Here I am talking about back story again. I know you're sick of it. I am too, but I'm still alittle confused. I'm reading two books and both of them are so sparse that I'm having a difficult time staying interested. There's an art to dropping tidbits of info into our stories. These two authors aren't dropping anything anywhere and I'm finding it annoying.
I don't require a lot of back story to stay interested in a good book, but geeze-louise, give me enough that the chapters make sense!
It's suddenly dawned on me that these days--this modern world of publishing technology, the ebooks/POD publishers/self-pubbing/short story apps, etc ... anything goes.
ANYTHING!
There must be 999 ways to write a book. With back story or without. With one character or twenty-one. All dialogue or ... all narrative. Or graphics only.
The most important thing we have to do is find an editor that likes our writing. That's the key. That's the answer. Put that on a little yellow sticky note and slap it on your computer. Write your book the way you want to write it then find an editor who loves it. They'll tell you what's wrong and if there's too much back story. Ultimately, the editor is the last word.
Next month I'm going to NaNoWrMo with the rest of the world. My novel is outlined and I plan to sit down and follow that outline. I'll get my usual 100 pages before I experience the Thanksgiving Crash. I'd love to make the 50,000 words goal but it hasn't happened yet. Turkey day always gets in the way. At least I'll have 100 pages of something new.
So, just out of curiosity, are you planning to Nano this year? If so, I'm registered as Jessy. Look me up and let's encourage each other.
BTW, do you know Jane Friedman? She's a columnist for Writer's Digest. Now go HERE and read the dirty secret behind writing advice.
4 comments:
You stole the geeze-louise thing from me! I know you did!
I won't be doing NANO. I've kind of wanted to but usually have too many other projects going. I'll check out the WD link.
I've given up on NaNo. November just isn't a good month for me. The first five days belong to my mom, and the last week and a half belong to my husband and family. Which leaves me roughly fifteen days to write a 50K-word novel. No can do.
Good luck to you, though! Let me know how you do.
I will be shadowing the NaNo thing this year, since I won't be starting a new project on Nov. 1st.
And you're right, there are at least a zillion ways to write a book.
Robert Parker's Appaloosa was a revelation to me on how to show, don't tell, and how to keep to a minimum the backstory but sprinkle it in as needed.
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