Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Mon, Oct 12 2015
Past Tense
A few days ago I saw a self-captioned photo online of someone I knew perhaps three decades ago. The person was still reminiscing about old times. I was surprised until I realized that this had been an old habit they had even when I knew them and had possibly repeated itself many times over the years. The old days were where everything happened for this person, where all the action took place. Their present was someplace they had been thrust into the way a six of clubs is dealt from a deck of cards, thrown onto the table of life through no choice of their own. Their talk of future was full of hopeful dreams, but the dreams were rarely based on reality from their past choices or present circumstances. Their self-trajectory for the future seemed based on something that might happen to them instead of on something they might help make happen.
Real people have a history when we meet them, but if they spend most of their time steeping in their history, it's hard to build a relationship with them in the present or make plans with them for the future. So I thought of the way writers handle our fictional characters. When we tell a character's story, we create a back story for them in our minds, so that we know them well, but we usually write more about their present and we hint at their future. We might sprinkle in bits of the back story, but we use it like a fine spice to enhance the reader's experience. (There are exceptions, of course, such as characters who are time-travelers or who remember nothing except their past because of a medical issue.) But a writer simply can't afford the luxury of leaving all characters in the past. We have to present a story that makes readers want to turn a page or move to the next scene to see what happens next.
posted at: 07:10 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
A few days ago I saw a self-captioned photo online of someone I knew perhaps three decades ago. The person was still reminiscing about old times. I was surprised until I realized that this had been an old habit they had even when I knew them and had possibly repeated itself many times over the years. The old days were where everything happened for this person, where all the action took place. Their present was someplace they had been thrust into the way a six of clubs is dealt from a deck of cards, thrown onto the table of life through no choice of their own. Their talk of future was full of hopeful dreams, but the dreams were rarely based on reality from their past choices or present circumstances. Their self-trajectory for the future seemed based on something that might happen to them instead of on something they might help make happen.
Real people have a history when we meet them, but if they spend most of their time steeping in their history, it's hard to build a relationship with them in the present or make plans with them for the future. So I thought of the way writers handle our fictional characters. When we tell a character's story, we create a back story for them in our minds, so that we know them well, but we usually write more about their present and we hint at their future. We might sprinkle in bits of the back story, but we use it like a fine spice to enhance the reader's experience. (There are exceptions, of course, such as characters who are time-travelers or who remember nothing except their past because of a medical issue.) But a writer simply can't afford the luxury of leaving all characters in the past. We have to present a story that makes readers want to turn a page or move to the next scene to see what happens next.
posted at: 07:10 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
