THE ART & CRAFT OF WRITING CHRISTIAN FICTION by Jeff Gerke

Author:Jeff Gerke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Categories of Telling

There are three main areas in which novelists generally resort to telling: Backstory, exposition, and explanation of character motivation. But they all have one thing in common: They stop the story cold and elicit snores from the reader.

Backstory is background information about your story, the environment, the setting, the characters, and the relationships. Here are some examples:

Kevin had grown up in affluence. His parents had always given him whatever he wanted. So he was spoiled, too. When he was ten, his mother bought him a …

The planet had been colonized two hundred years ago as part of the empire’s sweeping plan to …

Jerry used to be Susie’s boyfriend, but that was before Susie caught Jerry kissing Delilah, who had been Tom’s girl before the operation.

Do you see how the story has shifted into neutral (or park, or even reverse) while the author spoon-feeds the reader information about how things were before the story began? Nothing is actually happening. The story is stalled while we are forced to endure a lecture on the lore of yesteryear.

Backstory is similar to someone delaying the beginning of a movie in order to stand in front of the audience and say, “Before you can watch this you need to understand the distribution channels we went through to bring this to you. And you probably need to understand how distribution works in other industries besides the film industry. It all began back in …” The audience would revolt, shouting, “Shut up and get on with the story!”

Good advice.

Don’t explain everything that happened before now. Resist the urge to “get everything on the table” for the reader. Don’t front-load your story with explanation of that background.

The second category of telling is exposition. Exposition is when the novelist explains everything that’s happening and why.

The movers had used heavy-duty packing tape because sometimes the lighter stuff gave way and someone’s belongings would come crashing to the floor.

The events that took place over the next month were the strangest the town had ever known.

As Browne & King say in their fabulous book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: “Resist the urge to explain.” This kind of telling is like meta-information. It’s information about the story rather than something in the story itself. Readers don’t care. Don’t explain everything.

Finally, telling happens in character motivations when the novelist caves into the impulse to explain everything about her characters.

“Oh, my!” Twilene was impressed with what the general had said. “I’m so impressed with what you just said, General!”

“But everyone knows I’m not making this up, right?” Jerome said, looking for some support because he was feeling insecure.

Do you see how the character’s motives were explained? Lucy had a fear of being outside, so she always stayed indoors if she could. How boring is that? It’s like cheating. You’ve communicated something interesting about your character, but you’ve done it in the most uninteresting way possible.

Worse, if you write it like that, it won’t even impact the reader’s mind. You might tell us that she’s scared of the outdoors, but until you show her being afraid of going outside, we won’t believe it.

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