AUTHOR'S CORNER;

THE SHADOWS ON THE PAGE

It's all well and good placing an idea down on paper.  One can write about subject X moving from one end of the country to the other.  One can make subject X meet subject Y and they can fall in love and live happily ever after.  One can also take a used teabag and reuse it!  

Some of, no, all of the best writers I've read have been not one, not two, not even three, but four, five, six ....infinite dimensional on paper.  Their writing has hidden meaning, concealed emotions, pasts, backgrounds, mental hangups, helplessness, all threading in and out of the main theme, all somehow intertwining with the characters, weaving in and out of their lives and personalities and binding them together! 

GET THE PICTURE???

Good writers portray the meaning behind their story, they link in emotions, ideas, thoughts, hangups and background into their story.  

It's the emotion behind the commotion, the tears behind the fears,

the fright behind the flight, the sentiment behind the argument, the gist amidst the mist!!! Gets the picture?  It is the ability to make the reader see why subject X has gone to the other end of the country; the past she may have left behind, the emptiness that keeps her running.  The love she is yearning for, and the mean expression that hides all this.  These are what I call shadows!  Because whilst you as the author are writing your story, say about X and Y, there are 'shadows' you thread and interweave into your novel which makes the novel fuller, fatter and with substance.  

Shadows which express fear. 

Shadows which portray an inner loneliness.

Shadows which possess an element of past need.

Shadows which show love.

Or dream of passion.

The woman scorned.

The lovers mourned.

A bond once broken.

It would be boring to completely analyse and describe your character in the first chapter.  The reader will have nothing to discover and will soon get bored.  It is more entertaining to weave those so called shadows, gradually and cleverly into the novel, each time revealing just a little bit more about your characters, like slowly unwrapping a bar of chocolate.  And because I consider the gradual intro of info as 'shadows' to my pages, I can play with them as I like, sometimes revealing them, sometimes hiding them, sometimes they just lurk in the background, silent and yet so very much felt!