How do I fill in the background without sacrificing movement?

This is a copy of a comment to Mame's thread ”Dialogue Chapter 1 (The Company is Formed)”


Mame wrote:
I worry about how do I fill in the background without sacrificing movement?  I definitely feel the descriptions interupt the story but how do I fill in the reader without stopping and telling?
I love these ladies.  I know them in my own life and we have had similar conversations over cocktails.

It's a very good question… for me the only way that works is to stick to the Diving Deeper principles - to climb right into the scene and keep going, willing to not know what is going to happen. Maybe I have an event I'm heading for, or an 'ending', but I hold it lightly. “Background' falls into place without me having to think about it, and I can always put it in later. More important is to get the raw material down, the action, the scenes.

My sense is that 'what this story is about' is perhaps not yet completely clear - it is as if something underneath is wanting to come out - *you* have an idea what the story is about, but it could quite possibly be something else….and my sense is that all it needs is for you to keep entering into it, at various points, whatever 'comes up' when you sit down to write. Let your wonderful characters speak and act – they will do so for you, all you need is to watch and write.

Don't worry about keeping a linear time, just write what comes up. You may strike a note that just keeps going, in fact you are bound to. In which case, usually how much 'background' description to use will just come naturally. Right now, I'd say the less background the better, you can always change things later. As I said, what you want is 'raw material', the juice of the story, which is the action/movement, the interactions, what people do and say. This is the hard part to write. It's very easy to go back and fill in some unclear parts with background or another scene which 'shows'.

I often find the when I dip into generalizations or summarizations, I become distant from the story and the characters. However, it *is* important that I get to know my characters….. better than they know themselves. So if you find yourself writing 'about' them (i.e. in general terms, not in a specific scene) that's fine, but you may not need these pieces later. You could put such pieces somewhere else, in a kind of 'research' pile.

So, I'd suggest you keep writing scenes, and don't worry about the story or the background yet.

The more you let yourself write scenes, the more you will 'show' and the less description will be needed – So, for example,

Kate is the loud one in the group.

You know this, and we as reader will know it too, simply by the dialogue - the words Kate chooses to say, the responses of the others to her.  Climb into scenes, as if you were there, and write down what you see/feel/hear. The more you write actual scenes the more you will feel in the flow of the story, and the story will 'write itself'.

If you are choosing to write fiction, or creative non-fiction (ie inspired from memoir), the most important thing is to be willing to let go of what you know.

 It's possible you wanting to show us these wonderful women, who they are, and how they are, because you know them so well, is getting in the way of the story. They are fabulous characters and I can feel the huge possibility here, but it will be much easier if you don't try too hard to stick to 'truth'. I have discovered that the deeper I climb into a scene - one that is 'from my own life' - the more I 'make things up', and curiously, the stronger and more powerful the scene.

Sometimes we have stories and people in our lives that are 'larger than life', that seem to make for such ripe fiction. Curiously, I've found these stories the hardest to render into fiction. I'm attached to them being 'as they were'. If I was writing autobiography that would be one thing, but I'm not. I suspect it gets easier to use such material creatively, and it certainly gets easier the further into the past the 'real life' experience is (the longer ago the situation happened the less less attached to telling the 'truth', less attached to my readers seeing/feeling as I did;  I have have 'processed' what happened).

Another thing that I'm learning, is that it's quite a good idea to have in mind a 'length' of the work as I am writing it. This is something I'd only suggest to someone who has done a lot of writing 'what comes up' ie. without regard to outcome or content, simply getting used to the daily practice of writing, of facing the blank page.

If you have a lot of writing under your belt, then it might be time to ask yourself as you write: Is it a short story? A “long short story”? A novella? A novel? Most short stories are up to about 5000 words. I can't seem to write anything less than 3000, my hat is off to anyone who can. My “Photographing Nell” is 9000 or so, stretching it a bit. Novellas are up to about 40,000 words, Novels 80,000 and more. These are of course generalizations, but if you plan to write a short story, the approach is very different to a novel. A short story must more or less have only what is absolutely necessary in terms of characters and details. Novels allow for much longer meanderings.