Where To Start

Spring is typically contest season in the romance community. Nearly every RWA chapter runs a contest for unpublished authors to submit their work for consideration. I offered to judge a host of different contests this year, running the gamut of genres from YA to historical, fantasy and beyond, and selected the best of the bunch in each category I judged.

As icing on the cake, I attended a workshop last weekend where the first pages of the various authors in attendance were read and commented on by two literary agents and an industry speaker.

The results of my various critiques of the contest entries and the results of the panel last weekend were remarkably similar. It didn't matter if the work was science fiction, memoir, YA or traditional fiction, the overwhelming criticism was the book began in the wrong place. The author was trying to get all the backstory set in place, or 'walk the dog' by relaying every little thing going on in the scene instead of jumping in where the action started.

The best piece of advice about backstory I ever received was to pull out all the backstory and paste it on a page. Then, pretend the page was written on glass and drop it on the floor. As you pick up the splinters, use only that much at a time of the backstory and weave it into the storyline. Stephen King is even more succinct:

That's not to say backstory isn't important. Of course it is, and you, as an author, need to know what compelling forces happened to form your character, make them act and react in the way they do. But, as a reader, you don't want the whole story in the first chapter. Otherwise, why bother reading the rest of the book? The reader needs to develop a relationship with the character much the same way one does in person. You find out little nuggets of information about a person a bit at a time. 

So, my advice, as a result of all this passing of judgment, is to go back to the start of that manuscript you've been working on and look at it again. When does the action start? Have you written the first pages just to get your mindset in place about the character? If you answered yes to the second question, remove those pages and file them away in your character folder. Open with the action. I'm revising a work I started six months ago because, after sitting through one reading after another last weekend, I realized this particular work is guilty of the same thing. I start with description and backstory instead of getting right to the action. Which proves you're never too seasoned to learn something new. 

Back To The Drawing Board

Like most authors, I'm constantly searching for new ways to approach my craft. I take online and in person workshops, read articles on how to show vs. tell, enter contests for published authors showcasing their new work. Since I have been published for four years, some folks think I don't need to do this anymore since I must know it all by now.

If only it were that simple.

I had an idea for a contemporary two years ago, which was to be part of a trilogy. I wrote the manuscript, found an agent to peddle it for me, had it sent out all over the place, and got no bites. I fired the agent, took a look at the editing notes the agent only gave me after the first round of rejections, and revised the manuscript. I then sent if off myself to another publishing house with whom I've had some dealings in the past. Their acquisitions person got back to me saying she'd love to work with me, liked my work, but wanted me to change the beginning, middle and end. I told her I'd get back to her, and promptly filed the manuscript away for a rainy day.

It's not raining, but we did have a freakish snow storm here in Ohio over the weekend, so I thought it was a perfect time to pull it out and take another look at it. After reading the first twenty pages, I realized I hadn't run the document through my checklist, since some of my taboo words showed up with an uneasy frequency. Maybe the acquisitions editor wasn't so far off the mark after all.

I still think I'll send it elsewhere when I deem it ready to go again. And I'm not writing books two and three in this trilogy until the first one finds a home.