Backstory

I have been wrestling for some time now with the issue of backstory. Where to put it, when to put it and how much to put it.

Backstory kills the action and should be used sparingly, I'm told. Spread it throughout the story, I'm told. Only about two paragraphs of backstory at a time, I'm told.

But then, I read something by some famous author and there are big chunks of backstory, often at the beginning of a novel. Case in point, THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER (Putnam, 1997) by Jack Higgins. The entire first chapter, some 23 pages long, is backstory.

Now, love the book and, frankly, the first chapter is one of my favorite parts. But why is Higgins exempt from the "use backstory sparingly" rule and I am not.

I know. That is a stupid question. He is a rich famous author and I'm . . . well, uh, not a rich famous author. He gets a pass on that rule and probably many others as well. This is not where I go on about 'life's not fair.' If it were fair, I would perhaps be a bestselling author and no one would have ever heard of teenage sensation Justin Bieber. (I'm not hatin', I'm just sayin'.)

What I am saying, however, is that it is hard catching a break when the rules I'm expected to play by can be such moving targets. There are whole sections of my first novel, FIGHTING CHAOS, I will have to cut if I ever hope to sell it. (The whole book needs another total re-write, as I have said before, but that is a subject for another day.) They are sections rich with funny, moving detail, and they flesh out the characters and establish them more as three dimensional people.

That is my complaint for the day. Backstory. I have a cold and have been in bed most of the day and I guess I just felt like whining. So there you have it. I'm going back to bed.

But you get back to work! And thanks for reading.

POV

Until the last handful of years when I seriously took up writing fiction, I never gave much thought to point of view. As a journalist, most of my writing has been in third-person. Whether at a news conference or witnessing events as they unfolded, I was like a fly on the wall. I observed and wrote what I heard or observed but not as a participant.

There have been exceptions, of course.

Besides the editorials I wrote for The Philadelphia Tribune (for which I won a couple of awards, thank you very much), my writing career includes a handful of first-person articles about experiences I had, including two I had at racing school. But my favorite first-person article was while I worked for United Press International. It was about an experiment at the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia.

Using only paper, Popsicle sticks, string, glue and other materials found around the kitchen, a group of us, including an 11-year-old boy named Noah, had 15 minutes to construct something that would hold an egg and protect it from breaking when dropped from 12 feet onto some bricks. I felt particularly competitive toward Noah, though he was only one-third my age, and when I wrote the article I proudly announced to the world that I succeeded where most failed (though Noah wasn't one of them).

I have always felt most comfortable as a writer using a third-person POV. But as a reader, I generally don't care. In fact, I don't think most readers care. Or at least I don't think most readers who aren't writers actually care or even notice. So when other writers in my critique group say I sometimes switch POV when in third-person, I don't see it. I don't understand. It seems consistent throughout to me.

Then yesterday, I bell went off in my head and for the first time I got what other writers were talking about. I was reading James King's BILL WARRINGTON'S LAST CHANCE, which I have praised in the past and suggest you read. I was aware of whose head the writer in mind from chapter to chapter, and I noticed its consistency and when and why it changed.

James' writing is wonderful, descriptive and, it turns out, instructive.

I think I am going to stick with first-person narrative in my fiction for a while. It is challenging for me but also easier to keep consistent. So the next time I change POV, it will be with knowledge of forethought.

I've learned something. Thanks James.

And thanks to all of you for reading. Now go write something and don't give up.

Fan mail

Having a reader write or call to say they enjoyed your work is, I have found, one of the truly wonderful things about writing. I write with the reader in mind but first reader I work to please is always me. After that, I hope I connect with someone else. As I work, I am never sure.

I have gotten some very positive comments on my short story "The Missing CD" which is in BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD, which was published in June. And yes, most of the comments have come from people I know. But I have gotten a couple of e-mails from out of the blue.

I got an e-mail just today from someone who asked me about a detail in the story. It involved the storage room where Speedway Museum officials keep the vehicles that are not displayed on the museum floor.

I told her I wrote what little I knew about that aspect of the museum, which I had researched, and I made up the rest. That is why it is called fiction.

I don't know what I will do when I have a novel published and I start getting some mail that is not so positive. Probably what I have always done as a reporter: Thank the reader and not let their comments get to me.

We will see. But for now, I am enjoying what little fan mail I get.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Killing them softly . . .

I was reading an interview with Mary Higgins Clark over the weekend and was reminded of something I love to do. I love to kill off people I don't like. Or hurt them badly.

She said, "Don't hold a grudge! Instead, make the guy who was mean to you the victim in your next book." (Writer's Digest, Sept. 2010)

I do that. And I tell people to do that.

Of my victims, my favorite is a guy whom I don't truly dislike but who made my professional life difficult for a number of years. He was my boss' boss. He was unpredictable, often rude, inconsiderate, stubborn and controlling. (And a number of other bad things I won't get into.)

In my second novel, I had him bashed in the head with a heavy object and killed. It was so much fun and the best part was he wasn't killed for all the obvious reasons. He was killed because his assailant was a bigger bad-ass (and was crazier) than my victim was.

I started my current novel, AN UNTIDY AFFAIR, with a person I didn't like. I didn't have an idea for the book but I remembered this woman who was a real piece of work and I constructed a novel around that fact. She was a rude, pretentious, uppity (add the b-word). But I didn't kill her off. Actually, she wasn't worth the effort but I put her through Hell, which was also satisfying.

So my advice today is: Kill off that idiot you hate. Or at least hurt them badly. You will feel better for it and won't get sent to jail.

Thanks for reading. Now write something!

NaNoWriMo

I write occasionally for an alternative weekly newspaper called NUVO, and while I haven't gone to one of their weekly budget meetings for a number of months I went today. And as I was chatting with one of their contributing editors, who is also a playwright, the topic changed to my novel writing.

Now the editorial people at NUVO pride themselves as much for their literary knowledge as they do for their liberal politics. But to my amazement, they had never heard of National Novel Writing Month. And I don't think it was a simple matter of snobbery.

I mentioned that I wrote the first draft of my latest novel, AN UNTIDY AFFAIR, in 19 days last November during NaNoWriMo. David, the playwright, was impressed. (And he is a man I like to impress, by the way. Though too liberal for my tastes, he is a great writer, both knowledgeable and insightful.)

He suggested I write a journal this November as I work on my next novel and use it for an article for the newspaper. I had never thought of that but the prospect scares the hell out of me.

Just writing the novel will be hard enough. But also keeping a daily journal of my experiences would probably overtax me and drive me insane. But I agreed to think about it. November isn't for another two-and-a-half months so there is plenty of time to hash out some of the details, not the least of which being what novel I will write. Yet the idea is interesting. As part of my new critique group, I am doing a panel discussion at a local library on how to do NaNoWriMo. This could be part of that overall experience.

So I hope I am not biting off more than I can chew because I don't want to burn my candle on both ends. (A Larry Bird in the hand is worth two in a [George] bush and a rolling gathers no Kate Moss! Enough already!)

I think I will do it. But heaven help me when I do.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Write what you know.

The current issue of Writer's Digest is "The Big 10" issue in which the editors and writers share many of the 10 secrets of writing and success. They examine productivity, top books and markets, plot problems, and more. They have interviews with 10 best-selling authors, where I noted with amazement that not a single one of them was black. But that is a matter for another blog posting.

What immediately caught my attention, however, was the 10 Rules of Writing from writing experts. And most importantly, for each of the 10 rules, there was a reason one expert said you should follow it and another reason another expert said you should break it.

The whole exercise was exhilarating and confusing. What advice do I take?

Super agent Donald Maass, whom I unfortunately missed last October at Bouchercon, says write what you know. That means, he says, "write what you see differently, feel profoundly and know is important for the rest of us." But author Natalie Goldberg says the opposite. She says be curious, and look for "what lurks beyond the familiar, safe streets."

Good advice from both. But which do I choose? (As a writer for nearly all my professional life, I go with write what you know. But that's what research is for -- so there will be things you know.)

Write 'shitty first drafts.' John Smolens, an English professor and best-selling author of a number of books and short stories, says follow that rule. "Really, do you have a choice?" he asks. While columnist, teacher and author Nancy Kress says first drafts "can certainly be rough and sloppy," but that doesn't mean they have to be shitty. She says you can only write as well as you can write. A first draft can be messy but "a mess can be fixed. Shit is just a waste. And a first draft is never a waste."

More good advice from both sides of an issue.

And it goes on. Write every day, John Dufresne says, because you have to. Not so, says James Scott Bell. It's not possible to write everyday if only because life will sometimes intrude, he says, plus you regularly need the break to recharge your creative batteries.

Read what you like to write; silence your inner critic; if you want to get rich, do something else -- all great topics, and all with conflicting points of view.

But not necessarily. If you examine them closely, you can see similarities in the points of view. So what I took most from the article is that, as a writer and as a person, you have to be true to yourself. That is where the real truth is and it is from that place that you want to reach readers.

Do what feels best to you. That may not have been what the experts intended but it's what I got from them. Otherwise, all their advice is nothing more than background noise.

Thanks for reading. Search inside yourself and keep writing.

Other writers' success

Sorry I have been away for a while but I was on vacation. I am back in the swing of things now and have several topics to discuss but the first is on the success of other writers.

I read three books while on vacation -- two girlie books (the latest in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich; and REMEMBER ME?, a funny and charming novel written several years by Sophie Kinsella) and a terrific debut novel by Harry Dolan.

BAD THINGS HAPPEN was published some time ago and while it was on my reading list, I hadn't gotten to it. Too bad for me. Harry's writing is witty, his characters are rich and full-bodied, and his plot is suspenseful. It was a delightful read.

I only know Harry online and through other online friends but he is a good writer and I'm happy he is experiencing some literary success.

Another wonderful writer I have met online is James King, who won ABNA last year (handily beating me, I might add). His debut, BILL WARRINGTON'S LAST CHANCE, was published this week. I went to the bookstore this afternoon to get a copy -- there were two, so my local Borders sold out 50 percent of its inventory.

(I will post pictures of both novels on my blog once I figure out how to get them off my phone and onto my laptop. I need my 16-year-old daughter to tell me how to do that and she is in cheer camp this weekend. GO WILDCATS!!!)

I have said this before but I love it when authors I know or have met online achieve some measure of success. While I still admit to some degree of jealousy, it is quite small in comparison to the encouragement I feel when yet another deserving author breaks through. I am humbled by Harry's writing and storytelling, and by James' imaginative story (I haven't read the book yet). But they both also remind me that success can come with talent, hard work and persistence.

So when I feel dispair or discouraged, James and Harry are there in spirit to tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself and to get back to work -- on improving my writing, on sending out queries, on networking with other authors and on learning more about the publishing industry.

Thank you, gentlemen. Well done. I hope and pray to follow in your footsteps. I am certainly working on it.

Thanks for reading.