I’m missing my home in Santa Monica because I’ve been away for a while. Fall is creeping up here in the Midwest, with gloomy skies and changing leaves. While some of it’s nice, I miss my sunshine. I miss the ocean breeze. I miss the atmosphere. So you can imagine I was happy with the surprising hit that came from the decidedly New York movie, HappyThankYouMorePlease (just out on DVD).

The movie is a warm, nuanced look at young relationships and has a terrific script. So much is woven throughout it’s hard to encapsulate. Suffice it to say that even though it’s about New York City, the movie is infused with so much joy and love it seems to belie the city’s reputation.

What struck me head on, though, was the following description of Los Angeles. One of the main characters is being offered work on the “left coast.” (There was a heartbreaking—to me—sequence of him driving up the PCH that made me sniffle.) He and his girlfriend must decide if they will stay together if he pursues this option. He says to her:

Dave [the one offering the work] told me this great thing about LA. … He said he figured it out. He said the whole town is a blank canvas and whatever you bring to it, that’s what it is. It’s just this random collection of neighborhoods where it’s always sunny, and it basically reflects wherever you are back at you. You’re happy, LA’s great. You’re not, LA sucks. But it has nothing to do with Los Angeles cause get this … [with significance] … There’s no such thing.

Truth. This is truth. It’s the weirdest thing. LA is exactly what you make of it. It has no identity of its own, it’s whatever you want it to be. This is why you can be yourself there. Everyone else is being themselves, too. Just who you are, right then, that moment, is what you are.

True, you’re only as successful as your latest project. You’re only as well-known as the people who know you right now. You’re only as happy or as zen as you’ve made yourself be. You can’t blame the town—it’s paradise, after all. You are what you bring to it.

I dig this. Other places I’ve lived, my self-definition came from externals (my job, my neighborhood, my town, my friends). LA, though, is all about me. I am who I am. I can have eyes wide open and learn everywhere I go, or I can shape my own little existence to be exactly what I want it to be. It’s my choice.

Personally, I love it. I’d rather have my tiny apartment eleven blocks from the beach in Santa Monica living on my own terms, than a three-bedroom colonial (which I had) in a traditional suburb (where I lived) with a high-paying job (which nearly killed me).

You don’t find out in the movie whether the couple stays in NYC or goes to LA, but I found myself hoping the girlfriend would at least give it a try. You can’t have too much sunshine in your life.

Just finished viewing Forks Over Knives (now available on Instant Netflix), and I think it’s changed my life.

Dial Down the Junk
The change has taken several years, actually. Some time ago, I started liking higher quality food in general over the packed and processed kind. The biggest change was switching from mass market milk chocolate (Peanut M&M’s! Yum! By the bushel!) to dark high-cocoa content chocolate. I had to educate my tastebuds to like it, but now I can’t even eat the former stuff. Turns out the dark chocolate packs a bigger flavor punch, so I eat much less of it. I also stopped buying fries and ice cream and potato chips (although I still eat them if they’re just sitting there unattended), avoided things I don’t like anyway like white bread and rolls, and stepped up learning how to cook veggies. So that was Step One in my food evolution—getting off pure junk.

Go Local
Step Two involved understanding the difference between organic and local. Organic bananas are great, but there’s no such thing as a local banana. In doing research for my sci-fi trilogy on climate change, I became more aware that everything I ate had not just a food/water cost, but a carbon cost from transportation from wherever it was grown or raised to my mouth. I started frequenting the amazing Farmer’s Market near my home in Santa Monica, California. Lo and behold, there were more vegetables in the world besides broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, and perfectly manufactured baby-carrots. I discovered all kinds of new things, like baby zucchini with the blossoms still on and fresh spinach picked the prior day, the taste of which blew my mind. I can no longer eat a store-bought zucchini—the taste is too bitter. And don’t even get me started on tomatoes. Did you know they come in a million different colors? Amazing!

Seasons?
A side-effect of the local commitment was discovering—gasp—that foods have seasons. They don’t actually grow all year round. Knowing the seasons of figs, for example, makes all the difference. Figs out of season are hard and taste like sawdust. Figs in season remind me of the sunshine of Italy. Sure this means I’m doing a lot of squash and roots in the winter, but so be it.

Animals Away
Now, Step Three, as a result of watching Forks Over Knives, will mostly likely be giving up animal products, or at least stepping them way back. The documentary highlights many of the health testing done around the world with illuminating results, but the thing that got me was the mention of the carbon cost of meat. The show tells us that it takes over ten times the amount of energy from fossil fuel to produce a calorie of animal-based food than it does a calorie of plant food. So my plate of four ounces of lean chicken and four ounces of green leafies is costing the planet about five times more than it has to.

I’m not willing to contribute to that cost anymore. I suppose the health benefits will be good as the documentary shows, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I suppose it’s more humane not to eat other sentient beings, but again, that’s not my concern. What I want is to personally have the smallest footprint I can muster in this mechanized, homogenized, consumer-based-economy world.

The Plan
I’ll probably eat meat as the occasion demands, to be polite when I’m a guest or to avoid wasting something that is already sitting there (like the potato chips). I also kinda like eggs and cheese, so those probably won’t go. But I can make a lot of choices in general to step it back, mostly from chicken and fish, and see what happens. (I had already reduced beef and pork due to watching Food, Inc.)

I recommend Forks Over Knives highly. It has a lot of medical/dietary information every parent should know, and it’s got compelling arguments, great case studies, and abundant evidence to make its points. Meanwhile, I’ll be doing more with legumes, edamame, and nuts. See you in the kitchen!

Writing a trilogy—writing anything—that has to do with climate change implies research. Lots of it. In my journey to become as fully informed as possible, I had my eyes opened on things that I’ve never understood before.

Did You Know?
For example, did you know that if you have a plugged-in lamp over your shoulder illuminating the screen as you read, it is being powered by electricity generated this very moment? As in, right now, something, somewhere, most likely coal, is being burned to heat up water to create steam to turn a mechanism with magnets to generate an electrical charge that then flows through the line going past your house? The moment you flick that switch, that particular circuit is completed, allowing the power to get to your lamp or refrigerator or garage door or whathaveyou.

It happens right then, because we can’t store the damn stuff. Batteries are highly inefficient still, in that they have to be huge to store much, they take a ton of energy to manufacture, they use toxic materials, and then they are difficult to dispose of. I used to think that dams across rivers were mostly about regulating water, but it turns out they’re really a high-falutin’ way to store electricity, in that the water can be flowed through the dam in a way that turns magnetized turbines that then generate electricity. The dam allows its masters to regulate the flow to meet demand (you and me flicking switches) on a moment to moment basis.

Water…
All this causes a bunch of other things to happen. Dams (e.g., the Hoover, the Aswan in Egypt) create massive lakes of stored water. The easiest dams to build have been in areas that have great weather; i.e., they’re hot. Meaning desert. Meaning lots of sun. Meaning evaporation. So not only is the natural flow of the river truncated, but a lot of the water that would have flowed across the land watering the ground is evaporating into the atmosphere. So: More moisture in the air (not to mention a ruined river).

…Plus Heat…
Then we have the other electricity generator: burning coal. Which releases carbon dioxide. Which is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps the sun’s heat close to the Earth’s surface rather than allowing it to dissipate back into space. This warming encourages all the water on the Earth to both heat up and evaporate more, putting more of it into the atmosphere and making it more available to feed storms.

…Plus Wind…
So we have warmer air and more water. Now add the wind. The human race has adapted to a certain amount of water being thrown at us in certain seasons, be it heavy rains, blizzards, typhoons, hurricanes. But now there’s more water up there to be thrown, and there’s hotter air throwing it around. As this cycle continues, we can expect storms to be bigger, stronger, and beyond our current ability to adapt.

…Equals Trouble.
What does this have to do with us and our light switches? Sure, more efficient tools would be good, renewable energy would be good, developing better storage would be good. But until then, as long as we’re burning coal, it would also be good to see the connection between whatever hurricane is in the news and our own flicking of that switch. And maybe choosing, once in a while, to power down.

Back in the day (six months ago), I launched this blog as a way to get on the radar as a writer. Logically, then, I started by mostly writing about what I was doing, which was exactly that—mostly writing.

Trouble is, if you write mostly about writing, your readers will mostly be other writers. Whom I love of course (especially if they properly use the word “whom”)—I couldn’t live and breathe without the encouragement and expertise of the amazing writers I know. Yet, there’s a wider world out there beyond the craft—the stuff we’re writing about.

I write about the things I care about, so this blog should also reflect that. In the weeks to come, along with continued entries about the craft of writing, you’ll also see entries about issues that are riveting to me:

• Climate
• Energy
• The environment
• Migration
• Women’s rights
• Religion/values
• Politics
• And who knows what else

These things are all a part of the research I’m pouring into the writing of my second book. It may seem like a mish-mash of content, but the unifying force will be me. Which is what I love about blogs—they can be flat-out whatever the originator wants them to be. So I call dibs on being myself and writing what’s on my mind, like for example romance and sex and how everyone live this different and some even use free sex sites to find love.

Hope you’ll come on board for the journey.

Note: My two Twitter streams will keep the two themes separate, so if you just want to hear about one or the other (writing or issues), you can follow one or the other (@thinkStory or @LMattWRB).

Remember this from junior high? You’d get something on your school lunch tray that was indiscernible as food. Some sort of green gelatinous mass or a weird sludge-colored pasty thing. Invariably the local class cut-up (on whom you had a secret crush) would take a plastic spork and stab into it, shouting, “Kill it! Kill it before it multiplies!” Oh, isn’t he funny? And so cute! you’d think, as your lunch disintegrated across the table.

I have the same reaction to offensive words. These are the words that make me wield my editorial lightsaber and go on the attack. Warning: These words are not for the weak (only for weak writing). If you shudder easily, perhaps avert your eyes.

• Really
• Very
• Just
• But
• Then
• That
• Actually

I hate these words. I hate them. I hate them most when they show up in my own writing, that gourmet buffet I prepared for literary foodies the world over with my own hands. The appearance of these words on the plate makes my writing efforts seem like swill on a shingle. The more I think they’re not there, the more they appear, sneakily, winkling themselves in until they masquerade as part of “how I write,” my “voice,” my on-page identity. Next thing I know, they’re everywhere, sprinkled throughout the text like mold veins in bleu cheese (not the good kind).

The only hope is mass extermination. Thank the writing gods for any decent word-processor’s search-and-destroy feature. (How did Dickens and Austen write without it?) I search. I highlight. I consider. And I find myself asking these questions:

• Is that “really” really necessary?
• Will the “very” be very distracting?
• Just one more “just”!
• But I like all my “but”s!
• If there’s a conditional, then the “then” is needed, right?
• The “that”s that are filling this sentence are to improve the flow.
• I think the “actually” is actually helpful.

Find the offending word in each and win a million dollars! Uh, not really. But each offending word can actually be deleted without affecting the meaning of the sentence. Try it—it’s very fun.

What are your “kill them!” words? Let us help get rid of them!

This writing thing. For all the years I’ve been doing this, I’m just now learning what it feels like to have a few decent pages. These are pages I have no doubt about, pages I could show to anyone and be sure they’d think it’s a good story. Pages that don’t waste anyone’s time. Pages that throw readers into a universe of my own creating in an engaging enough way that they ask, “What happens next?”

It was way harder than I initially thought. It took way more work, the butt-in-chair kind, and both a willingness to consider feedback and some discernment on when to disregard it. Then, I had to act on that feedback with all I had, as though the idea had come from me and were a part of the story all along.

What did this look like? Here it is, broken down into steps.

• Start with cool concept, a hook that makes everyone who hears it sit up a little straighter and start asking questions.
• Write some spotty initial chapters, with great characters, dialog, and some sex, getting all the way to the end of the basic plotline involving the two main characters.
• Get a bunch of people to read it as you go. They like what they’re seeing, but they point out something is missing: setting. You’ve got no sense of place.
• Drop everything to figure out how to travel across the globe to your primary setting for an extended stay. (This involves selling your house, putting everything into storage, and taking off with laptop and camera for Rome, Italy. Rough life, eh?)
• Commence setting draft, adding in the sights, sounds, and smells, weather, flora and fauna, distances, buildings, everything you can find, and fill out the storyline, which turns into first draft complete.
• This first draft, clocking in at 160,000 words and including a mystical prologue, took three years.

Are you done? Not hardly.

• Get a bunch of people to read it. Beta readers and writer’s group give great feedback—which sends you back to the drawing board. Primary focus: Flesh out main character, give her more context and backstory, and reduce wordcount.
• Commence second draft, which takes three months. Axe 40,000 words, mostly the literary device of main character journal entries. (Save all these for possible website or expanded volume later.)
• Receive a brainwave from the gods on New Year’s morning, 2011.
• Commence third draft, after brain wave. Lose the prologue, figure out how to incorporate it into the first chapter instead. This draft takes three weeks.
• Give to offspring to read. Daughter gives amazing feedback. Son likens it to Orson Scott Card, a very high compliment. [Note, as much as they love you, neither kid had been able to get through first draft. The fact that they couldn’t put this one down warms your heart.]
• Fourth draft after offspring feedback takes two weeks. Primary focus: punching up supporting characters and subplots, including more of the technology. Add back in some material removed in the second draft, give eternal gratitude for saved revisions.
• Off to writer’s group again and new beta readers. It’s been six months between reads for the writer’s group. Confusing moments and particular spots where more info is needed are revealed.
• Fifth draft now feels like fine tuning rather than anything structural. Clean up confusing moments and dead spaces, add more info. Getting the feedback from everybody takes the most time, then it is a quick edit (once you get over the feedback).
• Sixth draft after intense line edit by editorial friend/former boss.
• Send to one final beta reader who had never read it before, a fan of the genre and a screenwriter/director. Confirms that prior edits have been successful, but brings up many intriguing points about the story itself. You experience a flash of, “Do I rewrite entirely, or is it done?” Beta reader assures that the story is great, so much so that it made him think of all these other things. You already are planning to explore these issues in the next book of the series, so for the first time on this first book, you feel done. You mark the date on your calendar.
• Read entire book out loud. Catch a million little things. Notice though that most of it reads quite smoothly, and begin to get the feeling you’re bathing in chocolate.
• It’s ready for prime time.

After all that grinding and upending and massaging and tweaking and rethinking, it shows. The book exists, its own entity, separate from me but my baby. The question now is, do I self-publish as I’d always intended? Or do I shop for an agent? How do I answer this question? I sign up for a writer’s conference where I can submit pages for critique.

Off go the first 15 pages. I jump into my car to drive from LA to Jackson, Wyoming. And the response at the conference is better than I could have written myself. Those pages are solid. I don’t need to sell them; they speak for themselves.

So, I change my plan. I decide to shop the manuscript for a year, knowing that the book is solid and the only way it won’t get representation or traditional publication is if it doesn’t fit into the industry’s current marketing plan. And I’ll be okay with finding that out—I can market it myself later. In the meantime, I start writing Book Two so I’m ready next year either to be launched by a publisher or to publish on my own.

It feels good. It feels real. I know something now that I didn’t know before—what “done” feels like. Truth be told, that already makes me a success. I think it’s the best feeling a writer can have.

Well, the first thing I learned is that Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is different from the town of Jackson itself, but the writer’s conference is still called the Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference. Beautiful country up there. Gave me an expanded sense of this nation of ours. Wide spaces, huge skies, high altitudes, mountains so close you could reach out and touch them.

But enough sentiment. On to the learning.

The Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference predominately and unapologetically focused on the traditional publishing model. In that sense, it seemed like a step back in time, not only because of the Wild West setting but also the content of some of the sessions. The publishing world is changing rapidly, but this news does not seem to have made it to Jackson Hole.

To have a writer’s conference in today’s climate that does not seriously discuss self-publishing as an option or omits in-depth, hands-on workshops on social media and online platforms seemed a bit out of touch, and unfortunately some misinformation was getting play. I found myself wanting to host my own clandestine sessions on the side.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t learn anything—I did, and it was definitely worth the trip. For example, I gained a much deeper understanding and appreciation for the traditional publishing world, particularly of the role of the editor. I learned a ton about the role of the agent, and found myself wanting one. (More on this in another post.)

One of my goals for the conference was to come to a decision about whether I should self-publish this year or take some time to shop my now completed novel to agents. The response I got to the pages I submitted from my four fabulous critiquers, along with a general sense of intrigue about the story, has made me think I should try shopping it first. I’m starting that ball rolling now, and will give it a year. But self-publishing and building an online platform remain important options that I will continue to investigate no matter what.

So. Main points from Jackson:

Agents are helpful
The panel discussion between four agents was an eye-opener. These folks are competitive, Type A negotiators, who have your back and make all the tough phone calls. The energy crackled as they answered questions rapid-fire from the audience, talking over each other in good fun and projecting passion for their clients’ best interests.

I don’t know what I was thinking going in, but now I can see that having someone like that negotiate all the money aspects for you and make sure you get paid can’t hurt. Once you get a publisher, that is. And that, of course, remains the tricky part.

Editors are amazing
The editing panel, on the other hand, was made up of lower-key professionals who genuinely care about the quality of the books they’re buying on behalf of their publishing houses. They defend the writer’s voice and art, and they’re passionate about offering works that amaze their readership.

These are quieter people, but no less engaged. And they want you to have an agent, because they themselves don’t want to have to talk with you, the writer, about money. They only want to talk with you about your work. It’s like buffer zones—writers write, agents negotiate, and editors talk to agents about the unpleasant worldly stuff and save their relationship with the writer for the work itself. Doesn’t that sound heavenly?

Writers are confused
What I mean by this is that as writers, we are focused on writing. As such, we don’t spend much time honing our business sense—that’s why agents exist. We have a hard time evaluating our own work—that’s why editors exist. Writers just want to write, and even relatively simply suggestions like “get a Twitter feed” or “start a website,” which are old hat to entrepreneurs in any other industry, flummox the writer to the point of paralysis. We don’t think of ourselves as business people.

This, I think, is one of our weak points. We’re in a much better position to become self-sustaining as writers if we acknowledge that we’re producing a product that then needs to be sold. We ourselves are the brand. (More on this in another post.)

Self-publishing is misunderstood
The option to self-publish was dismissed out of hand throughout the conference, which I think was a disservice to the attendees.

Mostly folks were concerned that “anyone can slap something up on Amazon and say they’ve published.” But to call making an unedited, undesigned manuscript available online “publishing” is a misnomer.

What I would have done if I were doing a session on this option would be to lay out for the writer what exactly successful self-publishing entails. You have to be the publisher, which means you are yourself taking on all the tasks of editing, design, packaging, marketing, distribution, publicity, etc., etc., etc.

True self-publishers take on the whole of the thing and make it work. These folks deserve as much respect as those who have been through the traditional publishing mill. Both are hard. Both are successful. Get over it.

Social media is wince-inducing
Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Goodreads. Blogs. Hashtags. @ replies. Friending. Liking. Fan pages. Group pages. Streams. From the expression on most writers’ faces at the conference, these words only made them think, “Kill me now.”

There was not a lot of talk about how powerful a tool the Web is for building a platform and getting your message out. No overarching statistics or results were shown making the case for the effectiveness of social media. It was all about how arduous the tasks themselves are, how time sucking, how irritating. This, too, seemed to me to be a disservice to attendees.

But hey, you’re already reading this blog entry, having found out about it probably on Twitter or on Facebook. I don’t have to tell you how social media has changed the face of publishing. So maybe we can just think of those writers who are still resisting it as reducing our overall competition and leave it at that.

What about you?
With the Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference under my belt, I have increased the number of such gatherings I’ve attended to exactly one. So it’s not like I know everything. Teach me more! What have you learned from conferences you’ve attended? Put it in the comments. I’d also love to see recommendations for conferences to attend.

It’s a wide world out there, let’s be a part of it. Hell, let’s shape it.

(#9 in a series of tips from my improv class that struck me as applying to writing.)

Improv [Writing] Tip #9: Avoid questions.
“What do you do?” is wasted dialog; instead say, “Being a cop must be hard.”

Another eye opening tip from improv. Here’s an example of what not to do:

SCENE OPENS
Malcolm (looking at sky): Holy cow, sis, we’re seeing stars tonight!
Me: How long have we been out here?

Dead. The reason this is so ineffective is that no building has taken place. The question doesn’t take the conversation forward at all, and in improv, that’s especially inconsiderate, because as a scene partner, you’re lobbing all the responsibility back onto your partner rather than shouldering your share.

Better:

SCENE OPENS
Malcolm (looking at sky): Holy cow, sis, we’re seeing stars tonight!
Me (scanning straight ahead): Yeah, and there’s Josh Brolin!
Malcolm (eyes dropping to my level): And he’s got that dog with him!
Me: You better get out of here, it really is no country for old men.

Well, sorta better. You know what I mean.

Here’s what Tina Fey has to say about this in the way funny Bossypants:

The Rules of Improvisation
That Will Change Your Life and Reduce Belly Fat

The next rule [from a great list of rules] is MAKE STATEMENTS. This is a positive way of saying “Don’t ask questions all the time.” If we’re in a scene and I say, “Who are you? Where are we? What are we doing here? What’s in that box?” I’m putting pressure on you to come up with all the answers.

In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles. We’ve all worked with that person. That person is a drag. It’s usually the same person around the office who says things like “There’s no calories in it if you eat it standing up!” and “I felt menaced when Terry raised her voice.”

MAKE STATEMENTS also applies to us women: Speak in statements instead of apologetic questions. No one wants to go to a doctor who says, “I’m going to be your surgeon? I’m here to talk to you about your procedure? I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice.

This of course applies to dialog in fiction as well. From what Tina Fey says, you could take a look at any characters that are coming across as weak, and make sure they’re not asking questions all the time. (Flipside is if you want a character to be weak, have them ask pointless questions. But this could get trying, especially if it weakens the dialog itself.)

I did a flat out search in the dialog of my novel for question marks. Turned out I had a lot of “What do you mean?”s and “Why?”s and “What?”s, etc. These could often be dispensed with by combining the surrounding dialog into one speech, or the conversational beat could be used for including other information.

EARLY DRAFT

Fulvia waved her hand. “Let Caesar come home! That’s all he wants. And we can throw him a triumph and rejoice in the wealth he’s bringing us.”

“I don’t know that he’s bringing it to us,” dark-haired and dark-eyed Porcia spoke up. “He seems to have made his own wealth with it, and purchased himself a few senators.”

“And what does that mean?” Fulvia’s eyebrows arched at her.

CURRENT DRAFT

Fulvia waved her hand. “Let Caesar come home! That’s all he wants. We can throw him a triumph and rejoice in the wealth he’ll bring us.”

“I don’t know that he’d bring it to us,” the brown-eyed younger woman said. “He seems to have made his own wealth with it, and purchased himself a few senators.”

“The young Porcia brings her own barbs,” Fulvia’s eyebrows arched at her.

Instead of having the empty “What does that mean,” I saw the space could be used to reveal more about the relationship between these two characters. By giving Fulvia something more meaningful to say, including the introduction of the other character’s name, it increased the impact of every sentence.

Make each speech in dialog count. See how many questions you can axe.

(#8 in a series of tips from my improv class that struck me as applying to writing.)

Improv [Writing] Tip #8: Keep it here and now.
Scenes are not about people not here or in the past. Scenes are about what you and I say and feel right now.

This tip for improv was especially eye-opening for me. I began to notice how many times I’d launch a dialog on stage, only to find I was talking about someone not actually in the scene. Like this:

Me: Hey, bro, how’s the prep for the first day of school?
Malcolm: I can’t find any of my notebooks!
Me: Didn’t Dad get you those yesterday?

And there we are, suddenly talking about Dad, and even worse, about the past. Better is:

Me: Hey, bro, how’s the prep for the first day of school?
Malcolm: I can’t find any of my notebooks!
Me: Is that why you stole all of mine?

If you do want to talk about Dad, make it about here and now.

Me: Hey, bro, how’s the prep for the first day of school?
Malcolm: I can’t find any of my notebooks!
Me: Aw, Dad was just messing with you! He hid them behind this plant.
Malcolm: And he told you? He always liked you best.
Me: That’s because I always do better in school.
Malcolm: Because you can always find your notebooks!

This idea has had huge implications for me whenever I try to add backstory into my prose. It’s too easy to slip into writing a scene as though a character is remembering it or witnessing it without interacting with it now.

For example, the main character in my time-travel novel witnesses some famous historical events. At first, I wrote the scenes from a distance, as though she were passively watching the events on TV. My critique partners gave me an excellent tip: put more of her emotions into it. So, I edited to show her internal reactions as the scene unfolded. This does a better job of connecting the scene to my character, and consequently, to my reader.

The important point is to make sure that whatever you’re saying, about the past or someone who is not there, has immediate implications for the characters in the present scene. How do they feel about what they’re saying now, not just back then? What does it mean to them now, in their current context?

It’s boring to talk about how frightened/hurt/mad they were when the event happened, because it’s not relevant to the current story. But the fact that they’re still angry, or newly angry, or getting angry now has implications for the story you’re telling at this moment.

Let’s take a look at one of the coolest revelations of backstory ever.

—————————————————————

VADER

There is no escape.  Don’t make
me destroy you.  You do not yet
realize your importance.  You
have only begun to discover your
power.  Join me and I will complete
your training.  With our combined
strength, we can end this destructive
conflict and bring order to the
galaxy.

LUKE

I’ll never join you!

VADER

If you only knew the power of the
dark side.  Obi-Wan never told
you what happened to your father.

LUKE

He told me enough!  It was you
who killed him.

VADER

No.  I am your father.

Shocked, Luke looks at Vader in utter disbelief.

LUKE

No.  No.  That’s not true!
That’s impossible!

VADER

Search your feelings.  You know
it to be true.

LUKE

No!  No!  No!

VADER

Luke.  You can destroy the Emperor.
He has foreseen this.  It is your
destiny.  Join me, and together
we can rule the galaxy as father
and son.  Come with me.  It is the
only way.

Vader puts away his sword and holds his hand out to Luke.

A calm comes over Luke, and he makes a decision.  In the next
instant he steps off the gantry platform into space.

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Darth Vader being Luke’s father is not all that is important to this scene; it’s how Luke feels about it at that moment and what he does upon discovering it.

I might have five different friends ask me how I’m doing today, and I’ll tell them each something different based on how I feel at that moment. Even as our feelings change and evolve, our characters’ will as well. Pick the moment to reveal backstory such that it also has a connection with the present story, and you’ll find you can get a lot of it in there painlessly.

She’s read every word I’ve written since that first crayon. She’s ooo’ed and ahh’ed over everything, from stories about my toys, to hand-made Mother’s Day cards, to school papers, to a letter I wrote to Dad when he was ill, to essays about God, to every entry of my three-year blog, to countless novels and screenplays my insane little mind has spawned.

And this week she was diagnosed with brain cancer.

She’s at peace with this. It’s expected that her weakening and leaving us will be painless and peaceful, so she is not afraid. She says she’s tired of this body and curious about the next thing. She can no longer walk or leave her bed, but she’s full of laughter and joy and love. Every time I call, it’s like a party over there in that hospital room. She loves the nurses and the doctors and the fact that this is the final word and she doesn’t have to fight anymore. We’re all headed home to get in on the fun.

Since she’s bedridden and spending her time appreciating the people around her, I doubt she’ll ever again be able to squeeze into the walk-in closet where they set up the desktop computer my dad uses to trade his stocks and play his games. She’ll never again comment on drafts of my novels or read a blog entry of mine or see my status on Facebook. Her time with us now is short, and she’s okay with that.

I’m not sure that I am. If it were me, I’d be fighting. If it were me, I’d be hanging on for all I’m worth. I love this life and can’t imagine wanting to leave it. But I’m at a different place than she is, and we’re not the same people. My hope now is that I can love her without attachment, letting her go into the beyond to whatever adventure awaits her there.

But I know when the time comes, my loss will be sharp. She’s always had the front row seat to my life’s wanderings, always found me entertaining, always supported me. I named my daughter after her; she stood with me when my son was born. What will I do without my sounding board, my laugh track, my prayer warrior?

I’ll have to know that her listening ear is part of me and always will be. I thank all that’s holy that this situation has arranged itself to give us time to get to her side and show her our love. It’s like she’s becoming a beam of light that will not be dimmed even as it transforms. I want to be with her; I want to witness her spirit changing from moth to butterfly.

And I know, when I get there, I’ll find nothing but love. She defines the term—she is my mother.