Hi

I have a query about backstory, I would appreciate advice on. I realise it is subjective, but I'm a bit stuck at one point.

An agent has asked for the opening pages of my WiP to be changed. She gave detailed feedback on what she liked and didn't, so it was easy to sort.

She noted that there was an issue with too much backstory in places. She named one chunk and, yes, this was easy to reduce - or, at least, cut in half. I think this was the offending chunk - the creator of the issue.

However, in chapter three, there is a chunk of backstory I'm now nervous about. I know it probably needs reducing, but can't see how. It does feel essential as it develops an emotional thread and I can't move it to later on. The pace of the story is slower at that point, as the MC is waiting around for someone and thinking.

How do you tell when backstory is too much? Are there any questions you'd ask yourself? Or tips for consideration?

Thank you.

Oh, it's tricky, isn't it.

I think that one question is:

is the backstory in a chunk - a lump of telling-what-happened-before, either as flashback, or narrated as having been in the past

or are you dripping and dropping bits in, as part of the (apparently) less random and structured thinking, while the 'now' of the scene goes on moving forwards.

Also, how much do we really need, now? In my experience the reader usually needs less that we think - only the tip of the iceberg of our imagining. As long as - in Cherys's immortal image - you drop in bits which are like sweets leading the through the forest, not baffling hints which just frustrate them - then they'll be satisfied with quite little.

I blogged about handling backstory here, which might help:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2011/10/flashing-slipping-and-mixing-things-up.html

Emma

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tsk! I so need more caffeine:

or are you dripping and dropping bits in, as part of the (apparently) random and less structured thinking in the 'now' of the scene which goes on moving forwards.

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you drop in bits which are like sweets leading the reader through the forest,

I'm sure everybody finds this difficult. There has almost always got to be some element of back-story at some stage but as authors we are probably too often over-concerned with the need to communicate it. Accepted wisdom has it that the back-story is best imparted via oblique references, for instance phrases that, by taking what has gone before as a given, communicate implicitly what it was that happened. That said, we sometimes need to supply the reader with rather more information than that approach can deal with. I've certainly been grappling with that problem. Perhaps these are questions we should ask ourselves?

Does this piece of back-story interrupt the narrative, i.e. will the reader, anxious to get on with the story, regard it as intrusive?

Is the piece of back-story an authorial intrusion? Does it come across as something separate from the narrative? Could it be presented in a different way (e.g. a character's brief thought or observation made in the course of activity or dialogue that is itself advancing the story) so that it becomes part of the main drift rather than a departure from it?

Could it be presented in much smaller chunks over a much longer section of the book?

Could some of it be communicated via something a character sees or reads? This can get over the 'not part of the immediate narrative' difficulty.

It's a tough one!

Chris






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Crossed with Emma.

Sharley, how are you presenting your back story? I've got quite alot of backstory in Soul Seer which either comes out in snippets in the prose, or in the dialogue between Rowan and Laura.

Thanks for the link, Emma.

I think I'm dripping and dropping bits in, as part of the (apparently) random and less structured thinking in the 'now' of the scene which goes on moving forwards. Like Jane in the third example of your blog, my MC brings the here and now in to her thoughts and is in and out in two quite short paras.

But it may be too much for the genre or too early in the book (just chapter three, which is approx 5,000 words in)? Would this make a difference do you think?

Thanks Chris. There are some valuable pointers there. I cut out the first piece of backstory, simply paring it down to a reference to a photograph, but with this one it's more difficult. But I'll certainly see if I can change it in some way.

Lorraine - she sees something that reminds her of her mum and then there's a train of thought that leads us back to the present. Not too much, but there must be something there that's making me nervous. I just can't pinpoint what.

Also, how much do we really need, now?

I think this is key. Most new writers tend to worry too much that the reader won't be able to follow the story without loads of background info. So, I think the watchword is less is more; and maybe Vonnegut's rule about starting the story as far forward as possible.

You can always check later - or get a reader to check - to see if you've done too little. For instance, we watched a movie last night called 'Hunky Dory'. Early on, we see the main character driving to her house in the country, then having a relaxed talk with a bloke, sharing wine, dope, etc. The obvious conclusion being that they're partners. But it isn't till much later in the film that you find out he's probably just a house-mate; and even later that he's actually a teacher in the same school as her. That I think is too little back-story, since by default it gave us a false back-story.

Terry

Most new writers tend to worry too much that the reader won't be able to follow the story without loads of background info.

Yes, absolutely. I'm always struck - retrospectively - just how little we often know about the background and backstory of the characters in some of the most compelling movies. Admittedly, a movie is a much shorter form than a novel. But the combined efforts of actor/director/writer are an object lesson in us believing in a character while NOT knowing tuppence about stuff Before.

And of course the writer may have, unconsciously, been using a big chunk of flashback (say) to work out precisely that info: the stuff that they need, but the reader maybe doesn't. Which is absolutely essential work... just not necessarily work which is best done in what, conceptually, is your first shot at a final draft.

That is the drawback of using the first draft to do your detailed imagining-on-paper, when it's also your first shot at a final draft: it can be hard to see what in that draft is really just notes-to-self, and what is the central to the story that the reader will read.

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"believing in a character" as in character-in-action: that we're convinced by how they act, what's at stake for them, why it all matters so much and why we hope they won't trust A but will go for B...

I just read some background (!) to the Hunky Dory film. The film is set in Swansea in 1976 (I was actually living in Swansea in 1976, as it happens) and the writer/director based it on his experiences then/there as a teenager. Which is fine for authentic details but he clearly based the story on people he actually knew. In the closing credits, there are photos of the characters with a line or two of what happened to them later, which doesn't really work in fiction - not unless you've set up compelling characters (like in American Graffiti, where you really appreciated the heads-up at the end of the movie); but unfortunately, in this case he hasn't, so you're just bemused.

Anyway, I think the writer got his actual back-stories confused with his characters'. So, he probably knew the teacher wasn't the partner of that bloke in real life, but didn't appreciate that we wouldn't.

Also, while he introduced quite a few themes - like skinhead violence, teenage runaways, family break-ups, etc - the film doesn't see any of them through. Which I suspect may be another example of him using what actually happened - which is often nothing much, really - instead of what the story could make happen, that the audience would be more gripped by.

Terry

That does sound muddly - it's genuinely hard to know what anyone except you will get, of your story.

I quite often see manuscripts where the last chapter - or epilogue - rounds off everyone's story after the Grand Last Scene... and we get a chapter covering months or even years of of X moving to the USA and getting married, and Y going to university and Z leaving town. I do think it's usually a mistake.

I've always suspected that it stems from the writer's own need to feel everything's safely resolved, or it's a response to beta readers and so on wanting the same thing - and I've sometimes asked the writer about yet and they've said yes, that is was happens.

Having readers wanting more is a tribute to the writer's power to get readers caring about their characters, but not necessarily something one should give in to, I reckon: it actually works much more strongly if the reader is left imagining in the space after the last scene...