Monday, February 23, 2009

Gooooooood Monday morning, beautiful people!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Ours was uneventful. Saturday I had my OKRWA writer's bootcamp meeting and Sunday we had a birthday party here at the building for my cousin's daughter. She needed the room because it was sort of like a miniature carnival. They had a bouncy jump thingy (which I couldn't keep little man out of;) and a bunch of different game stations where the kids won tickets for prizes. They also played games and the kids just had a blast. I even caught a few parents playing along. The cake was screwed up so I ran down to the local market and found a cute American Idol cake that replaced it perfectly. My cousin had a karaoke machine set up for the kids. Overall...chaos but fun.

My bootcamp was great. Drill Sarge read from a current Nocturne to point out how backstory can slow pacing. Amazing how easy it is to see from an objective perspective. One minute the woman was on the verge of having a villain capture her and the next she's discussing why they were picking on her and she was trying to put on her seatbelt. I don't know about you guys...but if an evil psycho was after me--I wouldn't be looking for my seatbelt. It sounded like a great read though.

Off to take teen to school. Have a productive day!

7 comments:

Jennifer Shirk said...

I know! Isn't it funny how easy it is to see OTHER people's mistakes and not our own? LOL!

Kate Karyus Quinn said...

Oh, I have definitely been guilty of overloading on the backstory too early. Somehow when it's your own stuff it doesn't seem wrong though until someone else points it out.

Bethanne said...

i guess that's why we have crit groups. :P so they can see all our faults! LOL great post. pacing is so important.

Chicki Brown said...

That party sounds like tons of fun!

As far as the novel goes, I think we've all been guilty of loading too much backstory into our writing. It's hard to figure out how to convey what's happened in the past without dumping.

Next month my chapter has an all-day workshop with Debra Dixon who wrote Goals, Motivation and Conflict!

Unknown said...

Thats what I love about you guys! If I have too much backstory...you tell me. But when I don't have enough then you are confused and tell me I need more.

Chicki - I've heard so much about Deb Dixon's GMC that I looked up and printed out articles on it. I bet the conference will be great!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like the carnival birthday party was a blast! And yeah, the backstory...such a problem, yet we do need to get some in there. Our work is tough some days! :)

Mel Rivera said...

Lovely blog thanks for sharing