Character Backstory: Sneaking It Gently Onto Your Pages
Issue #39, Backstory 4 of 4
Backstories can’t simply be written and told. You’ve got to take great care how you get them into your novel.
The biggest warning of this issue is to avoid info-dumps.
The key to utilizing backstory is to parcel it out gradually throughout the book. It’s one of those few occasions when you have full permission to be a laggard and s-l-o-w-l-y dispense your facts. Info-dumps are a bore and a story-stopper, especially if a quantity of dumping takes place in the first chapter (a sure sign of a beginner.)
To that point, here’s an old saying I just made up:
Only a beginning novelist unloads backstory at a novel’s beginning.
This excellent Reedsy post, “Character Backstory: 7 Tips for Deepening Your Character's History,” elaborates on the notion of letting backstory out incrementally, calling it “drip-feeding”:
“Drip feeding them the backstory throughout the book — or even series of books — will keep your audience engaged and speculating about the possibilities.”
Their example? The popular culture icon, Darth Vader.
When we first meet Vader, he’s simply an ominous villain. Then over subsequent Star Wars films, his backstory is “drip-fed” and his character fleshed out. Vader is slowly transformed from mysterious stereotypical bad guy to Anakin Skywalker, a complex character with enough depth to even earn audience sympathy.
K.M. Weiland in “The Backstory Drip (Backstory Techniques, Pt. 3 of 3)” also endorses the “drip-feeding method,” and adds this pearl of wisdom:
Never share backstory with your audience until absolutely necessary.
Timing is everything, in other words. And she suggests that not only do you carefully plan when to tell any particular backstory nugget, but consider whether this nugget needs to be told at all. Because any bit of backstory that isn’t essential to clarifying your plot should be cut.
The article “2 Checklists for Flashbacks and Backstory” on Fictionary offers more excellent advice for timing the doling out of backstory:
Your characters need to do something interesting before too much backstory is included.
An interesting development might then trigger peeks at backstory using a flashback: a much-used technique in literature or film which briefly takes the reader/viewer away from the present tale for a revelation of the past.
But flashbacks have drawbacks.
Diane O'Connell in “The 5 Rules Of Writing Effective Flashbacks,” warns that flashbacks should be brief, used sparingly, and essential to the tale. A triggering event should lead us into the flashback, and another one should lead us out. The usual triggers are sensory:
· Your character may see a person or place or even smell a scent that brings a flashback to mind and sends us back.
· Similarly, a cue like a noise or other physical sensation needs to pull the character from the flashback-past to return to the story.
One last way to get backstory out is for characters to chat about it.
In “Handling Backstory in Dialogue in Your Opening Pages,” C.S. Lakin tells us that this is a great technique…if handled correctly. She warns:
“Often the attempt to stuff backstory into dialogue results in long, tedious monologues instead of more believable two-way conversation.”
You can’t, in other words, simply put quotes around your exposition and have your characters talk about it, ’cause that’s not how real people talk. Lakin has a great example from the science fiction world in her post. Read it. And allow me to elaborate on my opening point with this: an info-dump is still an info-dump, whether you pose it in the form of a conversation or not.
In summary, be careful incorporating backstory, lest readers feel you’re info-dumping. Instead:
§ Drip-feed backstory to your reader.
§ Only add it when the time is right.
§ Sparingly use flashbacks.
§ Realistically insert it in dialogue
Our vocabulary word is usually a bit of an insult. But if you remember how deliberate and sparing you need to be in doling out backstory, you might take it as a compliment…just in case anyone uses it on you.
What is a laggard?
Action Plan
Check out the Substack of prolific Canadian author David Perlmutter and catch up on everything from his speculative fiction to media and animation history!
Next Up
We’re done with backstory, for now, but we’re just starting with character. ’Cause without good ones, we got nothin’.
#40) The Importance of Character & What We’ll Cover. See you in two weeks!
Craig
"Realistically insert it in dialogue" Not so sure about this last one. In a humorous story this is humorous. In a serious story this is... humorous : )
The drip article is very helpful, thank you!