The 30 Day Novel: Backstory

By Cyn Mobley

Weaving in the backstory is always a challenge for writers. In this book, I'll lay out the techniques for seamless integration of backstory and history (you DO know the difference, don't you?) Prologues, flashbacks, and appositives are just a few of the techniques that will solve your backstory problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cyn Mobley
• Release date: Jun 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781596771017

Cyn Mobley

USA Today bestselling author, former naval officer and lawyer. Eight Greyhounds, three Airedales, and a coupla mutts.

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The 30 Day Novel: Backstory

by Cyn Mobley

Published by Greyhound Books at Smashwords

Copyright Cyn Mobley 2007

Originally published as BAM: Book a Month: Backstory

Discover other titles by Cyn Mobley at Smashwords.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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ISBN:

With thanks

To my Advanced Fiction Group folks, who are individually and collectively just delightful people. The core group is Dr. Jim Stovall, Dr. Bryce Anderson, Todd Howard, Kelli Dieter, and Ann Simpson. The newcomers are Michael DeLisle, Marsha Brantley and Reggie Jay. AFG is by invitation only and I’ve been exceptionally fortunate to have simply great folks in the group. Come visit us at bamwriters.com.

To the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. The Summer Writing Workshops

were where I first field-tested the rhetoric of Structure and BAM.

It’s also where I met many writers who I now publish. My thanks in particular to John and Candice Reaves for everything they do to make those workshops possible.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Prologue/Epilogue

Flashback

Narrative Paragraph

Appositive Phrases

Word by Word

Troubleshooting

Conclusion

Introduction

Backstory: it’s one of the biggest challenges facing writers. How do you get it in? How do you bring your reader inside your protagonist’s world without simply dumping five pages of backstory and authorial intrusion on the reader?

The answer is the backstory dribble. It’s gotta come in gradually, within the flow of the main story.

I’ve been meaning to write about backstory for a long time but couldn’t decide how to approach teaching it. Then I woke up one morning with the concept almost completely outlined in my head, a way of