Tag: infodump

World Building Tips for Authors

forbes westGuest Post
by Forbes West

People come up to me – at bars, restaurants, half-way houses, and ask, “Forbes? That you?” After a few moments of sideways glances and awkward chatter, they will soon say to me, “Boy, Nighthawks at the Mission (available at Amazon.com now), you really set up a world there, whoa, I gotta say, you know, that world you built in that sci-fi story, yowza.” And I’ll nod and glance at my watch and exit the room quietly after making an excuse as I do not like talking to strangers.

After I’ve walked away and soon realize I left my keys in my other jacket pocket and I have to wait around an hour for my wife to come open the front door, I sometimes reflect to myself, what is world building? How does one do it without submerging the real stuff of story – the characters, the plot – and explain this new setting to the reader who doesn’t have the privilege of sitting inside my brain the entire day?

When I started writing Nighthawks at the Mission (available at Amazon.com now) I didn’t even exactly start with the story. I started by making up the actual entire world that this story would inhabit. Continue reading “World Building Tips for Authors”

Top 10 Ways to Lose a Reader

top-ten-list-top-95717_960_720Or maybe that should be bottom. These are ten of the … what should I call them? Mistakes I commonly see in indie books. Pet peeves. Maybe just the kind of things that will turn me off when reading a book.

I’m no David Letterman, but we’ll try it his way. Continue reading “Top 10 Ways to Lose a Reader”

Are You Pro Prologues? (Baby Got Backstory, Part II)

Last week we talked about backstory, how much is too much and nifty ways to use it. What about a prologue? Should you have one? Is it a great way to lay down a lot of background up front? Or will readers just buzz past it to get to Chapter One? Does all that backstory make my butt look big? No. Don’t answer that one.

However, there is no right or wrong answer about prologues. There is only Elmore Leonard and he is to blame. Well, not really. But that’s what happens when a popular author does something relatively bold – starts in the meat of the action and is successful at it – that gets writers thinking they have to do the same thing and readers thinking that most stories should start in the middle of a hostage situation. Continue reading “Are You Pro Prologues? (Baby Got Backstory, Part II)”

Baby Got Backstory (Part 1)

Backstory presents a challenge to a lot of writers. Not the writing of it. We’re pretty good at that. We can dream up plenty of history about the guy down the street who likes to wear pink, patent leather go-go boots to water his azaleas. Trouble is, some writers don’t know when to stop, or where and how to work it into the story.

There are no hard and fast rules about backstory; like most things in writing, it depends. Readers need to know enough to become invested in the story, but not so much that they get distracted from the action. Some genres need more than others. If you build worlds from scratch, you probably need to provide more explanation than those of us who set their stories on Earth as we know it. You may need to tell the reader that there are two suns, six moons, and seven species of sentient beings on your fictional planet because the rest of the universe exploded, leaving only these survivors, who all speak different languages and would hate each other even if they could communicate. Readers of fantasy and science fiction probably expect a certain amount of backstory.

In other types of fiction, particularly contemporary, less is more, and in all types, how you use it matters. Continue reading “Baby Got Backstory (Part 1)”