Help- advice needed

You want to lose readers? What are you thinking?

Meanwhile, write another book.

Nateskate, I haven't had time to read your excerpt, so my answer is based on your question alone.

If your POV character is the fifteen year old boy, then the readers will be discovering the story as events unfold around him. Does he know about all the backstory? I'm guessing not since he's young and inexperienced. Therefore, I'd suggest telling the readers about prior history as he figures them out. Let the readers sit on his shoulder and learn about his world while he learns.

Good luck!

If you hark back to Tolkien, you'll note that the Lord of the Rings stands all by itself without the Silmarillion. In fact, I've never read it, though I've read LoTR at least 20 times. I think the prequel was a great idea for hammering down your world in your mind, but I agree with the others: reveal the world and backstory as it becomes important to the boy. There may be stuff that you NEVER explain, but the readers will still get the sense that there is a reason for it.

Nate,
You've received lots of great advice, but keep those backstories in a drawer somewhere. When you sell that first book and get things rolling, your agent may very well be able to sell those prequels to your hungry audience! Good luck!

I answered this question in the other thread.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=856419#post856419

This question keeps popping up.

Is a prior knowledge (or indeed full knowledge at all?) of all that information and background really necessary to enable readers to enjoy what happens to your protagonist as they follow him on his journey to sort out whatever predicament he finds himself in?

Or is it really background information that you needed to know in order to write the story convincingly?

Good luck.

Nateskate, what you've described in your synopsis sounds very intriguing to me. I like stories with mystery involved, and having a young protagonist figuring out all these strange forces appeals to me.

For me as a reader, it's perfectly all right for the author not to explain everything. In fact, I'd rather the author didn't explain everything. I want to be able to make my own guesses as to what's really happening. I might be wrong, but speculation is part of the fun. As a reader, I'm trying to figure out what the author had in mind. As long as the story has internal consistency, as long as there's a reason why something happens, it's all right not to give the reason. Don't destroy the mystery.

The backstory becomes relevent because the real puppet masters are not humans. Where did they came from? Their agenda? Their methods? How can humans fight back?

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Okay, I could buy that, but there comes a point when I feel I have to question the necessity for me to know the background to a fantasy kingdom. In the story, the fantasy kingdom exists - it will be accepted without my knowing how it came into being.

I agree with TheIT. If do have to know, I would prefer to find out at the same time as the protagonist and because he has to know - when it matters. And I doubt he will require to know all the background.

Then let it be a game. It sounds like you've done a very thorough job of world building, so thorough that you should have many different stories to tell set in your realm. But remember: stories are different from the world-building.

Examples from literature and TV:

Tolkein's The Hobbit, LOTR, and The Silmarillion: The Hobbit tells the story of Bilbo as his complacent life is shattered when he's swept up in adventure. LOTR is a much more complex view of the Middle Earth. The Silmarillion is an encyclopedia. A reader does not have to read The Silmarillion in order to enjoy and appreciate The Hobbit.

The Wizard of Oz: Would you have wanted to know who was behind the curtain when Dorothy first asks the wizard for help?

Babylon 5: JMS spent three entire seasons before revealing the true nature of the Shadows. If he'd told the audience on day one who they were, do you think anyone would have kept watching?

Your story of the fifteen year old boy is just one story of many. Tell his story, and reveal other parts of your world in other stories.

Think of it like a fan dance. How much of the dancer is truly shown at any one time, and how much is imagined?

My thoughts - since I've discovered this problem in my own writing sometimes too...

Backstories are good to have for your own purposes as a writer, definitely ('cause you wanted to know where that great glowing crystal came from that the Hero is eventually going to have to do something with). There's a few ways to deal with them:

1)leave the one you have "in a drawer" as your own research on whatever world it is, so it's just for you
2)leave it in a drawer for future possibilities (someone already said this, but yeah, you never know, your agent could sell them one day as a prequel)
3)incorporate it into the story - either at the beginning (which I'm guessing would lead you to have to do a bit of rewriting and could end up taking ages to get together coherently) or, you could have your fifteen-year-old slowly get knowledge of what went on before as he goes along on his journey.

The last of these is my favorite idea of them all, but it's up to you. I'm sure others have other ideas I haven't thought of (and somebody already mentioned at least one of these).

Nateskate said:

At the moment I stand like Frodo at the crossroads knowing what I must do, but also realizing how hard it is going to be to do it because in writing the first two books, I made changes that will have to be edited into Book Three.

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Nateskate, I just wanted to encourage you. I've recently come to a similar realization on my WIP. I have been stripping page after page of useless backstory, and am now rewriting those sections. At least I have a solid foundation for a prequel or two if the WIP in ever sells.

Plus, the rewrite has brought life to a bit character and moved him a little more forward in the story. I never knew how interesting he was until now.

Bite the bullet my friend, your story will be better for it, and so will you.

Narrow your objective

I think the question is whether you want it published or not. From what I've read, you severly diminish your chances of publication (though miracles do happen) if your submission is:
1. too long (>120,000 words)
2. not a stand-alone work
When I see a four volume epic in which each book is >700 pages, I gulp and think of the time I would have to invest to read it, even if it is great.

My advice: keep everything "as is" in a separate drawer, etc. for the sake of posterity--we may drool over it someday. But for the sake of publication, carve out of your story a stand-alone novel within the usual guidelines. Then let the fans clamor for more.

BTW, I am in the same boat. My WIP looms at well over 100,000 words already, and I'm only in Part II of IV. I have learned in the process of writing that I need to write several pages of story so that I know it, only to chop it down to the one sentence that the readers need to know just then.

Nateskate said:

Cartemay stretched his tall frame to pull the ancient Chronicle from the shelf.

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I'm sorry, I can't help with the original question because I didn't get past this first sentence. Nothing personal about you or the writing just a rather general pet peeve of mine in general and here it is:

I'm either 6'2 or 6'4 (depending on which nurse is lying) but the point is, I'm tall. Much taller than most everyone else in my life. Except my younger brother but, well, he's a circus freak all the way around.

Do you know when it is that I realize I'm tall? When I look at pictures of me and my friends and it always has me in the back, sticking up over all of them as if they're Niblet and I'm painted green and am oh so very jolly.

Or I'm wandering the aisles of a store and some little old lady tells me she needs something from the top shelf and in response to my "I don't work here" comment is "So what? You're tall, get it for me." (actual quote).

Tall people usually don't realize they are that much taller than the world around them. Oh sure, we learn quickly to duck more and be much more wary of ceiling fans - and in some cases we even eye most 'compact cars' as nothing but the spawn of the Devil sent to give us a personal taste of Hell - but that's almost automatic and instinctive. But I certainly don't go around in my life thinking of my "tall frame" whether I'm stretching it or not. I don't normally consciously realize that I'm not metaphorically looking down on people, it's literal. Until something happens. Being tall for me is the same as being brunette (or, for another week or so - redhead) it's just something I am, something that just takes me through life.

So when I read cheap description such as this, it turns me off. It says to me 'lazy writing' and I tend to not want to go any further. Why would I? There are so many (hopefully) good books in my to be read stack that I would probably throw this back on the shelf with a sneer and move on. Or, failing that, I've got bookshelves full of either good books to be reread or research books to be read. But yet this type of thing seems to be endemic of the genre. To the point where a beta reader for a now officialy rejected novel commented that I didn't describe my main character until three quarters of the way through the book and by then the description was jarring because she already formed her own picture of him through other clues. And I didn't *want* to describe him at all.

So, what's wrong with just saying "Cartemay stretched to pull the Chronicle from the high shelf." Sure, doesn't tell us that the character is tall, but does tell us the Chronicle is high up.

Rabe...

joymark said:

Nateskate, I just wanted to encourage you.

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May I just add my own words of encouragement (notwithstanding what I posted above) and a personal example?

I'm currently working on the fourth book in what I've discovered is a six book series - which all started from a short story.

The funny thing is, I wrote book two first. I know it's book two because it built off what I knew was the story for book one but found hard to write. For whatever reason, book two was easier to write (read as: I could write it whereas I struggled with book one). After that, I was able to go back and write book one because I *knew* where the characters had to end up to progress to book two. Before I was even a quarter of the way finished with book one, I knew where book three would end. Thought that was the end of the story.

As I'm writing book three, I know where book four goes (because I made a stupid promise). While taking a break from this series, I watched a Discovery or TLC special and got book five. Then suddenly, I know the end of the series and what happens in book six.

So, summation is: sometimes knowing where the story winds up is actually more beneficial when you have to go back and redo the start of the story. Because the joy isn't in the destination, it's in the journey - but it's miserable if you don't have a clue where you're going.

Rabe...

Neeli said:

I have learned in the process of writing that I need to write several pages of story so that I know it, only to chop it down to the one sentence that the readers need to know just then.

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Hah! Ditto! I wish I had learned that lesson more quickly.