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 |   A month-long novel-planning challenge with prizes galore. |
Oct. 26: - Plot: CONTEST ROUND: Plot Background Story ā¼ Write a story that sets up your plot. EXAMPLE: The Lord of the Rings story revolves around the One Ring, its significance, and how it's destroyed. But how did Frodo get the One Ring in the first place? We learn that in The Hobbit. You obviously can't write a full-scale novel in 15 minutes, but you could write the scene where Bilbo encounters Gollum and stumbles across the ring. That would be a background story that sets up the plot in Lord of the Rings. So, the plot background story is a quick-fire fifteen minutes to almost write a prequel to your tale. This seems odd to some, I know, but I will give you an example. A few years ago, I had a story published in an anthology called Banned - horror stories based on rock music (mine was based on a Linkin Park song). We were then asked to write a drabble (exactly 100 words) as a prequel to set up the main story, released as a bonus book Banned Drabbles. Some of the writers felt it destroyed the mystique of their story; others felt there was nothing beforehand, but we'd signed the contract and there it was - we'd agreed to this. Some of these prequel stories - plot set-up stories, if you will - ended up being more inventive than the actual short story they led to! In my case, it made me look at the motives for the guy who ended up being killed by a revenant-type creature in the main story, something I'd touched on in the main story, but only explained on the periphery - it wasn't vital to the story itself - and so exploring that enabled me to write a drabble about a nasty little Satanic-styled ritual. So, what this rather long-winded post is saying is simple: don't think of it as something that is going to ruin a story or go over information that will be covered in the story, think of it as something that could give colour if included in the introduction or something like that. Don't think of a dry essay like a lot of Tolkien's extra works, but a fun little tale that can stand on its own as well as adding to the world-building or lore of your story. Good luck! |
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