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The right way to do backstory
Right now, I’m dragging myself through a book. It’s supposed to be really good, but personally, I despise the main characters. They’re too perfect. Their lives aren’t perfect, but the bad stuff that’s happened to them is presented in a way that makes them victims instead of strugglers with strength.
Ugh. Just thinking about it gets me all het up again. Let me just give you a bulleted list as to why this wrong, immoral and bad.
- All this bad stuff happened to them years ago, but their struggles . . . well, in hindsight, maybe they weren’t so bad. Now life is practically perfect in every way. (You want to hear about those characters now, don’t you?)
- There’s nothing going on in the present as we spend pages twelve through sixteen recounting the last ten years of the characters’ lives (characters we met on page eleven).
- Five pages of telling. In the first 20 pages.
- It’s backstory where we need to get some story.
- The antagonists’ storyline is more interesting. I want to read more about them. Something is happening over there other than people sitting and thinking about their lives. The so-called heroes? Not so much.
In a romance, we don’t have to hear about every person the main characters have ever dated, and every bad date they’ve ever been on. In a mystery, we don’t have to have the hero’s case-solving track record presented in full color. In any genre, we don’t need a character’s life story the first time we meet them (this drives me nuts!). We just need to know what’s pertinent to the story. There is a better way to deliver backstory!
In fact, Livia Blackburne did an in-depth analysis of some comparable titles to her work to see how they handle backstory in the first chapters. Surprisingly, both Graceling and The Hunger Games deliver big chunks of backstory that early in the novel.
However, I think the key is how they do it, and what they choose to include. Livia catalogues each line of backstory from those chapters, including flashbacks. The backstory:
- Informs character relationships. Often just a line or paragraph about how they met or a nickname, but these seem to highlight their power dynamic now. (Katniss & Gayle, Katniss & Peeta.)
- Builds the world—focusing on conflict. (Katniss learns to hold her tongue about the government.)
- Shows history that relates to this moment in the story—especially as it helps us understand the conflict. (Livia notes that there was one section of backstory which she found less than compelling, which dealt with the history of the civilization.)
Agent Rachelle Gardner has a great post about choosing and using backstory:
When you’re bringing your reader into the world of your novel, you’re trying to engage their senses and their emotions right away to get them involved in the story. You need to make an emotional connection with the reader as quickly as possible. The way to do that is in the here and now, the action and dialogue taking place in the present time. It’s highly unlikely you’ll make an emotional connection through backstory. . . .
There are ways to bring the backstory into the book, and the key is to do it slowly. Think about giving just enough information to illuminate one tiny aspect of your character at a time. Place your characters in situations, let them react, and let your reader wonder how they got there and why they reacted that way. You want to be strategic, almost cunning, in the way that you let little bits of information from the past appear on the page. Use those pieces of backstory to slowly and carefully flesh out that character, never giving away too much, always leaving the reader guessing a little.
I worry that in the past I’ve come down too hard on backstory. It’s useful—really!—but in many cases it’s more useful to writers than to readers. You know that lady that corners you and makes you look at photos of all seventeen grandchildren? Don’t be that lady when it comes to backstory!
What do you think? How have you seen backstory done well?
Image credits: history—Kristian Bjornard, applause—Jonathan McPherskesen
Posted in Technique
Tagged Backstory, backstory delivery, bad backstory, good backstory, integrating backstory
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Backstory in perspective
If you’ve been here a little while, you know that I’m a big fan of Alicia Rasley (and her co-blogger, Theresa Stevens, of course). I’m knee deep in revisions for the rest of the month, and Alicia goes and posts a great article on backstory. How can I not “reblog”?
A preview (emphasis and image added):
We know we need [backstory], so make it work. Part of the problem is that "layered-o
n" backstory (that which is meant to make the reader feel sorry for the character or understand some motivation) often ends up just being contrived– the rivets are showing, and the reader can feel the extraneousness of it. "Right, right, she was orphaned and we’re supposed to feel sorry for her. Got it." . . .
This makes the character and backstory work together for coherence. But the coherence requires us as writers taking the backstory we invent seriously, and imagining what it would REALLY cause in this particular person. That is, stop thinking of it as "backstory" and start thinking of it as "her/his past".
Read the rest: edittorrent: Coherence in backstory
What do you think? How can we take backstory more seriously and use it better?
Photo by Todd J
Figuring out the backstory
Ha ha, we’re back! I came across a handout from a class on backstory at last year’s National Romance Writers of America Conference.
Author Winnie Griggs says on her handout: “Whether you are a plotter or a pantser, the more time you spend 
figuring out what makes your character tick, the easier your story will be to write and the more depth it will have.”
For significant events in the characters’ lives, she includes how that event impacts her character’s life-view. The handout also outlines several ways to reveal the backstory (obviously, the full content was covered in the class, and I didn’t attend the conference, so I can’t help you fill in all the blanks).
This handout also features a chart for tracking your backstory against the backdrop of the historical events before and during your novel—an important aspect that we haven’t really discussed. Especially if you’re writing a historical novel, mapping out the events in the years before your novel may help you find some events that could have an impact on your characters.
Using a chart may or may not help you figure out your character’s history and personal motivations. But as I looked over the chart, I wondered how other people come up with backstory details. When it comes to backstory, are you more of a planner, a fixer/grafter or a happy coincidencer? Are you more likely to allow the story to grow out of something that happened before your story starts, or to fill in the blanks in your characters’ pasts as you write them?
How do you craft what came before?
Photo by Earl
Posted in Technique
Tagged Backstory, good backstory, story ideas, winnie griggs, worksheet
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Backstory: the end (for now?)
Once again, we’re at the “end” of the series on backstory. In this first iteration of the series, we focused on the standard uses of backstory (character motivation and trying to make characters look sympathetic) and the standard delivery of backstory (“shards” designed to clarify the story).
This “201″ take focused more on the special category of stories where the present story is all about discovering “truth” through discovering the past story. This backstory is more than just information that makes a scene make sense; it changes the entire way the character views the world (maybe we could say that it makes their whole world make more sense).
The example I keep using is in The Secret Life of Bees, where Lily is trying to find out the truth about her mother’s death (and her life). It’s been a while since I read it, but if I remember correctly, there are very few instances where backstory’s sole purpose is to justify a character’s action in the present. The backstory revelations aren’t incidental to the scene and the characters; when they come, they’re the purpose of the scene and have a big impact on the character and her journey.
It’s a special use of backstory, definitely, and not the “usual” use. But no matter how we use backstory, it can enrich our characters and our story—as long as it’s not like this:
What do you think? Have you ever seen this use of backstory (the good example or the bad one)? What all would you say is “bad” about the cartoon example?
Backstory delivery 201
Even good backstory can kill a story if it’s not delivered well. We’ve looked extensively at how to weave in backstory, but I think in this “201-level” look, we can go beyond the basic mechanics on a scene level (which we’ve covered before) and look at how backstory revelations should function in a story—and how to keep their delivery smooth.
As we said last time, this has to be the right kind of backstory—something worth waiting for. Hinting at the backstory, “insinuating” it as Chris Roerden puts it (Don’t Murder Your Mystery), can be a driving force for the novel if the “right” backstory is big enough (such as the identity of the murderer).
Hinting at the backstory throughout the story creates suspense by promising some big, important revelation. We’re writing the reader a promissory note, and if the revelation isn’t as big and important as we set it up to be, we can’t give our readers the pay off we promised.
But as long as our backstory is a big enough deal, suspense is often the main function of backstory. When you keep in mind that you’re trying to raise more questions than you answer (but answer enough questions not to frustrate your reader!), it might be easier to see why (and how) to slip backstory in a “shard” at a time.
One important thing to remember is that there has to be some “action” in the present to balance the action set in the past. Not fight scenes per se, but some character doing something. If the plot is going to revolve around searching for some truth or story or facts, that search has to be compelling in and of itself. An entire book about a girl sitting down to read her late father’s journal—which she does, successfully, in one sitting, and she counts herself lucky to have known him—isn’t as compelling or interesting as just depicting the backstory (the father’s life) as the “live action” of the story.
There has to be conflict in the present as well as in the backstory we’re revealing—and possibly between the two, as well. Maybe the daughter is going through troubles in her marriage and she reads about her father’s doubts in his marriage. But before she can come to his final choice whether to remain faithful to her mother, the daughter’s husband interrupts her. They have a fight. He takes the journal and burns it. The daughter must set off to find the “other woman” to see what her father chose. She only knows her first name, and so on. Discovering the story isn’t easy—and the character has a compelling reason to want to know the (very important) truth.
And of course, that revelatory truth will most likely come at or around the climax of the story—another reason why this has to be a big promise, and something worth revealing.
What do you think? When a story centers around backstory, how does the delivery differ than in other stories?
Photo by Michael Lehet
The “right” kind of backstory
Lots of books—especially, it seems, those of a more literary bent—focus on revealing backstory as unlocking a key in a mystery, whether it be finally understanding another person to the character finally discovering the truth about his/her own life. How is that different from “bad” backstory?
The answer may vary, but to me “bad” backstory is a.) delivered up-front in a chunk and/or b.) supposed to totally explain why the characters (especially bad guys and fractured protagonists) are the way they are, and thus justify their poor choices.
“Good” backstory, on the other hand, often isn’t something the main character knows yet. The main 
character is searching for the rest of the story right along with us. If a POV character does know the whole story, s/he should have a reason to hide that from the other characters and the reader, instead of just withholding for withholding’s sake.
This backstory must also be something worth waiting for. The premise of the novel rests on this character’s search for the truth—so that truth had better be worth reading the whole thing for. Trick endings might sell one book, but betrayed readers might be turned off forever.
But most important, perhaps, is what the backstory does. No matter what the specific events of the past or present in the book, discovering the truth should reveal some truth about the present story. It should help the character—and hopefully the reader—make sense of the world, and inform the character in some way greater than just the facts do.
That is, after all, the point of studying history, whether global or personal. We’re trying to understand where we fit in, what came before, and how that can guide us better. We want to know what we believe or feel or know has always been true. We want to know what truth is. And it’s not only the point of studying history—it can be the point of reading fiction, too.
What do you think? What defines the “right” kind of backstory?
Photo by Clever Cupcakes
The backstory of Backstory
I don’t want to rehash too much of what we discussed last time (can you believe it’s only been three months since we discussed this last?)—I want to move into new territory. But first, I guess, we have to go through the backstory on the backstory: review what we’ve already covered so I can see where to go next.
The last series covered several topics:
- Where to start and Jump into the action: starting stories and scenes with action instead of backstory.
- Winning Back Story: Not an Oxymoron (Guest post from Margie Lawson): slipping in backstory a “shard” at a time, and only what’s necessary
- Backstory: how much is too much? (Whatever stops the story)
- Handling Backstory through narration, Backstory through dialogue, and Backstory through setting and props
- Using Backstory and characterization (and what NOT to do!), and instead using Backstory to set up character motivation directly
- And finally, the subject that inspired this revisit, Backstory done right—backstory revelation as a driving force in the plot.
So we looked at determining what was backstory and what was story-story, as well as several methods of inserting backstory. As I said before, it’s that last subject that prompted this revisit. More and more I’m noticing stories that rely heavily on their backstory, whether to propel the current action of the story or to add the suspense necessary to propel the readers through the story. In less experienced hands, those same backstory-heavy books might drag, as hopelessly trapped in the past as their characters. But plenty of excellent authors are able to pull it off in style.
There are definitely good uses for backstory—and well-written, interesting stories can even revolve around backstory. So how can we make sure our backstory is the “right” kind and the “right” delivery?
Photo by Colleen Lane
