Patrick from Edinburgh has been attending a writers’ group where more
experienced writers talk about story and backstory. He isn’t sure of the
difference between the two and sent in this heartfelt plea: Please can you explain to me what backstory
is. Isn’t that the whole point of telling a story – to let readers know what’s
happened to the character?
Let’s start by defining story: a
story is a series of events, taking place in a particular setting, which cause
a character, or characters, to undergo change or growth.
Now to define backstory: backstory
is everything the author needs to
know about the characters and setting in order to create a credible and
riveting story.
Notice I said everything the author needs to know. The reason for the
emphasis is because the reader doesn’t
need to know all these things. All the reader needs to know, or rather wants to know, is how the characters
react and what part the setting has to play in events.
My day job is critiquing the work
of other writers and I deal with a large number of beginners, who almost
invariably begin with a backstory info dump of astronomical proportions.
Whenever I point this out to the
author, I get a reply explaining exactly why it is essential that the reader
knows immediately that Freddy, who is nearly fifty, on the fat side, with sandy
hair, hazel eyes, dark eyebrows and a lop-sided grin has only been out of
prison for two weeks after being sent down for twenty years for aggravated
assault while robbing a post office, not just one post office but a string of
them and a bank, too, although he wasn’t actually convicted of the bank job
because the cashier turned out to be an unreliable witness (in the end he only
served fifteen of the twenty term because he got time off for good behaviour, although
he wasn’t really good but the screws were on his payroll so didn’t report that
he’d been running a gambling and drug ring on the inside, although one did try
to grass him up, but he soon put a stop to that by getting the screws who were
on the take to beat him up) and in the first week after getting out he tracked
down his old girlfriend because she’d stopped visiting him and he had to beat
her and her new boyfriend to a pulp because he couldn’t let them get away with
making a fool of him.
If the reader doesn’t know all
that, the aggrieved author will ask, how will they understand why he did what
he did in week two? Quick answer? They’ll never need to understand, because
they won’t read far enough into the book to care!
Taking the example above, how much
does the reader really need to know? Very little. All of it is backstory and
slows the storytelling.
Some advice given me to when I
started out as a writer was to open as close to the action as possible. This is
impossible to do if you start out by telling the reader who the players are and
why they are there.
Let’s take Freddy and, instead of
lumping all that information into the intro, put him right into a pivotal scene
instead. If the book opened with Freddy confronting his ex-girlfriend and then
beating up the boyfriend, the author would have the perfect opportunity to let
the reader know that Freddy is just out of jail. Freddy could berate his
ex-girlfriend because she didn’t wait for him. She, in turn, could impart all
sorts of information about Freddy and his past as she begs him to spare her new
lover.
If we really needed to, we could
also learn that Freddy is a bit overweight because he isn’t as fit as he used
to be before he went inside. How would the author tell us this? He wouldn’t –
he’d show it by Freddy being surprised at how slow he is in attack and being
horrified to find he’s wheezing at the end of the fight.
An info dump in the opening
paragraphs is the kiss of death to any novel. Opening paragraphs have to hook
readers and compel them to read on. They need to make the reader wonder why the
characters are acting as they are. As I said earlier, the author needs to know
everything, but readers only need to know just enough to intrigue and keep them
turning the pages.
Readers can find out a few chapters
further on what Freddy got up to while he was inside – provided it’s essential
for them to know. But this doesn’t mean it’s okay to use info dumps later in
the book. The moment a passage of backstory appears on the page, the author’s voice
takes over and the reader is jolted out of the story.
Characters should be just like the
people you meet. You have to get to know them by their actions and dialogue. If
they speak for themselves, readers will believe in them and follow wherever
they go. If the author speaks for them, that connection is broken.
One of the reasons writers are
hammered with the mantra of “show, don’t tell” is because it is almost
impossible to make an info dump of backstory if you are showing your characters
in action, but all too easy to do so if you go into a long spell of narrative.
So, to summarise: think of
backstory as an iceberg. It is everything that has happened to the character up
to the point he or she appears in the story. The author needs to know all of this
so that the players act in character. The reader only needs to know the iceberg
tip – just enough to keep them intrigued and desperate to turn those pages.
---
Lorraine
Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition
judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is
the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is
also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The
Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private
critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500
competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.
Writing as Frances di
Plino, she is the author of crime/thriller, Bad Moon Rising, featuring
Detective Inspector Paolo Storey. The second in the series, Someday Never Comes, was
released earlier this year and the third, Call
It Pretending, will be out in December.
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