How Soon to Tell?
I brought my new trilogy--at least the prologue and two chapters--to my writers' group last night. I was relieved that all the changes were a sentence here, a word choice there . . . a couple of spots where, thanks to having a guy in my group, I apparently made the boy in the story a little too sentimental for a 12-year-old smarta**. But the other consistent item pointed out were little snippets of information about the boy's mother (who died when he was two) that my group felt I could have waited to tell.
Conincidentally, I spoke to my editor of my Nocturne trilogy yesterday (so yes, that's SIX books all total I am working on over the two years or so). SLOW DOWN was her advice for the first three chapters of the new proposal. Let it unfold a little slower.
This is, honest to God, one of my biggest struggles as a writer. Because I know my editor and my group are right. I have 300-friggin' pages to let it all unfold, but this battle is one with ME. Why?
In my real life, I am a totally open book. While I find it vaguely creepy when someone I just met tells me WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION about themselves, I also don't feel a particular need to hold back. If someone asks me x or y, I don't ever feel a need to lie, or white lie. I'll tell you if you ask. If someone I just met, for instance, noticed that there are three different last names in my family and asked about whatever complicated story it was regarding the names and the parentage of my kids, I'd tell them. If that prompted a question about why it was I left my ex-husband all those ages ago, I'd tell them. If they wanted to know what I thought about a particular subject or political stance, I'd say so. I might think, by this point, that they were being nosy, but I just don't feel I have anything to hide. It's frankly a very freeing way to go through life. I don't have this bit of artifice for the Barbie moms down the street, and this bit for the country club set (not that I would ever belong to a country club), and this bit for the reunion of my college where people are out to impress with their lives, and this bit of artifice for church, and this one for speaking to my kids' teachers. You get the idea. I like being ONE person, in essence, the same ME except maybe more raucous when playing poker. :-)
My emotions are the same way. I am not embarassed to cry--even in front of people I don't know well. I laugh loudly. If I have my feelings hurt, I will tell someone. If I have been deeply hurt or betrayed, I have to say something.
I think of the scene in the movie Adaptation from Charlie Kaufman's brilliant script. Nic Cage is aghast that his twin brother would have TOLD a woman he loved her when she didn't love him back. He considered that act humiliating. But his brother tells him it was HIS love to give to whomever he wanted, whether they loved him back or not. It was his love, and her not loving him didn't change that. How beautiful! Think of the dance most people go through when dating. Who will break down and say "I love you" first? Imagine if that was gone and you could just say it when YOU felt it?
So when I write . . . I tend to want to put it all out there up front. I also definitely worry that the reader may get impatient waiting for details. I have to fight that natural inclination.
How about you? Do you struggle with revealing too much up front? Do you struggle with your internal nature when it's opposite to what makes for the best book?
Conincidentally, I spoke to my editor of my Nocturne trilogy yesterday (so yes, that's SIX books all total I am working on over the two years or so). SLOW DOWN was her advice for the first three chapters of the new proposal. Let it unfold a little slower.
This is, honest to God, one of my biggest struggles as a writer. Because I know my editor and my group are right. I have 300-friggin' pages to let it all unfold, but this battle is one with ME. Why?
In my real life, I am a totally open book. While I find it vaguely creepy when someone I just met tells me WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION about themselves, I also don't feel a particular need to hold back. If someone asks me x or y, I don't ever feel a need to lie, or white lie. I'll tell you if you ask. If someone I just met, for instance, noticed that there are three different last names in my family and asked about whatever complicated story it was regarding the names and the parentage of my kids, I'd tell them. If that prompted a question about why it was I left my ex-husband all those ages ago, I'd tell them. If they wanted to know what I thought about a particular subject or political stance, I'd say so. I might think, by this point, that they were being nosy, but I just don't feel I have anything to hide. It's frankly a very freeing way to go through life. I don't have this bit of artifice for the Barbie moms down the street, and this bit for the country club set (not that I would ever belong to a country club), and this bit for the reunion of my college where people are out to impress with their lives, and this bit of artifice for church, and this one for speaking to my kids' teachers. You get the idea. I like being ONE person, in essence, the same ME except maybe more raucous when playing poker. :-)
My emotions are the same way. I am not embarassed to cry--even in front of people I don't know well. I laugh loudly. If I have my feelings hurt, I will tell someone. If I have been deeply hurt or betrayed, I have to say something.
I think of the scene in the movie Adaptation from Charlie Kaufman's brilliant script. Nic Cage is aghast that his twin brother would have TOLD a woman he loved her when she didn't love him back. He considered that act humiliating. But his brother tells him it was HIS love to give to whomever he wanted, whether they loved him back or not. It was his love, and her not loving him didn't change that. How beautiful! Think of the dance most people go through when dating. Who will break down and say "I love you" first? Imagine if that was gone and you could just say it when YOU felt it?
So when I write . . . I tend to want to put it all out there up front. I also definitely worry that the reader may get impatient waiting for details. I have to fight that natural inclination.
How about you? Do you struggle with revealing too much up front? Do you struggle with your internal nature when it's opposite to what makes for the best book?
Labels: internal writing struggles
posted by Erica Orloff at 6:54 AM
18 Comments:
Revealing just the right dose of information is such a hard balancing act. I don’t want the reader to get out of sync with the story, and yet I’m anxious to tell them what I (or my characters) know about the plot. The predicament reminds me of a child at Christmas who can’t keep a secret about what they wrapped up for mom or dad. They don’t realize that anticipation is the best part. It’s the craft of writing, something that is determined by that special “pacing” clock that ticks in a writer’s brain. I struggle with it everyday.
joe:
I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. I love giving presents--and always am in agony waiting until the other person opens it and I can see their face when I got them just the right thing.
I love the way you put it--a special "pacing" clock in out brains.
E
I've been struggling with this too. In the past, I've held back too much. I've decided to let my voice free in my wip and see what will happen.
Like Joe says, it's a hard balancing act.
In fiction, I love to drop a little hint and then a hint in the next chapter and pull out the suspense of the character's backstory. I think of J.D. Robb, and how Eve's backstory came out in tiny little snippets over fifteen or so books. It's kinda like brain sex ... you tease and tease the reader with it. Once you actually have the sex scene or spill the backstory, it loses that anticipatory buzz.
But in real life, I don't know. I gush out everything invited or not, LOL. There's just no filter in my brain, but lately I'm wrapped in problems in areas that aren't mine alone to talk about, or aren't good for the for little pitchers to hear, not that they're that big a deal. DH is very private, but that just makes things sixty times worse for me. I hate it, passionately.
Edie:
I've never held back in my writing--maybe that's been my whole problem. LOL! And with trilogies, I need to make sure it's spilled out bit by bit over multiple books.
E
Hi Spy:
I love it . . . . brain sex!!!
E
I have an incredibly hard time seeing the pacing in my own writing. I usually just write and hope it works. As for teasing the reader with little hints, I like that, but not if it's done too much. When I read The DaVinci Code, there were so many mentions of how traumatized the woman was because of something he'd seen her grandfather do. It seemed like it was mentioned in every scene. I finally skimmed through the book to find out what it was because the constant reference to it was so annoying. And then when I found it, it didn't seem like that big a deal, and there was no reason to have kept it from the reader.
My own thing seems to be writing a first chapter that is entirely backstory. Then after I've written a few more chapters, I have to go back and lop off the entire first chapter.
Hi Liz:
I do a lot of back story dumping at first, too. Then I hack away at it and find other spots to put the back story.
E
Do you struggle with revealing too much up front?
Frankly, I don't think there's any such thing.
IMHO, withholding information is a cheap little trick, a cookie-cutter contrivance for writers who want to emulate the throwaway thrillers flooding the market.
Tonight I started reading The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke, his latest Dave Robicheaux novel, and by page fifteen I knew the heartbreaking backstories of no less than six characters. I also knew that these characters are in for a great deal more heartache, because hurricane Katrina is on the way. All by page fifteen.
Do I care about these characters? Yep. Is there suspense, even though I know the psychology behind the characters' motivations and the extreme devastation that lies ahead? Yep.
Sometimes, you just have to follow your instincts and let the story unfold organically. If the death of the twelve-year-old's mother is pertinent in the first paragraph, then that's where it belongs.
One thing I've learned (and, I must say, it's a failure on my part that I've sometimes disregarded the lesson) is to never share anything until the second draft is complete. Until then, you don't really even know what belongs up front.
That might sound impossible when you're working with proposals and all, but I think what you have to do is say, "Yeah, okay," and then work through it your way anyway.
Critique partners and editors will have you chasing your tail till Kingdom Come if you let them. Write your book your way, and leave the cheap tricks for the Dan Brown wannabes.
The Roofer, IMO, is the perfect example of doing it your way and getting it right.
Don't trick me. Show me that little boy's nightmares in the first five pages. I'll love him and stick with him till the end.
Promise. :)
I love this post, and I like what Jude said. One of my favorite novels is I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven. Craven bluntly reveals the entire backstory in the first 200 words. I think it all depends on the needs of the project.
Jude:
I disagree. But we'd be debating over vastly different concepts . . . so it's sort of a difference in intent of the debate. I.e., there's a wealth of difference between back story dumping, which is entirely possible in a first draft (and hell, even in later ones and even in published books), and eloquently revealing to the reader enough heartbreak or back story in the first fifteen pages. It's the balancing act.There's no such think as back story dumping? As revealing too much? Then you haven't worked as en editor . . . you haven't seen writers pour 15 PAGES of character sketch and so on into what they think is prose, which--and I know you feel this way--should be lean and mean.
As for whether withholding is a trick . . . again . . . I think they're two different animals entirely. There are red herrings and withholding information for the sake of it. And then there are writers like J.K. Rowling who reveal a character arc over 8 books. I've got a trilogy to write. Unfolding it gracefully is part of what I am trying to do. There's a clunky (which it was in my case) revelation that a mother is dead--a sentence that just puts it out there. And there the spector of a dead mother floating over the scene . . . you know he's had a loss by a gesture. There's show don't tell.
Like I said, I think this is really about debating two different things, but there you go.
stephen:
Exactly.
Enough said. ;-)
E
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
Of course, you're right, too, Erica. It has to be done eloquently, with balance, lean and mean, the way masters like James Lee Burke and Kurt Vonnegut do it. And Stephen's right. It depends on the needs of the project.
I recently attempted to edit a chapter for a friend. It started out eight pages, and I whittled it down to six with editing suggestions. To me, it read much better with the edits, but my friend said, "The character is fairly erudite and verbose, so I'm not sure tightening up the text is the way to go." Hmm. I didn't argue the point. I mean, if someone is determined to write bad prose, there's really no way to talk them out of it. If a character is erudite and verbose, that can be shown with dialogue, IMO. The actual narrative (which was third-person in this case, btw) should be as concise as possible, peppering the action with snippets of pertinent backstory here and there.
In my novel on submission (which I hope to make a series, if it sells), pretty much everything you'll ever need to know about the character's backstory is in the first chapter. BUT, it doesn't read like an information dump (at least I hope it doesn't); it's weaved into the current action in a way that's THERE but not overpowering, not at all verbose.
I don't worry much about revealing too much too soon, but it has to be done right. Like you said, it's a balancing act.
Too much? Not enough?
I guess like plot twists and unpredictable endings, roaches or not.
'To heck with suspense'? Vonnegut quote or not, as a writer and avid reader, that remark makes me cringe.
My non-paranormal, non-urban fantasy reading pal does not "get" otherworld aspects, so she's lost in trying to interpret the filtering of world building and backstory up front.
As for me, I enjoy putting the pieces together. Pieces that are enticingly, strategically, suspensefully placed with skill and finesse.
Bottom line, it does come down to finesse, doesn't it?
Great post, Erica!
Kathy
Hi Kathy:
I think you raise an excellent point, too. There are no absolutes in the writing game. And I agree . . . I like some suspense.
E
I like suspense too. Love it. I think what Vonnegut was getting at was the artificial, gimmicky suspense some writers attempt, like the example Liz gave.
Jude,
THAT'S it, don't you think?
Subtly, dolled out, by degree, with finesse?
Kathy
Hi Kathy,
Sure, but I don't think true suspense is ever generated by withholding information about a character. In fact, the more info the better, IMO.
In Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, for example, we don't actually meet the killer until chapter nine; but, by the end of chapter one we have a nice profile of him through conversations between Will Graham and Jack Crawford. We know what he's capable of, and the chase (and suspense) is on. Everything that's pertinent is right there on the page. We know as much as Graham and Crawford do. Later, through POV switches, we know quite a bit more than the detectives, and the tension gets tighter and tighter as the chapters proceed.
We see glimpses of the killers childhood later in the book, but it's not like we were anxiously waiting to see that. That's not where the suspense comes from. The suspense comes from knowing what the character is capable of now, and we get all that in the first chapter.
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