Shannon Dittemore is the author of the Angel Eyes trilogy. She has an overactive imagination and a passion for truth. Her lifelong journey to combine the two is responsible for a stint at Portland Bible College, performances with local theater companies, and a focus on youth and young adult ministry. For more about Shan, check out her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Happy Friday, friends! When I was mulling over what to write about today, I noticed that both Steph and Jill have addressed story openings lately. Steph did it in her post on prologues and Jill did it just the other day with her article on making your openings intriguing.
I thought I’d add my voice to the conversation as well. Or, rather, I thought I’d steal Kurt Vonnegut’s words and give you my thoughts. Here’s what he has to say:
This certainly isn’t a new concept. Not by any stretch of the imagination, but until recently I hadn’t seen it written out in so simple a way. It’s given me a lot to think about. Namely, backstory.
Here’s what Stephen King says about backstory:
When you start your novel as near to the end as you possibly can, you’re doing yourself a favor with all that backstory you’ve developed. You’ve just made it interesting. Think about what Suzanne Collins did in The Hunger Games.
Peeta and Katniss have a history, don’t they? But Collins didn’t start the story on the day Peeta tossed Katniss a burnt piece of bread. She left it as a juicy bit of backstory we don’t mind her taking the time to explain later. It reveals something about Peeta’s character and gives us compassion for Katniss, a girl who’d rather keep everyone at a distance.
By starting the story on reaping day, Collins places us smack dab in the middle of the action, and when the time is right, she lets Katniss tell the reader all about the time the boy with the blond eyelashes saved her life.
She doesn’t dump it on us. In fact, she doesn’t bring it up at all until Katniss sees Peeta at the sorting. The unveiling of the information is organic and I like that. In reality, she’s stopping the story to tell us a bit of history, but we don’t even notice because of the action happening all around. It’s masterful.
This technique, when done well, can actually be hard to spot. All we know, as a reader, is that the story has started just where it should have.