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This week: Holding Back Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
-Stephen King
But I'm going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I'm leaving out, because there's still stuff I'm just not going to tell you. Get used to it.
-Robin McKinley
No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.
-Lewis Carroll |
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I've written before of the importance of not telling your backstory up front. Starting with one or two characters and their actions is a much better way to hook readers and hold interest.
But there's more to it than that.
We're all familiar with the "mysterious past" trope, I'm sure - the one where the main character or his/her love interest or whatever is holding some deep secret that can never be told. And yes, sometimes it feels like a cheap trick to keep the reader's interest - but played right, it does just that.
Here's how to play it right, in my personal opinion:
1) Make it something extraordinary. If it turns out that the character lied on his tax forms, no one cares, not even if the reader works for the IRS.
2) Make it meaningful to the story, something that drives characters' motivations, either because they're trying to keep the secret, or because they're trying to ferret it out.
3) Know what it is from the beginning.
4) Drop hints. Throw in some red herrings.
5) Reveal it before the end.
Alternatively, there's the route Tarantino went in Pulp Fiction: There's something in that briefcase (or bag, or safe deposit box, or whatever). Maybe you, the author, knows what it is, or maybe not. What's essential to the plot there is not whether the container holds drugs or money or a new, free source of energy, but the fact that some people will kill to obtain it and others will die to protect it. Or whatever the plot is. Someone once asked me what I thought was in the briefcase, and I said it was a Plot Device.
In a case like that, revealing it can be an anticlimax. Sometimes you want that, but usually, in these situations, you only need to know that it's something that is valuable to someone.
Either way, when you do the reveal, the story's effectively over. So use it wisely. |
Just a few bits of fantasy:
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Last time, in "Zombies" , I talked about zombies.
ENB  : Interesting topic.  I think the same things can be said with ghosts only they're less real. I like to compare Tolkien's Ringwraiths/Nazgul with zombies because they both are in that undead state but yet so alive and vicious. Anyway...
Of course, the trick is putting your own spin on any of these monsters.
creatress : Yeah. They really are the perfect monsters. I don't watch many zombie movies, so I never really picked up on any of the characteristics that you just shared until now.
I actually haven't seen too many zombie movies. But I loved Zombieland.
writetight: I could not agree more, Robert, with your Fantasy newsletter concerning zombies. Humans have to have a healthy outlet for their hate. It's politically correct to take our base fears out on a zombie. Well done.
What do we fear most? For many, it's death and dying. For others, it's whatever is different. For a select few of us, it's clowns. What many of these fears have in common is the element of the unknown. So we take the essential elements (death, the Other, and feature-obliterating makeup) and bingo: zombies.
Futrboy : While the zombies we see are pitiful, shambling wrecks (most of the time), I believe our fear of Zombies is much more than just a fear of the Other. I think it's more of a reaction to changing times that are beyond our control.
When Universal Pictures began its zombie movies in the 1930's and 40's, zombies were slow-moving, mind-controlled slaves. It was no shock that most of those portrayed were black. The greatest fear in the movies was for a white person to become a zombie.
This, I believe, came from the Great Depression. Americans lost their jobs by the millions. The American Dream was dead in their eyes. A wave of despair washed over them, unstoppable. For the first time in a long time, a vast majority of Americans felt that they were not in control of their lives. Others, such as greedy fatcat bankers, held control of their fates. At the height of the Depression, I believe many people thought there was no end in sight. Movies like "White Zombie" showed that fear in no longer being in control of one's life.
After WWII, when the economy skyrocketed, zombie movies became passe, though they didn't go away. Then, in 1968, as America seemed to be on the edge of revolt with the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam protests and violence from domestic terror groups like the SLA and Weathermen.
In the midst of this came George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." Again, no surprise that it was set in the South, the area that felt most threatened by the Civil Rights Movement.
Ensuing movies would exploit (and sometimes parody) things believed to be overwhelming America, like commercialism ("Dawn of the Dead") and corporate greed ("Resident Evil"). Even "World War Z" got it right once, with the scene in Israeli as the Israelis fought to hold back hordes that are thinly disguised Palestinians.
With the crisis in Eastern Ukraine, the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa and ISIL, among others, one can see unlimited potential for future zombie outbreaks.
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I see you've given the subject more thought than I have. Well done.
That'll do it for me for September. See you next month! Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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Fantasy: September 24, 2014 Issue [#6566]
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