Weather: Spring is here! Oh glory be! Spent the day driving
around the Bay of Fundy. Been there a few times... never seen high tide, so,
from my perspective, it's one huge mudflat.
Ah, the trials of writing interesting background. Actually, I love background. I love reading, love writing it. I love navel gazing and introspection. Internal angst is fascinating. But that is me.
When I read a book, I am happy to let things develop slowly. I always let an author work at her own speed. Of course, there has to be some payoff. Say lovely prose or a passage that sings to me. Even if the book is proving to be less than I had envisioned, I hang in there hoping the writer will redeem himself.
But I get that I'm not everyone and that most people like forward motion.
This penchant of mine makes it a little difficult for me to sort out my own background writing.
Here's the story...
Seven very different people face a crisis that drives them to a support group. As they work through their stuff, another crisis happens at the group which acts as a catalyst for each person in a different way.
So, as the story opens we meet the individuals on the day of their crisis. Seven very short chapters. Lots of action. Then I have written seven more short chapters giving the lead up to crisis day. And then we get to group session one....
What I'm wondering is if seven short chapters of background is going to bog down the story too much. Each chapter is about four pages long. So, in 28 pages we get a good sense of the person.
I'm personally fine with it, but understand that others may not be.
Here are two alternatives....
- Use the background to lead up to the crisis and combine each character's first and second chapters into one. They will still be only about eight pages long. The disadvantage to this is that we lose all that nice action up front.
- The background bits can be intermingled in with the group sessions. I think I prefer this method as it'll offer a dimension to the sessions that is lacking.
Any thoughts? Other suggestions?
How do you handle background?
C
3 comments:
Hi Colleen,
What you're doing there falls out of what I'm currently comfortable doing with my own writing, but I have certainly read and enjoyed works with that many pov characters. The most recent that I can think of is the full, extended version of Stephen King's THE STAND. That one is something like 1200 pages long, and the first 150 or so bounce between even more than 7 characters, all of whom are tied together by the plague that is sweeping the planet. What keeps it interested is the fact that, in all of the viewpoints, you are still learning more about the plague, and there is the feeling of coming gradually closer to something horrible and yet fascinating.
As author Beverly Swerling told me, however, background can ONLY be introduced into a story in small bits, and as it moves the story forward. In THE STAND, this “background” at the start of the story was actually largely not background at all, but just an early start to those characters’ stories. It’s a subtle distinction, but I think that the difference is that true background has no connection to the current plot, while what King did was just a slow-but-interesting way of moving into his characters’ lives.
In the one other book that I have so far read by King, THE SHINING, he did something similar at the start with his three main characters. Essentially, through psychic revelations about what is to come, he makes it clear that something horrible is coming, and also that these character’s selves are at the very core of how that plays out. So then we watch his background, not with boredom, but with fascination to see the keys in their past that will lead to this future event. Everything is connected, and is important.
Presumably you aren’t writing horror, but that hardly matters. There still has to be some sort of driving force that will keep modern readers reading, and that’s the same no matter what the genre these days (as you alluded to). Take it from my own stack of rejections for a well written start of a novel that your first work has to not only be well written, but also somehow gripping or strongly intriguing on the very first page. The rules are different for first-time novelists and established authors with a following. Readers will give those established authors that bit of leeway that you mention, but they never seem that forgiving for someone they don’t already trust as a good storyteller to some degree.
I think that the way you are starting your particular novel sounds like it will be challenging to pull off well, but feasible. I think that to do it well will require some foreshadowing of what is to come at their main meeting, or at least will require you to tie each character’s experience together tightly so that the events don’t just seem random. And consider this: I don’t know what kind of a support group this is, but if all the characters’ experiences are too similar to one another, the latter ones will not be interesting, but will be repetitive. You can only do this if each of the seven chapters adds something new. Otherwise, I’d cut out the ones that are repetitive, and just focus on the remaining characters.
It sounds like you are putting together a character study, and those can be very interesting. The challenge is to remember not to sound to preachy when you have an agenda (being subtle and leading people to form their own conclusions is so much more effective in anything but religious fiction), and to keep it interesting if the characters you are studying are too similar. Each of your main characters has to be unique, not only in their own character, but also to some degree in how their situations unfold.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents, my thoughts. I obviously haven’t read anything from your ms, so I can’t speak too intelligently to it. But from your description, these issues are what comes to mind. It sounds like you are taking a challenging avenue for your first book, but that’s the way great things are born. Just don’t be afraid to revise, rethink, expand, and cut if your first draft isn’t quite as gripping as you hope. It sounds like that’s what you’re worried about, and it’s generally good to trust your gut.
But your central concept sounds intriguing, so I’ll be very interested to hear more about that in the future!
Chris
Wow, that was longer than I thought. Sorry about that! I tend to be verbose. :)
Cheers,
Chris
Hey Chris
Wow, thanks so much for the thoughts. It's great to be reminded of a few key things. 1) the difference between background and early plot development (if I can call it that). Mine would be better characterized as the latter rather than the former. Your words of caution regarding character and tone are important. I think I'm okay from the character perspective (although once I put the MS aside for a few weeks and return to it with a fresh eye, we'll see how that opinion stands) but I'm less confident of the message/preachiness of certain bits. For example. when the social worker speaks, as she is the facilitator for the sessions, I have to watch that she doesn't sound too lecture-y. I have to make sure that I downplay her role and allow the other characters to be heard.
I loved The Stand and The Shining. Great stories.
And that's one of the things I have to determine.... if what I'm writing makes a good story or not.
Thanks again for your input.
Colleen
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