Quote:
Originally Posted by skb
Yes, Steven and GMW, that's the dilemma exactly. Nicely summed up.
The Groundhog Dilemma.
The two POV aren't shared. That is, there are some events the two characters share, but mostly it's what happens to each when the other isn't around. They share the BIG things. But it's the little and middling stuff that happens in between bigness that they don't.
But yes, there be (potential) groundhogs. Still, I'm in no hurry, according to my notes, I started this story in 2009...
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Well, really...aren't you just trying to fit backstory in? You're not Groundhogging it. You're doing what 75% of all authors do--dealing with how to shoehorn backstory into your plot. You can either do the ubiquitous "flashback," e.g., "Sharon thought back about the day she'd met him...", or s/he relays the eveents to the ubiquitous unknowing third party, who mostly tends to exist for Just. This. Purpose.
The ability to shoehorn backstory in is, IMHO, the mark of creativity. I mean, we all see it, we read it; when we simply accept it as part of the plot, it's been done successfully. Really, how's it any different than any conveyance of critical information to the reader? We all remember
The Da Vinci Code, right? There you have huge,
huge quantities of info that the author has to convey to the reader, or the reader will, literally, lose the plot, so to speak. Brown uses the plot device of (effectively) the
debutante; the inexperienced female character, who gets everything told to her, over the course of the story--and we, the readers, are learning it at the same time.
Because Brown is the master of the cliffhanger--which keeps us page-turning--and because he uses the tried-and-true method of having the older, experienced male expert tell the story to the much younger female, we think nothing of it.
It's no different. Your information may not be the dry information of whether or not "The Last Supper" has or has not mirror images of this or that, or whether the Church thinks this or that, but you're doing the same exact thing. You need to convey information, held by character X, as part of his or her experiential life. It's still simply information, whether it's something that happened from her POV, or it's a book she read, or like Robert Langdon, information in which s/he is an expert, right?
Soooo, you can info dump it (often a bad choice); Flashback it (better and more typical), or relay it seamlessly, (hopefully seamlessly) to a third party.
Right? Did I miss one, gang?
Hitch