: Re: How do I handle a backstory big enough to be a story of its own? I have an idea I'm working on, where there's a huge backstory that I'm not sure how to deal with. In my particular case,

I'd be fine with your backstory as a standalone novella which functions as a prequel to your main story.

Harry Connolly did this with his Twenty Palaces series. There's a main trilogy, and then a prequel novel about how the main character came to be where he was at the start of the trilogy. The prequel is helpful but not necessary to understand the trilogy.

If you read the Chronicles of Narnia in internal chronological order rather than publication order, The Magician's Nephew is the first book and deals with the creation of Narnia. It's set before The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (and the other five books).

The Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke is similar but not precisely identical. The first book, Rendezvous with Rama, sets up the arrival of the spaceship Rama at Earth. The next three in the series center on the adventures of one family who are (I think — it's been a while) mentioned in the first book, and they are set several decades later.

Load Full (0)

:

@Debbie451

Load Full 0 Comments

: I think what's being missed here is the idea that what makes something a "perfect" world is not the same for everyone. If you want an example of a utopia, try The Wizard of Oz and the

@Debbie451

Load Full 0 Comments

: Where in the writing process do you work in subtext? In the BBC Sherlock fandom there are many lively discussions about how a lot of the story takes place in subtext: Person C is a "mirror"

@Debbie451

Load Full 3 Comments

: 1) Use the ellispses and emphasis, and tighten up the spaces. This man, this...monster...has done something despicable. There's no typesetting reason to have spaces on both sides of those

: Re: How do I handle a backstory big enough to be a story of its own? I have an idea I'm working on, where there's a huge backstory that I'm not sure how to deal with. In my particular case,

More posts by @Debbie451

:

: I think what's being missed here is the idea that what makes something a "perfect" world is not the same for everyone. If you want an example of a utopia, try The Wizard of Oz and the

: Where in the writing process do you work in subtext? In the BBC Sherlock fandom there are many lively discussions about how a lot of the story takes place in subtext: Person C is a "mirror"

: 1) Use the ellispses and emphasis, and tighten up the spaces. This man, this...monster...has done something despicable. There's no typesetting reason to have spaces on both sides of those

Login to post a comment!

0 Comments

Back to top