{"id":881,"date":"2017-08-16T08:14:28","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T12:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=881"},"modified":"2017-08-16T08:14:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T12:14:28","slug":"starting-a-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/16\/starting-a-shift\/","title":{"rendered":"Starting a Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seems like yesterday, but in November, 2015, Kitty asked a question about how to write a prison break and avoid cliches. In January, 2016, I wrote a post on the subject–http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/20\/lemme-out-convincingly\/<\/a>\u2013and recently the universe responded with its own solution\u2013peanut butter! You may have read about this. More than one prisoner was involved, which is not what Kitty was looking for, but from the description, the break could have been carried out by just one, and it certainly avoids cliche. Happily, all prisoners have been returned to jail. You can read about it here: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/01\/us\/alabama-inmates-escape-peanut-butter.html?_r=0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And this lovely, in-depth article appeared recently in the HuffPost about the twentieth anniversary of Ella Enchanted<\/em>. You can read about it here: http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/ella-enchanted-feminist-nostalgia_us_597bb2e7e4b02a8434b6866e<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On to this post. On July 5, 2017, Bookfanatic wrote, Does anyone have any ideas that will help me with the beginning of my story? My MC went to live with the fairies when she was six but I\u2019m not sure how to write the transition from living with her aunt to living with the fairies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Samantha wrote in response, How about a prologue?<\/em><\/p>\n

And I suggested that Bookfanatic read The Moorchild<\/em> by Eloise McGraw, which I\u2019ve mentioned here before. In The Moorchild<\/em> the process goes the other way. A half-elf whose mother is an elf is banished from the elves\u2019 Mound and sent to grow up in a human family.\u00a0McGraw begins with the grandmother in the human family who suspects that Moql (elf name)\/Saaski (human name) is a changeling. After this start in current time, McGraw seamlessly transitions on page 13 to a flashback that provides the backstory. The writing is superb, and the temporal change works.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not a fan of either prologues or backstories if we can avoid them. Prologues worry me because some people (like me sometimes) skip them.
\nAnd I\u2019m not crazy about flashbacks because they divert attention from the action moving forward. That diversion can\u2013briefly\u2013weaken readers\u2019 interest, and, in a split second, we can lose them.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, some readers and writers love them. Readers may feel a backstory lets them in on a secret, which has more than enough charm to make up for the distraction. And writers may feel they\u2019re giving the reader a peek behind the story curtain.<\/p>\n

So take your pick.<\/p>\n

However, in this case, straightforward telling (and showing) seems called for. Our story can begin with our MC\u2013let\u2019s call her Lacy\u2013in her aunt\u2019s home, engaged in her ordinary routine. Let\u2019s say she\u2019s eating breakfast.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know if the aunt in Bookfanatic\u2019s story is a good character or a villain. If she\u2019s bad, Lacy\u2019s breakfast may be half a slice of burnt toast. If she\u2019s good, it may be a ripe peach, a fried egg, and oatmeal with cinnamon and brown sugar, which would have been my favorite if I had been a sensible child. In fact, my fave was six slices of white bread with the crusts removed, which, inexplicably, my parents let me eat day after day.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s imagine that the aunt is bad. The fairy materializes in the kitchen, waves the burnt toast in the aunt\u2019s face and intones in a mellow fairy voice, \u201cThis is what you give my godchild?\u201d Before Lacy\u2019s startled eyes, the aunt becomes a toad.<\/p>\n

The fairy smiles fetchingly and waves her wand, and Lacy finds herself seated at the fairy\u2019s fairyland dining table. A napkin unfolds in the air and settles gently in Lacy\u2019s lap. Breakfast appears on the empty plate.<\/p>\n

The fairy beams. \u201cDig in, darling child.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scents are unfamiliar, but Lacy picks up her spoon, fearing that if she doesn\u2019t eat she\u2019ll become a toad, too.<\/p>\n

And so on. Breakfast can be delicious or odd. We move onto the progression of Lacy\u2019s first day, using showing to reveal her disorientation, her mistakes, and the differences between the two worlds. We can use telling to reveal the reasons, beyond burnt toast, that explain why the fairy swooped in. If we\u2019re writing in first person, Lacy\u2019s older self, who\u2019s narrating the story, can provide the answers. If we\u2019re using third person, the narrator can reveal the reasons. This explanation can be woven into the showing, a sentence here, a sentence there.<\/p>\n

Or we can start even earlier, say in Lacy\u2019s infancy, again using showing to set up the conditions that will lead to the fairy\u2019s intervention. If we approach it this way, we won\u2019t need the narrative explanations.<\/p>\n

(Obviously, what I\u2019ve invented probably has nothing to do with Bookfanatic\u2019s plot. The fairies themselves may need the child. Or a zillion other possibilities.)<\/p>\n

If the main story takes place a long while later, say, when Lacy is sixteen, we may want to use telling to sketch in a few events in her life between then and now, so that the hop doesn\u2019t feel abrupt.<\/p>\n

When we bring the story into the present, we can echo the original situation. Lacy, older now, is eating breakfast across from the fairy and pouring caterpillar milk into her grass-seed cereal from a china pitcher in the shape of a toad.<\/p>\n

Lacy and the scenario I\u2019ve laid out may be charming, but it won\u2019t really start the story unless we introduce the central problem of the tale early. We want to get the reader worried as quickly as we can, if possible in the first scene\u2013not full-blown, but in a less emotion-packed way. Suppose the central conflict is a lack of understanding between humans and fairies. Well, we see evidence of it in the fairy\u2019s failure to notice Lacy\u2019s terror when her aunt was turned into a toad.<\/p>\n

Here are four prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write the first scene in the Lacy story with no flashbacks, just forward action.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write the first scene using a flashback.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write the scene when Lacy leaves the fairy\u2019s dining room and enters the wider world of fairyland. Show the differences, Lacy\u2019s confusion, her false assumptions, her missteps.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write the beginning scene in your telling of \u201cRumpelstiltskin.\u201d Go back in time as far as you need to in order to write the story without flashbacks, which may be the birth of Rumpelstiltskin or something in the life of the king, the miller, or his daughter.<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seems like yesterday, but in November, 2015, Kitty asked a question about how to write a prison break and avoid cliches. In January, 2016, I wrote a post on the subject–http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/20\/lemme-out-convincingly\/\u2013and recently the universe responded with its own solution\u2013peanut butter! You may have read about this. More than one prisoner was involved, which is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions\/883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}