What's in Your Backpack?
In which I pummel a revision metaphor
First off, a hearty welcome to new subscribers. I’m grateful for your presence and would love to hear about what you’re working on—hit reply and let me know!
For all my fellow letter writers, big stamp news!
Also, two announcements for North Carolina folks:
Live Storytelling starts at the Carrboro ArtsCenter on September 17th. It’s filling up, which I say not to drum up scarcity-driven anxiety, but rather let you know that if you’ve been eyeing this opportunity, now is a good time to sign up. Financial aid is available!
The next community gathering, aka A Scratch of Writers, will be Sunday, September 22nd in Chapel Hill. This is a free, casual event where writers can gab about what they’re reading, complain about how hard writing is, and enjoy the connection and camaraderie of creative community. There will be free books and lots of seltzer. This meetup will also include a new feature: Story Time with Dr. T. Attendees can choose to read a pre-selected story and come ready to discuss it. (They can also choose to not read it and shotgun seltzer in the corner with me.) The story for September is Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day. Which is a really, really good story. Learn more about the meetup and RSVP here.
No matter the time of year, there are few places I go without my backpack. Even at the age of 43, I’m a backpack person—and far from the only one in the college town I live in.
My backpack carries my writerly essentials: laptop, notebooks, pen case, water bottle, snacks, lip balm, even a few band aids for inevitable paper cuts. It’s spacious, but it’s not bottomless. I have to think about what I have room for, what I absolutely need, and how heavy all those things are going to be. When loading up for the day, I choose carefully, mindfully.
It is for all these reasons that I use the backpack to think about revision. Put on your seat belt—I’m about to work this metaphor REAL HARD.
Consider your reader is climbing a mountain, the mountain of your story. It’s a big mountain, and the journey will be long. They have a backpack that can only fit so much. Their brain and eyeballs have limited capacity (and time).
The writer’s first big decision is what goes IN the backpack. What’s essential to the story? What’s dead weight?
When I revise and read other people’s work, I’m always asking this question: does this belong in the story? If you think of sentences and scenes and details as actual weight your reader has to carry, are they worth it? Are they earning their place? Ask yourself: is this scene as important as lunch? Or is it pretty but nonessential, like your grandmother’s china?
The thing about grandma’s china is, like our favorite sentences, we might have a sentimental attachment to it. A strong affection. But liking something isn’t the same thing as needing it. Beautiful things can be essential. But I think real hard before I toss a teacup into that backpack.
Okay, the backpack is packed and we’re at the trailhead. But not everyone in your party is convinced this hike is a good idea. So we need something to entice them onto the path. An opening salvo, if you will.
As soon as the piece begins, the writer must offer the reader some stakes, drama, or intrigue. A reader needs a reason to read your story. We won’t be able to convey the full impact of the journey to them out of the gate, but we can (and should) give them something in the very first paragraph that gets their attention, draws them in, and makes them want to know more. That makes them decide they want to climb the mountain carrying the backpack.
Consider the opening of James Baldwins’ essay Notes of a Native Son:
On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.
—James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Ooof. That’s an opening. There are some big-ticket, high-drama events. And a personal story threaded through with some major intrigue—his father dying before his last child was born. The reader at the base of the mountain wants to know more. And so they climb.
*
Okay. Ready for more? Yeah, I got more.
Now, let’s say the mountain is pretty tall, and there isn’t enough room in the backpack for all the water the reader needs for the long journey. BUT there are springs along the way where they can refill their bottles. They just need enough to get them to the next spring.
In this case, the water is the backstory/context. The writer’s job is to give the reader enough backstory and context so that the characters’ forward choices make sense. If Aunt Nelly just signed up for riding lessons, the reader needs to know that she hasn’t been on a horse since she was 6, when a real bad thing happened—that last detail gives us enough information to want to keep going. Enough water to get to the next spring.
The thing to avoid is drowning the reader. We don’t actually need to tell the reader everything about the accident when it’s first mentioned. It might just be “the accident”—enticing to the thirsty reader. We might hint at a brother who was also present the day of the accident. Was he hurt? the reader wonders. When do I get to meet him?
Don’t give it all away—make the reader wonder. Too much information too fast is like too many gallons of water. Sips are best, creating dramatic tension that drives the story forward.
When I revise, I ask this question over and over and over: Does the reader need to know this right now? Can the backstory and drama be subdivided into smaller parts to create more tension? Writers are often surprised at how many places the backstory can go once they start firmly applying that question.
*
Okay, here it is, my last thumping of this metaphor.
When I get lost in revision, I retrace my steps. When I can’t go forward—when I can’t see what’s up ahead, I have to back up. I look at where I’ve been and either that tells me what the next logical step is OR I discover that what precedes what I’m trying to solve actually needs work itself. I go back and see if I missed a turnoff, or ten.
This is why, as much as I wish I could zip right through the revision of Act III of the novel I’m writing, I have to go back. I have to keep shoring up Act I and Act II and get really clear on the journey these characters are on. When I’ve done that, I’ll be much better positioned to work my way through the thrilling last third of the story.
Revision is one of trickiest parts of writing—much discussed but not always sharply. My mangling of the backpack/hiking metaphor is an effort to concretize some of its abstractness. If you want some more refined thoughts on revision, check out Dinty Moore’s Revision and Narrative Structure and Jane Smiley’s What Stories Teach. Moore is writing for memoirists and Smiley to fiction writers, but I think their wisdom applies across genre.
Keep writing, friends. And hydrating!
J.
Such great practical advice for a topic that can often be very conceptual! Thanks for this.
This metaphor is right up my alley. 😉 Thank you!