Seven Ways to Weave in Backstory Without Slowing the Pace



Winnie Griggs

Hi! Winnie Griggs here.  I’m so excited to be back at Seekerville.  I hope everyone had a lovely and blessed Thanksgiving. Today I’m going to discuss backstory.

What is Backstory?  Quite simply, it is everything that happened to your characters from their birth up until the point your story opens.  So, by definition, all backstory is important, because, for fully realized characters, everything that came before shaped them into who they are today. 

However, while it is important for you, the writer, to know all of the minutiae of your characters’ history, you want to avoid the ‘info dump’ syndrome when revealing backstory to your reader.  In other words, don’t serve up the details in a dense chunk, or in a contrived, author-intrusive manner. 

So how do you give the reader the information she needs without making her eyes glaze over?  By paying attention to the what, when and how of your backstory revelations.

WHAT:  Include only the bits and pieces necessary to keep the reader with you.  You want to trickle the information in rather than deluge the reader. 

Like learning to properly season a favorite dish, once you get past the basics, weaving in backstory is more of an art than a science.  

Add too much or the wrong mix of seasonings and you risk making the meal unpalatable. 

Add too little and it becomes bland and uninteresting, lacking in that certain zest we all strive for.



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Let’s take a for instance. 

Suppose the protagonist in your current WIP was traumatized as a young child by witnessing his older brother drown while he stood by unable to help.  And to make matters even worse, let’s say his father blamed him for letting it happen.  In preparation for this story you’ve done extensive research on not only the probable effects this will have on his mental health and world view during his growing up years, but on the kinds of services and treatments that would and would not have been available to help him during whatever years this encompassed. 

In fact you have a file bursting with all sorts of fascinating, little known facts on the subject. 

Now, having discovered all of these intriguing bits and pieces of information is a good thing.  It allows you to have a much clearer picture in your own mind of who he is and what sort of coping mechanisms he would have developed, mechanisms that will likely have followed him into the present day of your story.  And, if at some point you have him or another character remembering or ‘flashing back’ to the early period of his life, you will have some authentic details to sprinkle in. 

The key here is the phrase ‘sprinkle in’.  Because, unless the information you have so diligently and painstakingly collected serves a real purpose in your story, furthering the plot, providing necessary characterization, solidifying your world building, etc., LEAVE IT OUT.

What you must consider, and consider ruthlessly, is whether the information is essential for the reader to know in order to make sense of your character motivations and move your plot forward. 

In other words, don’t toss in information for its own sake - it must serve a purpose (i.e.: foreshadow, show motivation, escalate tension/conflict, etc.). 

WHEN:  Provide background information only when it is absolutely necessary to further the action and development of your story’s current situation. If you attempt to front load your story with buckets of backstory, you will eliminate much of the suspense, the page-turning quality that drives your reader further into the story, that makes them eager to follow along as the layers are peeled back a little at a time.

In other words, it should answer a crying need for the reader to know this information at this point in time.  Revealing information too soon can deflate tension and steal the opportunity to have a ‘WOW, I didn’t see that coming!’ moment later in the book.

And to give your really big, JUICY stuff more punch, you’ll want to wait until it can serve either one of two functions:

1.    To answer a story question you’ve been building up to in earlier pages.
EXAMPLE: Perhaps your heroine shows very subtle signs of discomfort or nervousness, whenever the subject turns to boats or water sports. When you reveal in chapter seven that she is afraid of the water or perhaps it’s that she gets seasick whenever she boards a boat, then the reader will feel some satisfaction in having deduced all or part of the picture.

2.    To introduce an unexpected twist that will send your story in a whole new direction, or that will shed a startling light on prior events.
EXAMPLE: Think of the Darth Vader’s classic Star Wars line “Luke, I’m your father.”
or of the revelation in Pirates Of The Caribbean  that Will Turner’s father was a pirate.  Revealing either of these bits of backstory earlier in the story would have robbed them of much of their impact.

HOW:  There are a number of different methods you can use.  First, keep in mind that revelation of Backstory is most effective when it both unveils the past and adds to the present situation.

There are several ways to do this.   Today I’ll talk about seven of them.

Keep in mind that none of these methods are inherently good or bad.  The key is to know which method best fills the need of this particular part of your story.

For all of these methods, no matter which you use, keep in mind two directives:

·         Pare your information down to the bare essentials of what needs to be revealed.

·         Always provide some relevance to the current situation

So we’ll start with:

1. Omniscient Narrative
This is revealing backstory by out-and-out telling about a historical incident from a source other than one of the on stage story characters. There are a couple of different approaches to this

·    The News Flash approach – this method involves using a passage from an outside source, such as a letter, email, reference text, news report, etc. to drop backstory information onto the page.
EXAMPLE: think of the opening of the original Star Wars movie where “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away...” scrolls across the screen

·    The Omniscient Narrator approach – this is where some outside entity simply states what has happened prior to the “here and now” of your story.
EXAMPLE: Think of the first Lord Of The Rings movie that opens with a narrator telling the audience the history of the rings. An author who is a master of this is Susan Elizabeth Phillips. For a great example, read the opening of her book It Had To Be You (This link will take you to the book on Amazon and you can use the Look Inside feature to read the opening: http://amzn.to/1TksuyL). She opens in Omniscient Narrator and about halfway through the third page seamlessly slips into third person POV.

2. Flashbacks

These are sections of backstory, told in present tense as if they are happening now.  They can be quite effective if used properly, but use them sparingly and keep them tight.  Flashbacks tend to take the reader away from the current action of the story.  If you run them on for too long you risk causing the reader to temporarily lose the thread of your story.  When using a flashback, always provide some relevance to the current situation. 

EXAMPLE: The Fugitive The movie opens with the police arriving at the murder scene, then we have a series of scenes where we juxtapose backstory events - scenes of Dr. Kimble and his wife at the party  and immediately after - with ‘here and now’ scenes of  Dr. Kimble’s arrest and trial.

A subset of the Flashback is the Frame Story. This is a that starts after the main story action is complete, and then proceeds to tell the rest of the story as one long flashback, with perhaps a short wrap-up at the end. 

Why would you want to employ a frame story?  There are several reasons.  A couple are:

4  To show dual perspectives - the protagonist as he’s experiencing the story events and also as he's reflecting on them afterwards

4  To pose a story question through some dramatic event that you then explain throughout the rest of the book.
EXAMPLE: Think of the movies Titanic, Ever After and Mrs. Winterbourne



3. Prologues

This can be a hot button topic among writers.  Some love them, some hate them.  So, how do you decide if you should use a prologue?  A prologue must provide essential information for the reader to know before the here and now of your actual story.  It should recount a significant event which is important for the reader to experience in real time with the character.  But make certain the information is essential to have up front.   If you use a prologue, your story will in effect have two starting points and you will need to develop two very strong opening hooks to draw your reader in.

Where a flashback often serves to answer a question raised earlier in the story, a prologue must raise questions that pulls the reader forward to search for answers. To make it work, it should be vivid and involving – a mini-story of sorts. And you should construct it in such a way that it raises story questions for the reader that propels her farther into the story to find the answer.

EXAMPLE: Pirates Of The Caribbean – the movie opens with the scene of Elizabeth and Will as children meeting for the first time. This scene accomplished several things, but in my estimation there was one very important point it made that most viewers probably weren’t consciously  aware of.  It grounded them in the fact that this was Elizabeth and Will’s story, not the more flamboyant Jack Sparrow’s.

4. Introspection
This is probably the most commonly used form of weaving in backstory.  It involves having a character think about some past event that parallels or contrasts the current situation.   

There are two ways to employ introspection

• Reminiscing-- Where a character thinks about past events he himself is familiar with
• Deduction-- Where a character puts together various bit and pieces of things he has observed to reach some sort of conclusion about another character’s past 

EXAMPLE – In the movie What Women Want the Mel Gibson character has acquired the ability to “hear” what women are thinking. You get some sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant snippets of various characters’ backstory by having him eavesdrop on their thoughts.

5. Dialogue


There are several ways to use dialogue to reveal backstory

·           Third party Revelation - This is probably the most commonly employed method.  One character reminisces about something in another character’s past to a third party

·           The Side Kick - The protagonist himself confides bits of backstory, either directly or through implication, to someone else

·           Situation Update - A rookie or other person ‘outside the loop’ comes into a situation and is briefed by those in the know.  EXAMPLE: The Closer often opened with someone updating Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson on what they know about the crime

Make certain the backstory-revealing-dialogue flows naturally from the characters and the current situation.  Take care to avoid the infamous  “As you know, Jane” scenario where one character is relating something to another character that they obviously both already know and have no logical reason to discuss other than to inform the reader.  Backstory through dialogue is most effective when it both reveals the past and adds to the present situation.

6. Implication
There are 2 ways you can use implication to weave in hints about backstory.

·         Self Implication - You can hint at backstory from the way a character reacts to a particular stimulus. 
For instance, if a woman flinches whenever a particular character enters the same room, your reader immediately suspects there is some dark, perhaps abusive history between the two.

·         Third Party Implication - This is actually the flip side of Self-Implication.  It’s where you hint at a particular character’s backstory based on the way other characters react to him/her

Using implication requires a deft touch - too subtle and your reader may miss the cues, too heavy-handed and you risk making the reader feel spoon-fed.  However, when done well, it allows the reader to deduce information about the character’s backstory. And it provides an impetus for the reader to keep reading to see if she has guessed correctly 

7.  Description

Personal Description - You can subtly weave in backstory through a character’s physical description.  Calluses or the lack thereof might indicate a certain kind of lifestyle.  Scars, limps, nervous habits can all hint at events in his past. 

Environment Description - The things they surround themselves with can also be telling.

·         If you want to show that your character is an avid traveler - surround him with exotic souvenirs or maps and charts

·         Is she well educated - scatter books and such around her lodgings

·         Has she recently experienced a financial downturn - have her wear expensive but outdated or faded clothing .



When using description to convey backstory, avoid resorting to stereotypes if possible, try to come up with fresh ways to illustrate your point.  But again, this is a more subtle way of imparting backstory and it allows the reader the fun of drawing their own conclusions rather than spoon feeding all the information.

So there you have it, seven methods to weave in your backstory.

Remember

·         Provide background information only when it is absolutely necessary to further the action and development of your story’s current situation.  In other words, it should answer a crying need for the reader to know this information at this point in time.

·         Include only the bits and pieces necessary to keep the reader with you.  You want to trickle the information in rather than deluge the reader. 

Keeping these two points in mind will help you maintain the fast pace and page turning quality in your story that keeps your readers coming back for more.

Let's talk about the challenges of using backstory wisely and yet, how much is too much, how little is too little, when and where to use it.

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Winnie Griggs 
Small Towns, Big Hearts, Amazing Grace
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
Her Holiday Family, Nov 2014
Second Chance Hero, May 2015

Journeys Of The Heart, July 2015

The Holiday Courtship, Dec 2015
http://www.winniegriggs.com/

He Wanted A Wife by Christmas... 

As Christmas approaches, Hank Chandler is determined to find a wife to mother his sister's orphaned children. When schoolteacher Janell Whitman offers to help him with his niece and nephew, she seems to be the perfect match—but she won't accept his proposal. Instead, she insists she'll find him another bride before the holidays. 

Janell moved to Turnabout, Texas, to put her past behind her and focus on her future—one that doesn't include marriage. But while she plays matchmaker and cares for Hank's children, she loses her heart to the two youngsters…and their adoptive father. If Janell reveals her secrets to Hank, will he still want her to be his Christmas bride? The Holiday Courtship by Winnie Griggs