Activity

“How does Chris Fabry show what the story is about so thoroughly right from the start? How can we learn from this?”

All the things that begin to affect Matt in the first chapter are elements of what the story is about. It references his brother through his baseball glove, introduces his childhood friends by way of Dickie’s phone call, and even hints at some not so great things that happened in his past. It seems as though just about every element that may have been a part of Matt’s character is present in this opening chapter. Often we see the people in stories begin as strangers to the reader and slowly become familiar, while here we observe the building blocks of Matt’s person from the start and can piece them together as we work through the book.

“Is Chris Fabry showing or telling? How explicit should authors be in indicating the psychological makeup of their characters and what drives, consumes, and motivates them? Do you suffer more from being “on the nose” or leaving readers in the dark as to what core obsession drives your characters and the logic behind their actions and emotions?”

The author is very strongly telling, at least in the first chapter or two. I think that while it is quite important to know the basics of why a character does what he does and thinks the way he does, we as readers should be left eager to learn more motivations. Being thrown back into Matt’s childhood is a good opportunity for us to start with a “final product” of his motivation and see how he comes to be this way. I personally like characters to start as nearly strangers and have a long development and journey that readers take with them.

“Do you do a good job at getting right to the point of what your story is about, or does it take you several chapters to flesh out what’s at stake in the character’s soul?”

Unfortunately I don’t haven’t written much, but when I am either reading or envisioning how I’d like to tell a story I tend to gravitate toward spending quite a bit of time with characters prior to seeing the event that begins the primary motion of the story. I think that it helps to solidify who they are as a “person” before the events start to push and shove them around. Bringing us back to Matt’s youth gives us a chance to see him shape into the person he becomes, which can help with the speed at which we are introduced to him.