Ask the Author
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Re: Ask the Author
I see several comments about the minimal backstory in this tale. Some readers don't like that and others do. I try to reveal the necessary back story through the events in the current tale and what the character says and how the character responds rather than paragraphs of exposition explaining how we got to where the story begins. The backstory in Strong Heart is told through the stories the characters tell (Tom's tale of Bob Bob for example) and revealed as the characters proceed and hopefully is enough to allow the reader to continue without feeling there is a huge gap. To me backstory interrupts the flow of the tale and stories are all about flow. Of course, in Strong Heart you could argue that Sarah's story is backstory, maybe the fundamental original backstory for all tales, and you would be right!
Thanks for the nice review by the way.
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Can you share some stories about people you met while researching this book?
Pronouns: She/Her
"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you." (Mortimer J. Adler)
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Well said. Thanks for the response!Charlie Sheldon wrote:meteku4: I'm sorry Sarah's tale was a bit boring for you and that you found the several chapters difficult without interjections. I wanted to describe her experience just as she saw it, without others jumping in and pulling her from her tale. The way I saw her, she was speaking almost in a trance, describing what she had seen and done, and she was beyond interruptions. I don't think if I had kept other characters speaking or commenting her tale would have been as vivid, or compelling to her or the reader, plus as a form of balance I wanted the story of today in the park to be well balanced by the other story deep in the past. I wanted the reader to be in the tale in the park, but then also in Sarah's tale, such that when reading one, they almost forget the other, and this seems to have happened with some readers. The stories are entirely different, separate tales, linked only with the reveal at the end, and that was intentional. My hope was that a reader would enjoy the tales, even wondering how they might be linked, and then be surprised and perhaps a little pleased when the link takes place. Maybe I missed it, but that was the point. I just didn't see how I could be in a 12 year old girls frame of view telling such a story and keep pulling her back to the present with questions. In a way she had to be speaking uninterrupted because she was drawing on some ancient power she didn't understand but needed full attention to to draw forth. If that makes any sense....and, this is important, all this explanation is I feel true but in the moments of writing all this I was aware of none of it, it just appeared beneath my hand. So I really have no idea at all what I was doing.
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