Over the month of January, I collected the stories I found on Twitter and in my feeds that were just too good to miss and put them together for you! Welcome to “Thinky Links“!

Author Janice Hardy offers some good advice on how to cut a scene without hurting your story

Kristen Lamb gives a really good example of how to start in medias res.

The Editors’ Blog looks at the use of coincidence in fiction, why it’s bad—and how to fix it.

I’ve been working hard on revising my Nano novel, so I’m really far behind on my feeds, but I did happen to see two good posts on EditTorrent recently, the kind that make me want to run around telling people “I’ve been vindicated” in an imaginary battle I was having with no one. The first covers showing versus telling in an interesting way (i.e. not writing 101), including that was is not always bad and is not the same thing as passive voice, and the role of telling in exposition.

The second is how to avoid that obnoxious “As you know, Bob” (or Alphonse) dialogue by slipping in backstory, characterization and other information through subtle cues. I LOVE working on this, and Alicia gives great examples!

Although I’m now with a traditional, regional publisher, I still find self-publishing very interesting. So for two different perspectives on that this month, Daniel J. Friedman takes a hard look at the numbers behind self publishing: what they make, what they’re worth, and what they’re selling. On the other hand, Joanna Penn interviewed Adam Croft on How To Sell 130,000 Books Without A Publisher. And for some perspective on both sides, Future Book looks at Why Amanda Hocking Switched, with some interesting notes on how her publishers are working for her.

And to close, here are a few of my favorite posts on this blog from Januaries past:

• A perennial favorite of mine, how to spot and avoid the most common (empty) gestures in writing
• Another one I still use extensively, creating and editing with a scene chart
• And a few from the series on tension, suspense and surprise:
  • Choosing whether plot elements should be set up strongly to create suspense, or should remain a surprise
  • One I should probably study a little more: creating suspense in Act I
  • What creates tension and suspense?

What’s the best writing/marketing/publishing advice you‘ve read lately?

Photo by Karola Riegler

Keep collecting your favorite posts on writing for Writing Wednesday next week!

When I saw Jeannie’s guest post on author Elizabeth Mueller’s blog (another friend!), I knew I had to play along. Normally I’m reluctant to post much about my works (aside from excerpts that have done well in contests), but I’m making an exception today. It’s just three questions, right? And since I’m still working on falling back in love with my story, this seems like a fun opportunity. Plus it’s just three questions.

The character I’m playing with today is Frank Walters. He served in the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and when the story takes place, just after the war, he’s with the Central Intelligence Group (predecessor of the CIA). Physically, he’s based loosely on my husband’s grandfather Walter, who was in the Navy in WWII, pictured here. (Somehow we ended up with his WWII scrapbook. He traveled the whole world during the war, with pictures and postcards from Hawaii, Scotland, Iceland, Morocco, the South Pacific, and I know he served in Japan, too.)

And over to Frank:

What is your greatest fear?

Losing myself to the job. The peace might not be as assured as the general public would like to believe, but I’m here to keep things from falling apart again. At the same time, I need to prove something to myself—that we’ll prevail. That I’m on the right side. That we’re the right side because of our principles, and we don’t have to undermine those principles to do it.

What is your biggest accomplishment?

I don’t know. Standing up for someone who’s weak. Doing the right thing when it’s hard. It takes a lot of those little things like that to make it worth it—and just one failure to wipe it all out.

What is your biggest regret?

After the war, we had custody of a bunch of the Nazis’ POWs, including some Soviets. Some secret deal at one of the Big Three conferences included one little stipulation that we must’ve bowed to: all Soviets would be returned to the USSR.

Some of these men said they’d never even been to the Soviet Union. Some of them had come from there, and they couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the constant terror. After surviving a Nazi concentration camp, they’d be labeled as traitors and German spies. Maybe sent to Soviet labor camps. Maybe executed.

They begged us not to return them, to shoot them instead. Some of them even killed themselves before we handed them over.

But I followed orders. I sent grown men—and boys—begging, screaming and crying for mercy . . . to the slaughter.

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Aaand back to me. Of these, question #3 was the only one I’d really worked on in depth before. #1 was there but this helped me refine and crystallize it a little. #2 was by far the most challenging. Isn’t that odd? Shouldn’t it be easier to think of something we’re proud of?

What do you think? What would your characters say? Which question would be hardest for you?

Right now, I’m dragging myself through a book. It’s supposed to be really good, but personally, I despise the main characters. They’re too perfect. Their lives aren’t perfect, but the bad stuff that’s happened to them is presented in a way that makes them victims instead of strugglers with strength.

Ugh. Just thinking about it gets me all het up again. Let me just give you a bulleted list as to why this wrong, immoral and bad.

• All this bad stuff happened to them years ago, but their struggles . . . well, in hindsight, maybe they weren’t so bad. Now life is practically perfect in every way. (You want to hear about those characters now, don’t you?)
• There’s nothing going on in the present as we spend pages twelve through sixteen recounting the last ten years of the characters’ lives (characters we met on page eleven).
• Five pages of telling. In the first 20 pages.
• It’s backstory where we need to get some story.
• The antagonists’ storyline is more interesting. I want to read more about them. Something is happening over there other than people sitting and thinking about their lives. The so-called heroes? Not so much.

In a romance, we don’t have to hear about every person the main characters have ever dated, and every bad date they’ve ever been on. In a mystery, we don’t have to have the hero’s case-solving track record presented in full color. In any genre, we don’t need a character’s life story the first time we meet them (this drives me nuts!). We just need to know what’s pertinent to the story. There is a better way to deliver backstory!

In fact, Livia Blackburne did an in-depth analysis of some comparable titles to her work to see how they handle backstory in the first chapters. Surprisingly, both Graceling and The Hunger Games deliver big chunks of backstory that early in the novel.

However, I think the key is how they do it, and what they choose to include. Livia catalogues each line of backstory from those chapters, including flashbacks. The backstory:

• Informs character relationships. Often just a line or paragraph about how they met or a nickname, but these seem to highlight their power dynamic now. (Katniss & Gayle, Katniss & Peeta.)
• Builds the world—focusing on conflict. (Katniss learns to hold her tongue about the government.)
• Shows history that relates to this moment in the story—especially as it helps us understand the conflict. (Livia notes that there was one section of backstory which she found less than compelling, which dealt with the history of the civilization.)

Agent Rachelle Gardner has a great post about choosing and using backstory:

When you’re bringing your reader into the world of your novel, you’re trying to engage their senses and their emotions right away to get them involved in the story. You need to make an emotional connection with the reader as quickly as possible. The way to do that is in the here and now, the action and dialogue taking place in the present time. It’s highly unlikely you’ll make an emotional connection through backstory. . . .

There are ways to bring the backstory into the book, and the key is to do it slowly. Think about giving just enough information to illuminate one tiny aspect of your character at a time. Place your characters in situations, let them react, and let your reader wonder how they got there and why they reacted that way. You want to be strategic, almost cunning, in the way that you let little bits of information from the past appear on the page. Use those pieces of backstory to slowly and carefully flesh out that character, never giving away too much, always leaving the reader guessing a little.

I worry that in the past I’ve come down too hard on backstory. It’s useful—really!—but in many cases it’s more useful to writers than to readers. You know that lady that corners you and makes you look at photos of all seventeen grandchildren? Don’t be that lady when it comes to backstory!

What do you think? How have you seen backstory done well?

Image credits: history—Kristian Bjornard, applause—Jonathan McPherskesen

I love my kids, and I love words, so it probably goes without saying that I love my kids’ words. My favorite is when my small children suddenly use large words. Among other favorite phrases, my two-year-old daughter has started saying “Acksee . . .” (actually). But I think the most surprising recent words were this:

Last night at dinner, we were talking about our visit with Nana (my mom). I asked my son Hayden what his favorite part of the visit was. He decided his favorite part was getting new blocks from Nana.

“Here’s the backstory,” he said. And he proceeded to explain in great detail the shopping trip a week ago when we bought the new blocks.

Even a five-year-old can understand backstory! (And we’ve talked about backstory before—for a whole series.)

What do you think? How often do you use backstory?

If you’ve been here a little while, you know that I’m a big fan of Alicia Rasley (and her co-blogger, Theresa Stevens, of course). I’m knee deep in revisions for the rest of the month, and Alicia goes and posts a great article on backstory. How can I not “reblog”?

A preview (emphasis and image added):

We know we need [backstory], so make it work. Part of the problem is that "layered-on" backstory (that which is meant to make the reader feel sorry for the character or understand some motivation) often ends up just being contrived– the rivets are showing, and the reader can feel the extraneousness of it. "Right, right, she was orphaned and we’re supposed to feel sorry for her. Got it." . . .

This makes the character and backstory work together for coherence. But the coherence requires us as writers taking the backstory we invent seriously, and imagining what it would REALLY cause in this particular person. That is, stop thinking of it as "backstory" and start thinking of it as "her/his past".

Read the rest: edittorrent: Coherence in backstory

What do you think? How can we take backstory more seriously and use it better?

Photo by Todd J