Writing Unforgettable Characters: How to Create Story People Who Jump Off the Page (Bell on Writing Book 12) by James Scott Bell

Author:James Scott Bell [Bell, James Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Compendium Press
Published: 2020-08-16T23:00:00+00:00

We then cut to the mother’s funeral, and the narrator, Will Klein, leaving the house to walk through his old neighborhood. He has a specific place he’s going to, the place where a terrible murder happened years before. Along the way he describes the setting and drops in some backstory, especially about one night when his big brother explained the “facts of life” to him from a ninth grader’s perspective. It’s a warm, human bit that creates sympathy. But Coben weaves it in with the action, which is about the narrator getting to the murder spot. That happens on the very next page. Very little time is lost to backstory.

Some time ago I interviewed Laura Caldwell, author of the Izzy McNeil series. She told me the following:

“I wish I’d known how to weave in background information instead of dumping it in big chunks. It’s still something I struggle with, although I think I’ve improved a lot. It’s a skill that has to constantly be refined so the background information which gets delivered reads and feels organic right at that point in the story.”

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