new.

I have a novel I finished before Triple Love Score, called Tarnished.  This is a project I let go in order to start something new.  I don’t know if I’ll return to it, but I know that I made the right decision moving forward instead of clinging to something that wasn’t able to find a publishing home.  Sometimes in an archery tournament, you find yourself unable to get the shot to fire.  You just stand there like a statue; that was me with Tarnished.   It can be really hard to let the arrow down and start over again, but what result can you expect to have from something that is stuck and breaking down?  It is better to start again.  Don’t be afraid to let down and recompose yourself.  It isn’t failing to do that—it’s learning.

What's Your Bow and Arrow?

While I don’t think all of you are going to rush out and try archery as a way of making your writing better (though I really recommend it), I do recommend looking at the other things in your life that you enjoy or are successful at.  How did that happen?  How can you build those elements into your writing practice to get where you want to go as a writer?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!

About Brandi

Brandi Megan Granett (formerly Scollins-Mantha) is the author the newly released TRIPLE LOVE SCORE (Wyatt-Maczenie, September 1, 2016), MY INTENDED (Eagle Brook/Morrow, 2000), and CARS AND OTHER THINGS THAT GET AROUND (2014). She earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Stockton, NJ, with her husband and daughter. When she is not writing or teaching or mothering, she is honing her Olympic archery skills.

• Brandi’s Amazon Author Page
• Visit Brandi’s Website: http://www.brandigranett.com
• Connect with Brandi on Goodreads
• Huffington Post Columnist Page: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandi-megan-mantha/