Thursday, August 05, 2010

Carolyn J. Rose

 Author Carolyn J. Rose is here today to talk about back story and how she used it in her latest book, Hemlock Lake. She’ll also be stopping by over the day to read comments and answer questions.

Welcome Carolyn J. Rose.

The role of backstory in Hemlock Lake

What happened before the story contained between the covers of a book began can be crucial to the ways in which both characters and plot will develop. It can even determine where things will stand on the final page.

Events that took place in the past can cast a long and dark shadow over the future. Events set in motion because of past tragedies, gains, losses, or emotional upheavals, can wound a character’s body, mind, and soul. How those wounds heal and the scars they leave can shape thought, action, and emotion.

 In Hemlock Lake, the past overlaps and seeps into the present in the form of relationships locked into the structure of childhood, townspeople fighting change, a patriarch dying by inches, a lover lost in the aftermath of war, roles decreed by ancestry and tradition, and two ghosts who recreate the final moments of their lives in dreams Dan Stone dreads, but cannot escape.

As he tells Camille Chancellor, an outsider and the one person he feels he can confide in, “Sometimes I feel like one of those butterflies pinned to a piece of cardboard inside a display case. I can see where I’d like to fly to. But I can’t escape without dragging the pins and cardboard with me.”

In less symbolic terms, as my husband Mike Nettleton often puts it, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Confronted with a setting or background that can’t be changed, a character faces hard choices: fight the situation until it breaks him, give in and go with the flow, or get out. The character who takes that last course of action faces two additional choices: renounce the past, break clean, and start anew, or continue, in a fresh setting, to be influenced by past events and emotional baggage.

In order to redefine himself, Dan moved far from the remote Catskill Mountain community where he was born and raised. But when his mother’s terminal illness brought him back, he discovered that nothing he’d accomplished while he was away changed opinions held in Hemlock Lake. He finds that only that part of his life up until he left is important. He feels out of synch, inferior, still the quarterback who couldn’t lead his team to victory, still the boy who didn’t like to hunt, who lost himself in books.

When someone threatens to torch an upscale development in his hometown, Dan is assigned to the case. He finds himself in a no-man’s land between newcomers and long-time residents who oppose the development and stonewall his investigation as they cling to the way things were. Bound by what he calls “a family code of honor to meet responsibility and do his job,” Dan can’t walk away, and he can’t go with the flow and sandbag the investigation. He stays and he fights—to solve the crimes and free himself of the past.

As those who read Hemlock Lake will discover, that fight is nearly fatal.

Thank you Carolyn.

What about you? How do you use back story in your books? Leave your comments and questions before you click away!
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29 comments:

  1. After watching the book trailer on this blog yesterday, I was intrigued and bought the Kindle edition. I'm halfway through already and love the way you use an unreliable narrator to weave in the backstory with dreams.

    Reading the book is actually answering some questions for me, so thank you!

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  2. As I already stated, I love the look of your book and now the sound of it too.

    In my current wip I use backstory more than I did in my first novel where I used it sparingly. But the current one demands it because I chose to start with the aftermath of the crime and then dart back and forth to the buildup over the course of a hot summer in migrant farm country. I've been worried about the arc of the story, however, wondering when essential backstory becomes too much backstory. Do you have some thoughts on how to handle that?

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  3. Good question Yvonne. One thing you don't want to do is drag down the pace of the story with an overload of backstory. Keep telling yourself that this book is a whole new story and it has to stand on its own.

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  4. Great post. Thanks for having Carolyn here, Helen. Backstory is always important and it's usually trial and error for me in working it in.

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  5. Using a backstory and making it work takes a special talent. I tried it and the result was avergae at best. So its on the back burner for now. Best wishes for your success with Hemlock Lake.

    Stephen Tremp

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  6. I like the idea of backstory being part of the current story--seeping into the present, as you mentioned. I think that's a good technique to use since backstory can lose readers quickly.

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  7. In some of my cozies, backstory has been limited--only a paragraph or two to explain how the character got to where she is and why she feels she has do to whatever she feels she must tackle. But backstory in Hemlock Lake is like a whirlpool or quicksand. It's always sucking at the protagonist. When I wrote the book, I had so much it was overpowering. Over the years, I pared it down.
    I hope that those of you who read the book will tell me whether you feel I struck a balance.
    Thank you for all your comments.

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  8. I had never thought of back story in those terms--thanks for this, Carolyn (and Helen). Funny--without even thinking about it, I just finished writing a novel in which understanding and exposing the back story becomes crucial to resolution in the book.

    Bodie P

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  9. Thanks for the insights.

    Weaving in backstory is an important part of my current ms - I hope it works pretty well. :)

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  10. Like Laura, I bought the kindle edition of the book after viewing the trailer. I've barely started, but I will be paying close attention to the use of back story. It is something I often struggle with in my own writing - when and how to work it in, how much I should tell.

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  11. Bodie makes a good point. I think backstory is like our own unconscious. Sometimes we (and readers) are aware of it and sometimes we're not.

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  12. Thanks for this post. I like your butterfly simile. I normally hate metaphors/similes, but that one was vivid and strong.

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  13. I've not had to use background - yet.

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  14. This sounds like an interesting story; have to go check it out.

    Carolyn, I feel like I know you! (Ask Helen to clarify! haa!) Kidding!

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  15. Chris - you've got me hooked. Were we related in another lifetime?

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  16. Carolyn, you didn't know it but you visited my blog last week. Actually your picture did. Chris guest posted last Thursday and for a good portion of the day, I had your picture up instead of hers. (Yes, I am a dingbat.)

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  17. LOL LOL LOL. Feel free to put her picture up instead of mine for part of today.

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  18. Back story is vital for the author. Knowing what parts the reader has to know, and when to reveal them--that's the tricky part.

    Terry
    Terry's Place
    Romance with a Twist--of Mystery

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  19. Smooth backstory is only one of the gems in Carolyn's book. Characterization is even more important and HEMLOCK LAKE oozes characterization. LOVE the book!

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  20. Since I write fantasy series, I always have to work some backstory in the second and third books of the story so if someone picks it up first they're not lost. It's a tricky line between getting the information needed in the story without slowing it down.
    I love novels where someone goes back home where everything is the same but the person who left and returned.

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  21. Yesterday, I watched the trailer. It's nice to learn more about the book. It sounds like one of those situations for the protagonist where "right" isn't so clean cut. It seems like it has many layers.

    I don't put backstory on the first page, but I do try to bring it up in small pieces soon after so readers know where the characters are coming from.

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  22. Yes, Susan, that's what's at the core of Hemlock Lake--that time warp kind of feeling.

    And Deni, thanks for the kind words. Without your deft editing touch, there would be a few places where characterization needed a transfusion.

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  23. I agree, try not to put backstory on the first page or in most case in the first chapter.

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  24. It's interesting how important backstory can be, and how important keeping it lowkey can be. Hemlock Lake sounds interesting.

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  25. Enjoyed the back story info aboutr Hemlock Lake. I use back story when it touches on the plot line. In my next book, Open Season, there are racial issues in the plot line and the central character react to those issues based on their upbringing.

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  26. True, we can't let the past rule our present!

    Morgan Mandel
    http://morganmandel. blogspot.com
    http://facebook.com/morgan.mandel

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  27. I try to weave in backstory rather than dropping it in huge chunks. It's easier to digest that way ;)

    W.I.P. It: A Writer's Journey

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  28. Fascinating trailer and the book sounds cool. It is difficult to sprinkle in the back story, but it seems to me that a lot of what you have here is the protag's personality...essential and interesting.

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