In keeping with Penn Week, today I’m going to send you all on over to my guest post on Joanna’s site, The Creative Penn.
You all read The 4 Most Common Mistakes Fiction Editors See, yes?
Well, today learn the mistakes we see even from the pros:
2 thoughts on “Beyond the Most Common Fiction Mistakes: guest post on The Creative Penn”
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At the risk of appearing old-fashioned, I think the widespread distaste for exposition and backstory in all its forms may be getting a little out of control.
Yes, siebendach, styles do change. However backstory is still alive and well, and exposition has never been the stuff of lasting literature. In order to be powerful, exposition must be so much more fabulously-written than scenes that I simply advise aspiring writers to stay away from it until they’ve developed their skills to a high degree. Thornton Wilder could write an entire novel in exposition, and it would be gorgeous. But very few of us (especially in this day & age) are Thornton Wilder.
Backstory is everywhere and has a solid place in the correct structure of a novel. But of course exposition and backstory are not the same thing.