Comments on: Background Fails

By: Curt Scroger

Curt Scroger — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:55:13 +0000

Facebook has taken the because of quake together with, hardly to become merely a means to get caught up with college or university or maybe a highschool neighbors.

By: Kristi Helvig

Kristi Helvig — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:51:53 +0000

I think it was Elmore Leonard who said to cut out the parts that people skip. When I find myself getting bored with a book, it’s usually due to excessive backstory and setting descriptions, so I cut everything out of my own ms that I felt was unnecessary. I tend to be a bare bones kind of writer anyway so I’m always fleshing things out after the first draft. With my new ms, my CP’s actually suggested I add more detail and history. I did, and they’ve promised me it’s not boring in the least. We’ll see.

By: Kristin Laughtin

Kristin Laughtin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:48:37 +0000

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking about this today because, even though I’m in the middle of my novel, I just got out of one big action-y sequence and my outline called for a lot of description of the next setting, and I’ve realized that in this case, it wouldn’t add anything to the story, but just bog it down before I get to the next exciting thing. I’m planning to either write it much shorter than I had intended or to combine that setting with an earlier scene. I think I avoided this well enough at the beginning of this novel, at least!

@Aonghus: At least in the case of Lost, those flashbacks were, as you said, intercut with the other scenes. It wasn’t a case of one exciting opening scene followed by 35 minutes of Kate eating toast. Whatever was happening was usually important or interesting, too, so I don’t think it was quite what John meant. Background on the characters is important and can be done well, but it’s awkward when it’s presented as someone’s life story over 50 pages rather than worked more seamlessly into the narrative.

By: Aonghus Fallon

Aonghus Fallon — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:09:04 +0000

Is this always true, John? ‘Breaking Bad’ follows the format you just outlined. It has a dramatic first scene, with the character being pursued by the police, but the remainder of the episode constitutes background (according to your criteria) as it establishes why a nerdy science teacher ended up cooking crystal meth in the first place.

Similarly, ‘Lost’ intercut the characters’ situation with countless flashbacks yet was still watched by millions of people. I’m not disagreeing with you per se. In fact I do think you need to have very good reasons for using flashbacks/background(the character’s background should have some immediate bearing on his current situation) but would never discount it entirely.