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One would think that a writer would occasionally talk about writing on her blog.<\/p>\nOne would think that a writer would occasionally talk about writing on her blog.<\/p>\n
One would think.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019d much rather talk about Nancy Drew. <\/p>\n
So let\u2019s kill two birds with one stone, shall we? Let\u2019s talk about back story.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re writing a series, you must share just enough back story to bring new readers up to speed, but not so much that you bore the series\u2019 avid fans.<\/p>\n
One way to reveal back story is through dialogue. But it must be NATURAL dialogue.<\/p>\n
In the second chapter of The Mysterious Mannequin<\/em>, Ned\u2019s friends Burt and Dave bring us up to speed with this exchange: <\/p>\n \u201cNancy,\u201d said Burt, \u201cyou working on another mystery right now?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to locate a missing mannequin, believe it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Dave laughed. \u201cThat\u2019s certainly something different. If I recall correctly, you started your detective career hunting for The Secret of the Old Clock<\/em>, and recently we helped you solve the mystery of The Invisible Intruder<\/em>. Boy, that was a tough case!\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is a perfect example of how NOT to reveal back story! <\/p>\n Now, don\u2019t think I\u2019m criticizing Nancy Drew or \u201cauthor\u201d Carolyn Keene. They could never do anything wrong in my eyes. As I said, this is the perfect<\/em> example. So, you see, I\u2019m really praising them.<\/p>\n So there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One would think that a writer would occasionally talk about writing on her blog. One would think. But I\u2019d much rather talk about Nancy Drew. So let\u2019s kill two birds with one stone, shall we? Let\u2019s talk about back story. … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,38],"tags":[24,27],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nancy-drewsday","category-writing","tag-nancy-drew","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}