As part of revising middle chapters in my current draft, I’m looking at some notes I made on turning points while writing Deep as a Tomb. The typical problem in the middle of a novel is that the story sags. You’re not yet to the climax but are laying in all that has to happen before the climax can happen. That can drag. Turning points The best advice I’ve seen for avoiding that sagginess is to give each scene an internal and…
Writing has ruined me as a reader. It used to be that when I stumbled in a book, I thought it was my fault. Now I usually blame the writer. I notice and nitpick things I used to let slide. One of those things is delivering backstory. What Is Backstory? Backstory is whatever happened before the book starts, so all books have backstory. In science fiction and fantasy, backstory sometimes also include information about the world that the character already…