Writing Challenge Tuesday: Post-History

I'm a bit of a horror buff. You might have guessed that. I can wax enthusiastic all day long about smart, psychological horror, and probably send you away with an armload of DVDs and a viewing list.

(Torture-porn, not so much. While I have no problem with gore when a story calls for it -- my books, case in point -- horror that relies on violence over character and plot just strikes me as criminally lazy; anybody can splash some red stuff around and call it a day. Though it's even worse when the gore actively undercuts the story. I will never not be pissed at the Saw series for doing something nobody else has -- a deep, intricate and winding plotline stretched across seven freakin' movies, while playing with clever time-shifts and drawn out reveals -- and hiding all that great stuff behind mountains of torture scenes and general nastiness.)

The Scream series is an interesting one, mingling comedy and slasher tropes. While deconstructing horror seems old-hat today (and has anybody done it better than Joss  Whedon's "Cabin in the Woods"?), remember that back in '96, a character actually calling out (and sometimes succumbing to) horror-movie tropes was pretty radical.  One of the phrases that Randy, the film’s film buff, uses, has always struck me: “Preponderance of backstory.” 

Specifically, he’s talking about how to tell if you’re in an installment, or the final chapter of a trilogy. As it happens, the movie makers sort of backtracked that, since they made a fourth. All the same, it’s a fantastic phrase, and it’s something I’ve always contemplated in particular with the older generations in my books. Bentley and Corman have plenty of story yet to tell, and someday, I hope to tell it. I’m not sure yet how it will all come out, but I’m looking forward to it. Suffice to say that in their heyday, they got up to some antics that rivaled Daniel's...

So this is my writing challenge for the week: Write a preponderance of backstory for one of your elder characters. A father, a grandfather, a mother, an aunt. Someone who hasn’t had their tale told as part of the course of the story yet. Maybe it ties to the main plot. Maybe it doesn’t, and they’re in the middle of saying goodbye. 

I’m told as we age, we start to contemplate how we’ve gotten where we are, and what brought us here. If that’s true, then our stories are just going to get more important right before the end. 

See you all on Thursday for another Inspirations post, and next Tuesday, look forward to an awesome announcement!