TECH: Background

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 25 Jan 2010

Writers Digest, August 2008, page 71-72 have an article by Steve Almond with the title, "Background." It starts out with the little story that follows...

"Years ago I served as a teaching assistant in a fiction class. The instructor was a sweet grouch with a penchant for dogma. One day, someone asked if there was anything the narrator had to reveal on page one. He sighed deeply. 'The narrator should tell the reader everything he needs to know in the first sentence.'"

Steve goes on to explain that the teacher emphasized that we should know who the protagonist is, where we are, and what the situation is.

Steve reminds us that he believes the Hippocratic oath of writing is: never confuse the reader. And when we thrust a reader into a story without the facts, we're confusing them!

He gives an example of a student story that starts out:

I can remember the first time I saw her It was hard to miss her that night.

When you read that, you want to know who the speaker is, who she is, where they are, and what makes her hard to miss, at least. Steve says that in the student's story, all that information was much later in the story. His suggested rewrite started out:

The first time I saw Tammy Feldman was at Deke's Sadie Hawkins bash. She was wearing a plaid mini and doing shots off my girlfriend's belly.

What do you think? Is the rewrite clearer? One thing I notice is that we still don't know who "I" am, but...

Here's another beginning. What do you think about it?

His shirt was red and his knuckles were warped and there was broken glass under his feet. He could hear shouting. He headed for the road that would take him back to her.

Guess what? This is about a protagonist who gets into a bar fight and heads for refuge with an old girlfriend. Did you guess that?

But you don't want to bury the beginning in background details, right? So which ones do you use?

Steve suggests a simple rule of thumb -- make sure the reader knows at least as much as your protagonist. In that last example, the hero knows he's in a bar, he's had a fight that made his shirt bloody, and that he's trying to escape. So let the reader know that, too.

Give the reader the facts that create the emotional significance of the scene...and they'll go right along with you.

So why do we hide information? Uncertainty -- we (the writers) aren't sure where to start, and then don't go back and revise. Insecurity -- we may try to create curiosity by hiding facts, but it isn't what happens that makes a story interesting, it's the how and the why. Arrogance -- sometimes writers think it is beneath them to explain to their readers. But if you're not writing for the reader, who are you writing for?

Steve's final paragraph...

"Readers are by nature generous creatures. They come to a story, or a novel, eager to lose themselves in an imagined world. This requires that they attach themselves to the fate of one or more characters. But this empathic bond can only occur if authors share with us -- as soon as possible -- the specific fears and desires of their creations."

Make sure your first sentence has enough background to let the readers dive in.

Write?