Oh Hansel, I’m so afraid no one will find us! Never fear, Gretel, we will drop breadcrumbs, and someone will follow… Let’s say you’re the woodcutter, now wouldn’t YOU be curious to know what is at the end of those breadcrumbs? (Especially if they were, say, Panera bagel breadcrumbs? So I might be a little hungry this morning….). The key to backstory is dropping just enough crumbs to stir your reader’s hunger for more. You don’t want to give them too much at the beginning, or they’ll get filled up, satisfied, and they won’t have an appetite to finish the journey. How much backstory should you put into a scene? Just enough to give the reader the information he/she needs to understand/accept the current action and decisions. To embrace the […]
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Digging for Treasure: The Backstory
So here’s the deal. I was teaching all day Saturday at the MN Christian Writer’s Guild spring seminar, and then again on Monday night, at their monthly meeting, then I drove home on Tuesday, 6 hours, only to arrive just in time to pick up my oldest son and another son’s bike, return to town, drop off my packages, then hang around until another son got done with track practice, only to pick them (sons and bikes) all back up and return home, drag in my suitcases and drop into a heap. That’s the backstory to why I didn’t blog yesterday. Now, I’m thinking you didn’t need all that. A simple….life washed over me and swept me away, and I was unable to blog would have been sufficient. Yes, it […]
Read the RestStakes not Steaks
So, I say to Rachel, hey, we’re going to talk about Stakes this week on MBT, and she says, Nummy, I like mine rare! Ha ha, very funny. No, I’m not talking about a T-bone, or Sirloin. Stakes are those things that make us see what we could lose. It helps us stand at the precipice and say, is it worth it to step over into the unknown? (Reminds me a lot of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy has to step out in FAITH. What a great scene!) Stakes are those things that drive the story, that make the reader say, hey, I care about this story, I want to know what happens. They might not even be as big as we know starting […]
Read the RestThe power of metaphor in a scene
I first discovered the power of metaphor during my premarital counseling. We were using what (I think it was in a Gary Smalley book) was called, “Word Pictures.” The idea of taking an object or an event and using it as a symbol for something else. Okay, we as writers aren’t dumb. We get the whole metaphor idea. But sometimes we forget its power in a scene. And, I’m not talking about a direct metaphor where the main character in the scene spells it out for the others. I’m talking about the subtle metaphors that betray emotions, or revelation in the scene in the background. It’s similiar to subtexting, only in description. For example, in my newest book, I put the opening scene on a beach, the sky darkening as […]
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