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 For Authors: January 22, 2020 Issue [#9979] |
 This week: Let's Play Show or Tell Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading   More Newsletters By This Editor    1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions 
 
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As writers, we use ‘backstory’ to do this. We know the details behind our characters’ actions; we know how the ‘snapshots’ of poetic stanzas evolve to reach their full-screen resolution; we know what each of our characters does, looks like, thinks like, fears and hopes. We share with our readers only enough of this information to draw them into the story and make them understand why events are unfolding as they are, why characters act as they do, and make them want to know more. We don’t want to give them everything, they don't need an information dump to distract them from the world we’re creating for them with our story or poem. Our reader doesn’t care, and doesn’t need to know, what each character had for breakfast (unless perhaps poison is involved). . 
Prologue - establishes something that our readers then want to see answered. It provides the premise for what is to follow. To make our readers want to learn more, engage their emotions, remember to give just enough information to to actively engage them with characters or ideas; jump them into our 'otherworld.' By otherworld, I mean taking our readers on a journey for a time away from their immediate surroundings by engaging them with the images created by our words poetic or prosaic. By revealing some dynamic event or interplay between characters, we can make our reader want to learn more. By telling them a little bit up front, we can make them want to know more, and they will turn the page to find out.
Flashback - on the other hand, answers a question we've posed for our readers; tells them something in response to action that's taken place. It's an effective way of weaving history into the ongoing story. For example, Mike will not consider living in a house without a basement, one without a foundation. He becomes again the five year old running for the door his grandpa held open against the storm. His grandpa stopped smiling as the oak hit the trailer, mashing it, and his grandpa, into the unyielding ground. 
Dialogue - is a dynamic way of engaging our readers in backstory, and give depth to the characters themselves. Conversation among characters is an effective way of telling why they are taking one action over another, foreshadowing events to come by alluding to events in the characters' past. It can be overt or subtle, proclaim deeds done or allude to the motive for what may occur. 
Narrative - is another way that we can 'tell' our readers something, either using your character's voice or our own author's omniscient voice. Our character can provide background, internal and external, for action taking place or perhaps yet to occur. Or, as the omniscient author, we can offer third-person narrative to explain the present by relating it to the past.
