Skip to main content

Unseen Background Details by Mary Deal

 
 
As a writer, you may find that TV characters can be emotionally flat time and again. What sets them apart, even what gets the viewer to like them, is that we can see them. We see their facial expressions and how they react to other people and occurrences. We see their actions, which express motivations and emotion. We see the background scenery and how they act and react in such a setting.
What we see on TV or in a film is exactly what many writers fail to include in their stories.
Details we see in a picture don't have to be explained because we see them. When writing our stories and books, we must skillfully describe the important silent background details for the reader.
A simplified example: If the reader doesn't know the character is caught out in a rainstorm, how will the reader know anything except that the character is walking down a street?
We must describe the setting. If it was raining, don't stop there.
 
Was it a thunderstorm or simply sprinkling?
Did the character get caught without a raincoat and umbrella?
Was the sky dark, or was the sun shining through the rain?
Was the wind blowing?
Who else was nearby and how did they react to the rain?
 
We writers must include in our written works anything that might otherwise be seen when viewing the same scene on TV or in a film. Yet, we cannot over-do the details by stopping the story and describing the background.
Every detail necessary should be woven into the action as long as it enhances the scene. Which do you prefer?
 
The sky was dark. Lightning lit up the distant sky. Thunder rolled. The wind was fierce. It bent her umbrella backwards. She discarded it. Rain pelted down. She wore a raincoat but was now getting drenched.
 
Or this:
 
When lightning flashed and thunder rolled again and the deluge came, she grabbed the collar of her raincoat, drew it up around her neck, and began running. Her umbrella bent backwards as the wind tore it from her hands. Her hair hung in loose wet ringlets as water streamed off the ends and ran down inside her collar. How did she ever let herself get caught alone on a dark street with wind strong enough to blow her over the side of the bridge? And why had that dark sedan slowed its speed to keep pace directly behind her?
 
The rule is never to stop the story to describe the background or scene, but to include the surroundings among the action performed by each character and as it affects that character.



LINK TO AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE: 


Author, Painter, Photographer
Eric Hoffer Book Award Winner
National Indie Excellence Book Awards Finalist (past)
Pushcart Prize Nominee
Global eBook Awards Nominee
2014 National Indie Excellence Book Awards Finalist
Global eBook Awards Bronze
Global eBook Awards Silver



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MARGARET FIELAND INTERVIEW (guest blogger)

When did you first know you were destined to be a writer? LOL, I never realized I was destined to be a writer -- I fell into it. I'd written poetry for years, collecting it in notebooks stacked in my attic when I wrote one I wanted to keep. This led me to several online sites and ultimately to discovering the Muse Online Writers Conference where I hooked up with Linda Barnett Johnson and joined her writers forums. She required everyone to write both fiction and poetry, so, with much trepidation, I started writing fiction. Then I got hooked on it, wrote a chapter book, took the ICL course and actually learned how to write it. Then in 2010, I was seized by a desire to write a sci fi novel, so I spent six weeks or so on world building, mostly, with a bit of plotting thrown in for good measure. Who would you cite as your influences? I'm a way-back sci-fi fan, and Robert A. Heinlein influenced me heavily. I took a lot away from his writing, notably the value of surpris...
6 comments
Read more

A Tip for Authors: What to Put on the Back Cover of a Book

If you have accomplished the arduous task of writing a book, you may not embrace the job of choosing what to put on your book's back cover. Maybe you think that a short biography, along with a few endorsements should suffice. Actually the material on the back cover can carry out its intended job, without the presence of a two or three line bio. It does pay to highlight any endorsements you have received from experts within the industry, or from recognized members of government or society. Still, you may not have on file an endorsement that can stir up the emotions in a potential reader. Yet you have little reason to hope that the reader of the rear covering piece will elect to look at the pages between the covers, if you fail to trigger that same person's emotions. With that fact in mind, you must consider what emotions might push a book lover to purchase the publication that bears your name. Maybe that potential reader feels challeng...
Post a Comment
Read more

Those S and ES Endings by Mary Deal

These endings have always troubled me until I finally decided to get it right. Compare the versions and pick out the correct usages in this name ending with the letter s . The Joneses came for dinner. The Jones’s came for dinner. The Jones came for dinner. John Joneses car stalled. John Jones car stalled. John Jones’s car stalled. That Jones’s girl. That Joneses girl. That Jones girl. The correct sentences are: The Joneses came for dinner. John Jones’s car stalled. That Jones girl. Some tips: When a name ends with an s, and when speaking of the family as a group, add es , as in Joneses. When speaking about something John Jones owned, it is his property and, therefore, an apostrophe and s shows ownership, as in Jones’s . When speaking about a person in the singular, use only the name Jones. However, when speaking about a group of girls all named Jones, you would write that sentence: The Jones girls . Notice that the name stays...
2 comments
Read more