Mission Accomplished (I think)

So much writing to do and so little time. The good news is that the rewrite is finished. I’m letting it steep for 24 hours, and then I’ll proof it one more time before I fire it off to my agent in time for the Friday deadline. That 24-hour period is vital in the prevention of RSM’s (really stupid mistakes).

And okay, I admit it, I like the rewrite better. The back-story is less clunky. If you don’t write, you have no idea how hard back-story is. The idea with a novel is to begin at a point of high conflict, but to do that, your characters have to have a history that led them up to this moment. The trick is to clue the reader in on this without telling them a whole, boring, ten-page story before the book really begins. Well, okay, Dickens did it, but a) I’m no Dickens, and b) I don’t really care for Dickens.

If the writer does her job, you get all of the history that you need, but you’re hardly aware of how you’re getting it. Before I started writing novels, I could enjoy a book without that awareness. Now, I am painfully conscious of it. Even if the writer does a great job sneaking that stuff in, I have to pause and think, “Ooooh, nice way to do back-story.” If it’s not well done, I think, “Ooooh, kachunk! Dropped that one in like a bomb, huh?” It’s incredibly annoying either way.

This is yet another problem with choosing an unconventional setting. If I set my book in the Regency time period, my reader automatically knows that women are supposed to marry up, but men never down unless there is a great deal of money involved, in which case they must endure the blow to their pride and take the money. If it’s your standard medieval, marriages are made so that the men in the families can merge lands and titles. In either time period, lands and titles come together as a package deal, always inherited by the eldest son or closest male relative.

Anglo Saxon families voted on which member of the family would get the title after the one who previously held it died. Women could own property—vast amounts of it, actually, complete with what amounted to serfs and vassals (though neither term was in use and there were no equivalents), but they couldn’t inherit titles. Not every chunk of land had a title attached at all. The whole feudal system hadn’t really been developed. There were no knights. They didn’t have a word for serf. There were freemen and slaves. In the ruling class, there were dukes and earls and a warrior class, some landed, some not, but all of the same rank. Oh yeah, and no castles.

Did you know all this stuff? Most of my readers won’t, so I have to clue them in without boring them. It’s about the story, not the history. This is why Kristin would rather I tweaked the facts and used settings and terms that I don’t have to educate my readers about. Well, for one thing, I’d just die if a reader or reviewer nailed me on historical accuracy. I’d look like I was sloppy or not very bright, neither of which appeals to me as a label. For another, according to the Myer-Briggs personality test, I’m an ENFJ. Ya know what that is? A bloody teacher. Yup, that’s the single word used to describe the type. I’m hopeless. It’s in my DNA or something. (Actually, it is—my great-grandfather was a teacher. I have his 19th century gradebook with names and grades and everything!)

But I digress. The point is, I got the chapter finished, just in time to spend Friday evening and all day Saturday at a speech meet and to grade a bunch of book reports. Do you suppose that, while my students were reading those books, any of them paused to appreciate that elegant use of back-story? I don’t think so either.

tags: writing