Think it up, write it down

Laptop, desktop, Underwood or pencil: what works best for you? How has the way you write (and submit stories) evolved since you started?

by Dietrich

The first time I wrote anything novel length I used a pen on lined paper. A lot of stroked out words and balled up pages later, I had a first draft which I kept in a box. I was in my mid-teens and a pen and paper were the only means I had of getting the story down. I learned to type in high school and some years later, I cranked out my first short story on an antique Underwood Standard I acquired. The cap P had filled in, but other than a couple of keys occasionally jamming together, I loved the sound of the clacking and the crisp stroke of the long keys, the ding of the carriage return, and the overall heft of the vintage beast. On the downside I went through Wite-Out by the quart. Some years after, I got a much lighter self-correcting electric Smith-Corona. It was smooth and efficient, and I didn’t end up with nearly as much fluid and ribbon ink on my fingers.

Then came a string of Macs, starting with the Color Classic II, followed a few years later by a Power Mac, then a G3, and finally a couple of generations of iMacs.   

Those early typed submissions were dabbed with correction fluid, and had snippets of replacement lines and paragraphs taped and glued to the pages. The original typed pages looked like ransom notes and had to be photocopied, then submitted by mail. After which, I waited, and waited, and waited for a reply. These days I just type THE END, and I hit send. And although I miss the clanging and dinging of that old Underwood, nothing is neater or easier than a laptop or desktop. And there’s no need to copy and collate the whole thing, then stuff several hundred pages of a manuscript into a giant envelope and trudge off to the post office.

I don’t do it every time, but I still like writing a first draft in longhand, and in spite of the ink smudges and a tired wrist after hours of writing, there’s something satisfying about the organic process. Sometimes I scratch with a pencil, although they need frequent sharpening; other times I write with pens that sometimes leak, or with fine-tip markers that may smudge. And although it proved even slower and messier, I even tried a refill cartridge fountain pen someone gave me as a gift.

And it's longhand when I’m waiting on the departure call at the airport, or while I’m sitting on a rocking train, writing with the little overhead light on while other passengers are sleeping through the night.

When I’m working on a story, I’m forever writing little notes to myself — story ideas or some kind of direction to myself — leaving them in a stack next to my computer.

Aside from the writing itself, it’s far easier and so much faster to do the bulk of the research on the internet — much faster than going to the local library, or waiting for something to be sent by mail. And internet connections are like lightning these days — remember dial-up internet, waiting from that bleeping handshake?

Stone Tablets, Anyone?

 

Terry Shames here, answering the question: Laptop, desktop, Underwood or pencil: what works best for you? How has the way you write (and submit stories) evolved since you started? 

 Stone tablets were so hard to write on. 

Either the stone was too hard to chip into, or it shattered too easily. Then there was papyrus—don’t get me started. It was always too damp or too dry to scratch onto. And it was liable to crumble before anyone could read it. The pencil and paper were a huge breakthrough. And then, glory be, there was the typewriter. A mistake was still hard to correct (eraser; then whiteout), but it was a lot better than having to chisel a whole new stone tablet. 

 At last, after all those struggles, true bliss: The computer. 

Okay, yeah, I’ve been at this writing business forever. In fact, I have a true story about my early days as a budding writer. When I was a child, Big Chief tablets were the primary writing tablets—a pad of big, brownish paper with wood chips in it (okay, I exaggerate, but only a little). The tablet had a red cover which would horrify people today because it had the picture of an Indian chief on it (an aside: what the Big Chief had to do with a pad of paper is beyond me). Not to mention how the meaning of the word “tablet” has changed. 

The sight of a blank page in a tablet was thrilling for me. One day I was at my grandparents’ house and saw some “spare” change on my grandmother’s bureau. I snatched some up and went downstairs to the little general store they ran on the first floor of the house, and bought myself a new Big Chief tablet. Somewhere I found a pencil. 

I had just opened the pad of paper, dazzled by all that blank space for writing a story, when my mother asked me where I got the tablet. I told her I bought it. “Where did you get the money?” I told her I found it, and promptly burst into tears. She made me march back and return the pad and tell my grandmother what I’d done. 

 I would have made a terrible thief, but at least it’s a good story that illustrates, 1) that I’m ancient, and 2) that I always wanted to be a writer. 

 Being ancient means I first submitted stories, and later novels, written on my typewriter. First I wrote the story in long-hand, and then did my first edit when I transferred the story to the typewriter. I sent out the manuscripts in the mail, and received mail telling me it had arrived at its destination. And eventually, if the manuscript was rejected AND if I had sent with it enough postage to have it returned, it would land back on my doorstep like a dead rat. There’s some comfort in getting a private rejection that isn’t on the doorstep for the world to see. 

There were some advantages to the old system, though. Requests for full manuscripts were not handed out lightly. Agents and publishers knew it cost dearly to send the full manuscript through the U.S. Postal Service. So if you got a request for a full, you knew it meant something special. And it also meant that agents and editors didn’t get as many manuscripts, because it took more time to write them and it was more expensive to send them. 

 I’ve heard critics say that using the computer has made it too easy to write first drafts that aren’t well thought-out. It might be true for some people. And in fact, I suspect there might be some issues with people who don’t edit seriously. Most writers I know do some version of reading their manuscripts aloud when they edit. I don’t think I ever heard of that before the computer, and I wonder if it evolved to help people take editing seriously when the computer makes it so easy to throw things onto the page. 

 However it has changed writing, the computer has made submission a lot easier—and in some ways harder. It’s easy to send a manuscript winging off to an agent or an editor. But it means editors and agents receive significantly more manuscripts that they have to wade through. It has led to many of them only replying to authors if they are interested in a further look. As appalling as that is, it strikes me that it means not everyone fully embraces the capability of computers. Formulating a quick boilerplate reply that can be sent with one key stroke isn’t that hard, and yet it seems impossible for many agents. 

On the other hand, I suspect that as mentioned earlier, the computer has made it possible for fledging writers to bang out something they think is brilliant and send it winging to agents long before the work is ready. It’s the flip side of not quite understanding the capability, and short-comings, of using the computer for the business of writing. 

I sometimes miss the feel of pen on paper. But I don’t miss having to make corrections from a typewriter! Whatever the shortcomings of creating by computer. I have no interest in going back to pen and paper, then typewriter. I wonder if there are writers who still use and paper, or typewriters to compose their first drafts—or even editing? 

A Writer's Tools

Laptop, desktop, Underwood or pencil: what works best for you? How has the way you write (and submit stories) evolved since you started?

Brenda Chapman at the keyboard.

Way, way back when I first started writing poetry and short stories, I used paper and pen or pencil. I still have my handwritten notebook full of poems composed in university when I was studying English lit and taking a creative writing course as one of my electives. Those were the days before computers (I can hear the Millennials' gasps) and I had a little Olivetti typewriter that I used to pound out my essays. We had white tape that you could slip under the key, that had to be tapped again to 'erase' an error. Three of these fixes though and the page had to be retyped, however, since there was always a telltale sign of the error and the page looked messy. 

Never mind trying to organize all the research and type a coherent essay on the first go. An idea or piece of information or argument was tougher to work in if forgotten further on in the essay. The result was often more retyping of pages. One sad anecdote: I completed a 10,000-word history essay and left it with my books on a shelf outside the cafeteria as we weren't allowed to bring our books inside (not sure why but that was the rule). when I returned, my essay file was gone. I had no copy and had to retype the entire thing from my notes and my memory.

Let me just say that computers came none too soon.

My first job in the government was as a writer/editor, and computers were new on the scene. I actually had to ask how to turn mine on. My supervisor sent me on Word Perfect training (Word was not the software of choice) a couple of times, and I gradually became more adept at the keyboard. I'd even mastered the floppy disc before it went the way of the buggy whip, just as CDs are all but obsolete now. In one of my less auspicious moments back then, I managed to delete an entire shared drive at work and the tech guy spent his lunch hour bringing it back. I'm sure they dreaded my daily call for help ....

Since then, I've become proficient with my home computer (which I still use to work on a manuscript) and my laptop (which I use more and more often). Gone are the days of needing to call the computer hotline to speak with one of those techs to fix our home computer - do you remember being as frustrated as we were trying to follow their instructions?

My home office

I also remember printing off manuscripts and queries and sending them by post to publishers. The first manuscripts were returned with editing done on the hard copy and I'd have to go through the changes and make mine with a pen. How far we've come! Now, everything is done electronically, which is so much more efficient and quick.

I'm in the process of learning the self-publishing process, having decided to go this route with my next book. I'm still out to sea about a lot of it, but I'm determined to muddle my way through. The speed with which technology keeps changing is both exciting and daunting. I will admit that I still prefer a hard copy day timer and continue to write out shopping lists and notes to myself using good old pen and paper. It's all but impossible to doodle while daydreaming on a computer ....

www.brendachapman.ca

Twitter: brendaAchapman

Facebook & Instagram: BrendaChapmanAuthor

Kill the Backstory. By Josh Stallings

Q: How do you deal with backstory? How much do you need, and where do you put it? How do you know what to leave in, and what to take out?

I just finished reading Heather Levy’s debut novel, Walking Through Needles, it takes place in 1994 and 2009 from the point of view of two teenagers and later, adults. It is a hard book handled brilliantly. By jumping time frames she makes backstory feel immediate. It made me think, backstory must drive the story or be dropped. 

I’m editing my newest book and I hear in my head, “Dude, your research is showing.” You know those paragraphs you put in because you spent hours to discover the exact military vehicles bought by the LAPD in 1984? It’s the Vietnam era Cadillac Gage Commando V-100, or M706, if you’re wondering. I could give engine specs, but this info dump has slowed the essay down enough as it is. How about I go with  “LAPD was the first American police force to use tanks against its citizenry.” Readers don’t care about the rabbit hole I fell down to research the novel. 

Backstory is often things I discovered about characters in early drafts. My job in editing is only keep backstory where it is absolutely necessary. Tricky is the story of a detective trying to discover what happened the day of a shooting and more importantly who the suspect is. In many ways the book hinges on discovering Cisco’s backstory. What keeps the mystery going is how the backstory is doled out, and the fact that most witnesses that tell about Cisco’s backstory could be lying. I wrote entire chapters set in the past, used them as research and then tossed them out. I needed to write them, readers didn’t need to read them.

Tangent alert: Some research facts are needed, as proven brilliantly in Throw Mamma From The Train. A woman from Billy Crystal’s writing class reads from her MS, “"Dive... DIVE" yelled the captain through the thing. So the man who makes it dive pressed a button, or something, and it dove. And the enemy was foiled again!”

My backstory: At sixteen I moved to LA to study acting at The Lee Strasberg Institute. To build a character I was trained to start with biography. Know a character inside and out. Then forget it and simply be. 

No one needs to know that Detective Madsen’s grandfather was a Texas Ranger, and the truth of the Texas Rangers is darker, more racist, and evil than the myth we have been fed. Well no one except me. I need to know it to write honestly about Madsen. To understand a character I need to understand their backstory. The hat trick is to figure out what readers need and when? Early into Tricky I show a printout of Cisco’s rap sheet. It is the police record of an evil SOB. It is part of his backstory. I also introduce believable characters who swear Cisco is a good man, and incapable of doing the things they say he did. The tension in Tricky is delivered by this simple idea; are we our backstory or is real transformation possible?

I broke somebody’s cardinal rule by starting Young Americans with a flashback. A young girl works to open a safe while her grandfather times her. She is a safe cracking prodigy. I needed the reader to believe this fact from the get go. Next chapter she’s in her early 20’s, living in Humboldt dancing for a living. A character mystery is set in motion, why would a safe cracking wunderkind end up working in a low rent club in the sticks?

Catriona McPherson’s thrilling novel Strangers at the Gate hangs entirely on backstory. Discovering what really happened versus what people say happened is the difference between life and death. McPherson’s skill is such that I never once felt a writer’s hand on the mechanisms of suspense. It was scary as hell and felt natural and believable. 

Could you live without a backstory? The crime fiction trope where an amnesiac wakes to find a dead body in their bed, is fascinating and terrifying. The question of who are we without our history, is universally fascinating. 

Backstory can be used as a deception. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl gives us two compromised visions of the backstory, both factually kinda true, both leaving much out. Who do you trust, when you can’t trust your narrator?

When dealing with backstory remember, “show don’t tell.” My least favorite note, until on my 6th book, when I finally understood it. Now I’m starting to see how it applies to backstory. 

A Telling) “Johnny Killjoy grew up on a farm in Driscoll county… blah blah blah…”

B Showing) “‘Boy, grab that calf’s feet and pull.’ Johnny was seven and felt the mortal weight of the newborn animal’s life in his hands.”

Both of these examples give you the information that Johnny grew up on a farm, but only one of them makes you feel what that did to him, how it affected his world view. You know, the stuff we actually care about.

“But I want the readers to know Declan grew up in Belfast.” I say rather stridently to myself. 

“Why?” Myself asks me. “Irish isn’t a character trait.”

Oh… So once I really know who the character is, I can discern what information is actually needed to deliver that person fully alive in three dimensions. Why didn’t I say that to myself in the first place?

Now I’m starting to worry that I got this whole idea wrong. Maybe backstory simply means a character’s biography… If that’s true, and it doesn’t enlighten or amuse, or move the plot or widen the mystery… Then leave it all out.

Four pages into James Crumley’s The Wrong Case, Milo Milodragovich lets us know that he is broke, and when he turns 52 he'll inherit his family’s fortune. Pure backstory and yet it explains why he acts like a man in limbo, a true slacker, before that term came to be. I love it even if it ruins my “leave all backstory out.” So I’ll amend my earlier statement, leave all backstory out… unless it works.

Backstory Guestblog, with Liz Milliron

Craft: How do you deal with backstory? How much do you need, and where do you put it? How do you know what to leave in, and what to take out?

Catriona writes: Ask me how tough it was to have a guest this week and so miss the chance to answer this question myself? Zero tough. My answer was "Oh Lord, I dunno". Now ask how tough it was to be welcoming Liz Milliron back to Criminal Acres? Negative tough. Runny honey. Raw meringue. 

Liz is a writer of  two very distinct series with the same gritty sensibility: the Laurel Highlands Mysteries are set in the reality (not the idyll) of rural Pennsylvania, where shut coalmines, thriving meth labs, rampant wildfires and flash flooding serve as the background to the cases that challenge state trooper, Jim Duncan, and Sally Castle, the assistant PD of Lafayette County. In the Homefront Mysteries, Betty Ahern is working for the war effort at Bell Airplane in Buffalo and solving crimes in her blue-collar neighbourhood, helped by a tight crew of good friends.  I'm a big fan of both, and of Liz too. Liz, take it away!

Liz writes: Thanks, Catriona, for giving me a guest spot on the blog today. It’s always fun when I get to step “in front of the camera,” as it were.

Ah, backstory. We all have one. You, me, your next-door-neighbor, the characters in your favorite book. The question is not whether we have a backstory, it’s if we tell that story, how, and when.

Think about real-life. When you meet someone at a cocktail party, you don’t start the conversation with “Hi, I’m Liz. Let me tell you about every single thing in my life from birth until this morning.” (Athough the thought that someone might is what keeps the question of party attendance on a knife edge! CMcP) First, that would take forever. Especially if birth was, um, a while ago. Second, it’s a snooze and would probably send your newfound companion running for the bar before you got past the stories of kindergarten.

It’s not much different for books. Think about it. If every time a new character is introduced, the author treats you, the reader, to paragraphs of information about the person’s life, well, you probably won’t keep reading. I know I won’t. I’ll skip, skip, skip until I get back to the story. And that’s if I’m feeling generous. Remember Elmore Leonard’s rule? “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Yeah, that’s backstory.

But you can’t ignore it entirely. You didn’t spring into being this morning and neither did the protagonist in your favorite series. So how do I, as an author, balance the two?

First, I decide if the information is relevant. Do you really need to know that I got my shoelace caught in an escalator at age six and it gave me a lifelong dislike of moving staircases? Well, you might – if we’re standing at the foot of an escalator, that’s the only way to get to the second floor, and I refuse to go up. (See what I did there?)

Second, when do you need to know this? Probably not when we first meet. But it would be helpful to know the reason for my refusal to move if we’re at the bottom of the escalator and we’re going to be late if we don’t get upstairs.

Most authors will tell you they know all about their characters and their backstories. Most of the time it never gets used. But an author never knows. For example, Jim Duncan got into a fight in high school with the class bully. I knew about this because it informed his character. But I never planned on putting this into a novel – until one day he sat down to talk to his young trainee about why he chose law enforcement and the story came out.

In essence, I think backstory is like salt and pepper. When you sprinkle just enough, and exactly when you need it, it enhances the tale. A savvy author will dribble bits of backstory throughout the novel. Maybe it’s a scrap of dialog. Maybe through an unspoken thought. Or perhaps an emotional reaction.

So do I love backstory? Absolutely. I want to know the characters on the page, I want to feel they are real people, and I want to connect with them.

But please. Spare me the paragraphs of narrative history. Or else you just might find me making excuses to leave and get another drink.

Liz Milliron is the author of The Laurel Highlands Mysteries series, set in the scenic Laurel Highlands of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and The Home Front Mysteries, set in Buffalo, NY during the early years of World War II. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Pennwriters, and International Thriller Writers. Now an empty-nester, Liz lives outside Pittsburgh with her husband and a retired-racer greyhound. http://lizmilliron.com

About Harm not the Earth

When Southwest Pennsylvania’s summer rains flood the Casselman River, State Police Trooper Jim Duncan finds a John Doe body in what is initially believed to be a tragic accident. 

Meanwhile, Assistant Public Defender Sally Castle is approached by an abused woman who is accused of murdering her abuser.

As their separate cases become intertwined, Jim and Sally struggle to determine if their new paths can be traveled together . . .

Over-egged, or underdone? by Cathy Ace

Craft: How do you deal with backstory? How much do you need, and where do you put it? How do you know what to leave in, and what to take out?

Backstory: I LOVE BACKSTORY!!!! There, that’s got that out of my system.

Anyone who habitually reads 7 Criminal Minds will have sussed out that I use it as a bit of a confessional. If not, you might not know that I’m a slightly OCD plotter – taking my plotting notes to a degree where I understand many other writers wouldn’t end up writing the book itself because they’d feel they’d already done that. I, on the other hand, have nothing but amazed admiration for writers who manage to find out, as they write, whodunit, and why.

Thus, as you might imagine, I spend a fair amount of time working out the detail of the backstory for every single one of my characters. A good example of what I mean? I know where they were all born, raised, and went to school, and, in many cases, where their parents went to school too. (NOTE: my own background is in psychology, and especially educational psychology, which I why I am highly attuned to how early-life experiences shape later-life psyche, attitudes, and behavior.) I then draft their entire life story.

Of course, most of this information doesn’t end up in the book – not even the first draft – but I need to know it to understand the characters I’m writing about before I plot, and write. No, my characters don’t walk into my writing room fully formed and introduce themselves (I think I wish they would). No, my characters don’t talk to me (even more on the fence about this idea). But, once they are thoroughly fleshed out in terms of their background, and their psyche becomes clear to me, THEN I’m able to drop them into the situation I have crafted for them (and, of course, I know how they came to be "there, then") and I can allow them to act within that setting and situation according to their psychological profile…which means they do things, and don’t do things, that are appropriate to my plot. If they aren’t cutting it as far as my needs are concerned, I have to amend their backstory to allow them to play the role I need them to play in the way I need them to play it…but with all of that arising naturally from their previous life.

So, I suppose what I’m saying, in a nutshell, is that I like to play God, and this is as close as I’m likely to come to it…I create these people.

That said, what I try to do is drip-feed any relevant backstory into the book as the character is developing, but I use different methods, depending on the type of book I'm writing. 

In my Cait Morgan Mysteries this is possible because Cait and Bud are in a different part of the world each time, with a different cast of characters – so they are always having to get to know those people afresh…which allows the reader to learn about them as my characters do. 

Artwork, highlighting the fact Cait's always on the road, by Free@LastTV

That’s quite a different editing/information selection process than in my WISE Enquiries Agency books where there’s a recurring cast of characters…which means everyone knows almost everyone else (as would be the case in a village/stately home setting where I allow for a few new characters in each book) so I have to use different devices to allow a bit of backstory to be communicated to the reader who might be reading books 2, 3 or 4 first, as opposed to book 1. 

Which one of the four WISE women PIs is a wizard at making Welshcakes...and why?

To be honest – I find the latter to be the greater challenge, because naturally-occurring reasons for a character’s backstory to be revealed are fewer and further between. And, yes, editing information dumps is difficult, or has to be managed carefully (eg: with four private investigators in the WISE books, gathering information about people, then communicating that in some form to a colleague is a useful way for me to provide the reader with information in a “business-like” way).

I hope I do it well enough that readers believe they are reading about the natural attitudes and actions of relatable human beings, rather than two-dimensional cyphers…but it’s a constant battle, and it’s where beta readers and editing really help: because I know so much more about my characters than my readers do, it’s only a reader who can tell me if I’ve over-egged the cake, or if it’s still a bit flat.

If you want to be first to know about where the next Cait Morgan Mystery will take place, and see the cover reveal, please consider signing up for my newsletter? http://www.cathyace.com/

The eleventh Cait Morgan Mystery will be published in November 2021! Have you taken all ten of her journeys with her yet? If not, why not catch up now? http://www.cathyace.com/cait-morgan-mysteries

Backstory Takes a Back Seat

How do you deal with backstory? How much do you need, and where do you put it? How do you know what to leave in, and what to take out?

From Frank

As time has passed, I have become a less and less tolerant reader when it comes to info-dumps. I see them as lazy at best and immersion shattering at worst. This method of conveying backstory is often handled clumsily, even by good writers in otherwise good books. I recently put down a highly touted multiple-award nominated book about a quarter of the way through for exactly this reason. Screeching brakes on the story while the author intrudes with "Hey, reader - just so you know..." information. 

Repeatedly.

As a reader, I'm hard ass about this. Merciless and unapologetic.

As a writer, though? Boy, do I sympathize.

We writers want so badly for the reader to understand every nuance that we believe is so important to the story, don't we? And maybe we're right. But sometimes we're not.

Either way, stopping all of the action to back up the facts-we-think-is-oh-so-important truck to the reader's porch and gracelessly dump a big load of information there isn't the way to do it.

Let's be clear - I am as guilty as the next writer of this, so don't take any of this as me being holier-than-thou about it. It's more like I'm as sinful-as-thou. But the questions have been asked, and these are my true answers.

How do deal with it? Insert backstory in small bits, first off. Digestible chunks that the reader can absorb and process. Secondly, mix up the delivery of the information. Some of it may be narrative but you can show backstory (or at least hint strongly at it) in dialogue and action, too. And lastly, priortize which pieces of backstory are the most important and, in general, work them in first.

How much do you need? I wrote a textbook on police report writing. In it, I state that there are four pillars of good report writing. A report must be clear, concise, complete, and accurate. Now, while fiction is very different than technical writing, many of the fundamentals are the same. And when it comes to how much backstory you need, I would point you to the concise pillar. The simple definition of concise in the textbook is all of the information you need and no more. 

Sure, it's a little nebulous. But it's a great starting point. We don't need to know everything about a character's backstory to get who they are. We just need enough.

Where do you put it? Early on, obviously. And not all in one place. And not all in the form of a "stop here for a moment so I can fill you in" narrative. Like I mentioned above, we can garner some backstory through conversation, and through the current actions of our character. These are far less obtrusive and keeps things moving forward.

How do you know what to leave in, and what to take out? This is the art of it all, right? Where is that razor's edge between concise and complete? All the information you need and no more?

There's a lot of meat on the bone that is this question. But I'll leave some of that meat for my Wed, Thur, and especially Friday (looking at you, Abir!) panelists to gnaw on. Otherwise, this will be a book and not a blog post.

My recent experience with backstory. The biggest challenge I've had recently with backstory came when Colin Conway and I were writing Code Four, the final book of a four-book arc in the Charlie-316 series.

Code Four was the fifth book Colin and I had written together. We'd developed a process that worked for us, and a form of shorthand. One of those shorthand pieces came about when we were revising Some Degree of Murder back in 2012. SDoM was a bloated 111,000 words that no one wanted to publish. By the time we shaved it down to its essentials, it was 74,000 words (and far better). How'd we accomplish that? Well, Colin coined the analogy that we cut anything that gets us off the freeway. Only the occasional short detour to a rest stop was allowed, then it was back on the freeway. No tooling around surface streets. Keep the action moving forward.

Guess what? When we adhered to that, one of the most notable casualties was a ton of backstory.

But for Code Four, we were in a tough spot.  A lot had occurred in the first three books. Some of it was a little intricate, and some of the inter-woven relationships were important for the reader to be aware of. It seemed like some backstory was necessary, especially for those readers who picked up this book first and didn't have the luxury of the story knowledge that came with reading the first three.

So what'd we do?

We tried to keep it on the freeway.

The first chapter featured the antagonist in action. Largely through his actions, and a little internal monologue, the reader immediately knows what he's all about. They don't get many specifics but they get the gist of it. 

The next chapter shows the inciting incident. In this case, we see the Chief of Police learning that DOJ is sending investigators to his department. We get his reaction and dialogue with another staff officer as they form a plan of action. This allowed us to insert a few more items of backstory in a way the seemed organic.

Then we get the chapter that almost killed me. 

The third chapter is from the POV of one of my favorite all-time characters - Detective Wardell Clint. On the surface, Clint is working a case that occured at the conclusion of book three. But underneath that, he's also working the same case he's been grinding away at for the entire arc.

I wrote this chapter, and in the first draft, I did exactly what I have railed against - a massive info dump. Rightfully, Colin pushed back. I revised accordingly. Eventually, Clint interacts with three different sets of people in this chapter. Two of those interactions are rife with conflict while one is friendly. Each gives him cause to mete out bits of backstory outside of his own internal narrative. Since he's a detective working through possibilities, though, these internal thoughts are framed as following his line of thought about the case at hand. This is a little more interesting than just pushing pause and saying, "Previously, on Charlie-316..."

In the end, this chapter is still a bit heavy on backstory. It seemed necessary, though. So we cloaked it in action and dialogue wherever possible, and trimmed it down as much as we could. In the end, it is about 400 words shorter than my first draft (roughly ten percent less).

It wasn't the perfect solution, and I think I would have cut a lot more if reading the previous three books was a requirement for picking up Code Four. But since it wasn't, we had to weave in the backstory, and this is how we went about it.

Making me, of course, a bit of a hypocrite...

*********************BSP Alert********************

My first Stanley Melvin story will be released on August 17, 2021 from PI Tales.

In Hallmarks of the Job, meticulous private investigator Stanley Melvin likes to keep his work grounded in reality, not at all like the classic detective novels he has read incessantly since childhood. But his best friend and annoying neighbor Rudy quickly points out that his routine “cheater” case is rapidly taking on all of the features that Stanley steadfastly insists are mere fictional tropes of the genre.

As you can see, this novella is being paired with a story from Michael Bracken, so that almost guarantees people will pick up the book. Hopefully they don't skip Stanley!

Hallmarks was fun to write. It's outside my comfort zone, as it is supposed to be at least mildly humorous. I'm no Catriona so don't expect gut busting guffaws but I think this tale might elicit a smile or two. 

Or at least a smirk.

 

A Fresh Perspective by a New Crime Writer

 I’m pleased to welcome Karen E. Osborne as a guest author. Karen and I met when we worked for a university in New York State. In those days we wrote a lot, but it wasn’t fiction – or we hoped it wasn’t. I was delighted when I learned last year that she’s joined our ranks. Her second book, which starts with a jolt, is just out. Here’s a chance to learn something about it, and about her. 

Karen: I’ve been writing since the age of twelve and making up stories for as long as I can remember. As a kid on the block in the Bronx, I kept my friends enthralled with fake adventures I pretended to experience. In middle school (junior high back then), I submitted book reports on fiction I created in my head. Gave them titles and authors. Never got caught. Under my photo in my high school yearbook next to “Ambition” it read “Writer.” For forty-three years I worked first as an academic administrator and then, in partnership with my husband, Bob, as co-owner of The Osborne Group consulting and training firm. I wrote the first draft of Getting It Right on airplanes and in hotel rooms. I’m delighted to share my new murder mystery, Tangled Lies with new and returning readers. 

 

 

Q: How do you deal with backstory? How much do you need and where do you put it? How do you know what to leave in and what to take out?

 

I love these questions. They get at the heart of character development, the adage of “show, don’t tell,” and the ultimate challenge of every writer, what to include and what to leave out. Not just backstory, but dialogue, scenes, and even chapters that you LOVE but realize (or a beta reader points out) don’t propel the story forward.

 

Character Development

Before I can decide what pieces of backstory to weave or not include in one of my novels, I first must create the cast of characters’ histories. I rarely start a story or novel with the plot. Characters come to me. They have conversations in my head and demand I listen. I see them, hear them, and ask questions. Something important happened to them or is about to and often that is the inciting incident for the tale.

 

Does that sound strange? Does this happen to you? But they don’t always tell me their backstory. I must uncover it — all of it. Where and when they were born. What devastating and formative events happened when they were children, young adults, later in life. Parents’ quirks and reactions, friends, and education. Heartbreaks. Strengths and weaknesses and how they came about. The events that shaped them into who they are today.

 

The award winning and groundbreaking television show, The Wire, reportedly had a writer assigned to each character responsible for the qualities, traits, mannerisms and so forth, along with a complete backstory so whenever their character appeared in a script, the writer knew how their character would react. That’s what we have to do with our characters as we strive to create complex, nuanced, interesting living, and breathing people on the page. https://nathanbransford.com/blog/2008/03/learning-from-wire

Tangled Lies was my first attempt at a murder mystery and thus a more plot driven story. But I wanted it to be as character driven as possible without losing the elements of a good whodunit. 

 

Including Backstory

Monica M. Clarke in this excellent blog post recommends starting with action. https://thewritepractice.com/weave-backstory/ I agree. It is another way of following the “show, don’t tell” adage. Show the characters reaction, and then tell your reader why she reacted that way. Of course, not every time and every incident. Pick your moments.

 

In my third novel, Reckonings, coming out next year, I want the reader to know the main character, Roxy, was raped eighteen years earlier. In chapter one, you see her terrified about the antagonist’s return to town, but you don’t know why. In five backstory sentences, I tell you. “Eighteen years and he can still do this to me. She remembered rough hands pinning hers above her head on the scratchy Army blanket, the throb from the slap across her face and the excruciating pain from his forced penetration. His words rang in her ears. I should have done this a long time ago. You’ll like it better next time.” 

 

Sometimes, however, more backstory is needed. In Tangled Lies the first chapter provides the backstory — the discovery of the murder. Chapter Two jumps ahead in time. You can hear me reading Chapter One here. https://www.kareneosborne.com/post/a-peek-into-tangled-lies

 

Is This Sentence or Paragraph Working Hard Enough?

When deciding what to include or exclude, I ask myself tough questions. What is the purpose of this sentence, paragraph, scene? Is it the best way to achieve that purpose? Is it working hard enough, accomplishing enough goals? 

 

Another adage comes into play. “Kill your darlings,” attributed to William Faulkner and Oscar Wilde among others. It means you must cut your especially self-indulgent passages for the greater good of your literary work. Even if you love this chunk of backstory and how beautifully you’ve written it, is it necessary? Does it propel the plot and/or add crucial insight? I find this the most difficult. In my first novel, Getting It Right, I had a hilarious scene in another character’s point of view — different from the altering chapters of my two protagonists. The story was so tense, and packed with suspense, I wanted to lighten in the mood. My beta readers all agreed it was funny and well written but did it do anything else besides add a chuckle? In the end, I decided to add humor in a different way and different place. I killed my darling.

 

How are you handling this tricky but essential aspect of fiction writing? I’d love to hear from you. You can find me at www.karenEosborne.com and on my YouTube  channel or at Karen E Osborne Author on FB. 

 

 

 

Guest blogger - Vaseem Khan

 

Hello. Abir here. This week I'm handing my spot over to my good friend and co-presenter of the Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast, Vaseem Khan. Vaseem is the author of the Inspector Chopra series and the CWA Historical Dagger winning Persis Wadia series, both set in Bombay. His latest novel, The Dying Day, is out now. You should buy it because if you don't, he has threatened to hit me with a stick.

Now. Over to Vaseem.

How has writing changed your life and how has life changed your writing?

by Vaseem Khan, author, The Dying Day

‘As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.’ So goes the opening line from Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s classic film, chronicling the escapades of mafia-associate-turned-informant Henry Hill. 

            I feel an affinity with Hill. Not because I wanted to be an informant or a gangster – though that was always an option in the East London neighbourhood I grew up in – but because as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. Even in school I was that irritating little kid who submitted illegible forty-page stories about three-legged goblins and talking toadstools when all our poor teacher wanted was something easy to mark along the lines of ‘what I did on my holidays’.

            As a teenager, I came across Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, prompting me to write a towering comic SF fantasy, submitting it to several agents, and then sitting back to wait for the life of riches and fame I supposed was every author’s right. 

There was one small problem. The book was crap. 

            I spent the next twenty-three years writing six more novels, each one garnering another round of death threats from agents up and down the land. (OK. So the abuse was imagined, but I’m sure they were thinking it.) Literary fiction, thrillers, even erotica, replete with toe-curlingly bad sex scenes. (Think Fifty Shades of Grey, but with a dose of Nabokovian literary playfulness to break up the gratuitous dialogue and exotic sex toys.)

            It wasn’t until I allowed life – namely, the decade I spent in India – to flow through me onto the page, that I finally found a publishing deal. It’s that old saw: write what you know. All those years of chasing what I thought the market wanted, when all I had to do was write about the country I’d found myself in at the age of 23, a wet-eared innocent thrust into the splendour and squalor of a nation changing beyond all recognition, beset, on all sides, by lepers, beggars, eunuchs, slumdogs, and the sort of mad, bad co-inhabitants that would make even Byron hurl himself off a cliff. 

            The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra chronicles that India. Published in 2015, it finally vindicated more than two decades of soul-destroying effort. (In your face, ex-English teacher!) The book introduces us to the eponymous Chopra, a rigid and honest policeman who retires from the Mumbai police service in his late forties but is beset with the need to continue pursuing justice. And so he investigates a murder. At the same time, he also happens to inherit a baby elephant, a device I used to symbolise the fabulousness of the subcontinent. 

Chopra is my alter-ego, troubled by the social inequalities of a country that local politicians continue to herald (in the face of all evidence) as a sort of modern, spice-infused Eden. The book became a bestseller, translated into sixteen languages, and selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 40 best crime novels published between 2015-2020. Four more in the series followed, permitting me to cling grimly onto the Eiger-like face of the modern publishing mountain, from whence so many authors topple to their literary deaths after a ‘promising debut’. 

            Fast forward six years. 

I have now published seven books (or more correctly, my publisher, Hodder & Stoughton has published…), five in the Chopra series, and two in a new historical crime series set in 1950s Bombay. The first of these, Midnight at Malabar House, won the Crime Writers Association Historical Dagger in 2021. The book introduces us to India’s first female police detective, and her English forensic scientist sidekick.

            Why go historical? 

Well, if I might be permitted to don my pretentious-author hat for a moment (mine has feathers in it, plucked from the tail of the legendary Garuda bird, and soaked in the blood of my enemies): it was the desire to examine the roots of the modern India I wrote about in my first series, to frame the narrative that links past and present. India in 1950 is a turbulent place, just three years after Independence, Gandhi’s assassination, and the horrors of Partition. Tens of thousands of foreigners linger in the country. One such Brit, a senior diplomat, is murdered, and the case falls into my heroine’s lap.

That India, led by Gandhi’s colleague and friend, Nehru, set the tone for the country that would subsequently emerge, as the nation came to grips with running herself after three centuries of foreign interference. My hope, with Midnight at Malabar House, was to shake some of that old history loose, to edify and educate, all wrapped up in a good old-fashioned murder mystery.

            The second in the Malabar House series, The Dying Day, has just come out. The blurb? It’s Bombay, 1950.When a 600-year-old copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy vanishes from Bombay’s Asiatic Society, the case lands on Inspector Persis Wadia’s desk. Uncovering a series of complex riddles written in verse, Persis – together with English forensic scientist Archie Blackfinch – is soon on the trail. But then they discover the first body... The initial reviews have been gratifyingly positive. The Observer calls it a ‘delicious treat of a historical crime novel’. Crime writing legend Ann Cleeves says of the book: ‘This is a crime novel for everyone; for those who love traditional mysteries there are clues, codes and ciphers, but it also had a harder edge and a post-war darkness.’ 

Is this my subtle way of urging you to purchase a copy? Why, yes. Nothing subtle about it. There are no guarantees in this business. Each book is another leap across the canyon on a clapped-out motorbike. We authors are utterly reliant on the kindness of reader-folk. 

            So, has writing changed my life?

            As I sit on my golden throne, barking instructions at my manservant, sipping on the finest port from a gem-encrusted goblet, I reflect on how little my life has actually changed. I still love to read books (even ones written by other people); I love to play cricket (by play I mean turn up for the first match of the year, pick up an injury, and spend the rest of the season jealously sniping from the side-lines at my teammates); I love to go to the cinema (on my own, these days, as my wife has boycotted the sort of films I like to watch); I love to eat out with friends (yes, I do have some, thank you very much!); and, above all, I love to write. 

            I’m fortunate enough to be able to continue to create worlds and characters that intrigue me, and, hopefully, my readers. And that, ultimately, is a sort of literary success story, isn’t it? To know that somewhere in the world, someone is reading – hopefully with some measure of enjoyment – the words that little old me dreamed up. 

            Believe me, when I tell you, I am grateful beyond words, and more than anything else, that is what inspires me to keep on keeping on.

 

Note: There’s currently a free short story available on my website in the Malabar House series and a competition to win a box of crime fiction bestsellers.

 

Vaseem’s website: www.vaseemkhan.com

Vaseem’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/VaseemKhanUK