On October 31, 2011, writeforfun wrote, …how do you know where to put those important backstories, the ones that are pivotal to a character? Is there any way to know, or do you just put it where it seems \u201cright\u201d?<\/i>
There are lots of ways and places and times to work in a backstory, and I think where it seems right is a good guide.<\/p>\n
You can do it in dialogue. For example, Elizabeth and Pamela are sleeping over at Marianne\u2019s house. They\u2019re in their pajamas in Marianne\u2019s room. They\u2019ve been friends since they were in kindergarten. Pamela starts a conversation about the first time she was in this bedroom. Others chime in with their early memories. These reveal their backstories.<\/p>\n
Or Elizabeth, Pamela and Marianne are marching against the umbertis, enormous intelligent crabs that have invaded their homeland. The soldiers have a long way to go, and they pass the time talking about memories of home, their backstories.<\/p>\n
Or you can do the same in thought. Pamela is the POV character. At the sleepover she thinks about her friendship with the two girls. She\u2019s felt close to Marianne since the beginning, but her relationship with Elizabeth has had ups and downs. She can obsess over details of their run-ins. Or she can think about her own home, where she\u2019s never invited the others to sleep over. Or, on the march against the umbertis she can think about her fellow soldiers or she can think about her mother\u2019s teachings on warfare.<\/p>\n
Or in narration. An omniscient narrator can chronicle the sleepover or the foot soldiers\u2019 advance. The narrator can directly provide background for each girl.<\/p>\n
The danger with backstory, which I suspect writeforfun is worrying about, is interrupting the flow of the story. For backstory to work, in most cases anyway, the front story needs to be underway. The reader has to care about the character with the backstory and the ongoing action of the story. Again in most cases, backstory will fit best in, say, the first third of the novel. Much later than that the reader is likely to have come to his own conclusions and backstory may just annoy. And at the end of a book backstory may feel too convenient, like a deus ex machina arrived to save the day or at least to explain it.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take the case of the umbertis. The reader has watched with Marianne as a crab\u2019s purple pincer cruelly pinches her little brother Patrick and pulls him away. Another crab\u2019s beady metallic eyes scan Marianne\u2019s family\u2019s living room, where she is crouched in horror behind a couch. Patrick\u2019s screams are heard from the hallway. This is not the time for backstory about how much Marianne loves her brother or how much he annoys her. Unless–<\/p>\n
Unless this interrupted action is going to be a motif in the story. Whenever things get exciting, the narrator switches to something else, which could be backstory. The reader groans while smiling, knowing that the main storyline will continue later. This is a way of creating distance and making the reader aware that he\u2019s reading, reading the work of a very clever author. I\u2019ve enjoyed books like this. I think the crime novelists Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake (high school and above) have written this kind of thing, although I can\u2019t think of a particular title.<\/p>\n
However, in this sort of story, even if it\u2019s really well done, sometimes I will gnash my teeth and thumb ahead to where the action resumes. Then, after I\u2019ve read the continuing crab drama, I may be reluctant to go back to the intervening pages. If I don\u2019t, I may lose the thread of the story and I may abandon the book entirely. So there\u2019s a risk. In general, quiet moments are best for backstory.<\/p>\n
When I wrote the early drafts of Fairest<\/i>, writing in omniscient third-person POV (I switched to first person later), I put in backstory for Queen Ivi. I included several scenes between her and Skulni, the creature in the mirror, and one between her, her mother, and her brother (who didn\u2019t make the final cut). The scenes and backstory explained Ivi\u2019s behavior. But third person didn\u2019t work and most of the backstory had to go. I miss these scenes. They deepened Ivi\u2019s character for me. But they weren\u2019t necessary, and they gunked up the story. The reader accepts Ivi without the explanations. <\/p>\n
What I\u2019m saying is, consider if you need the backstory at all. You may need it for yourself, to understand why your character behaves as she does and to figure out what she\u2019ll do in future situations, but the reader may not. Take the sleepover example. Let\u2019s say Elizabeth makes fun of Marianne\u2019s pajamas, which are cotton with a print of climbing vines that Elizabeth calls poison ivy. And Elizabeth keeps complaining that she isn\u2019t going to be able to sleep because of Pamela\u2019s snoring. I don\u2019t think the reader needs to know that Elizabeth\u2019s mother is hypercritical and her father is uninvolved in family life. The reader takes Elizabeth as he finds her. He\u2019ll also be watching Elizabeth\u2019s and Pamela\u2019s response to her. If they treat her with understanding he\u2019s going to suspect they understand her or that she has virtues he hasn\u2019t experienced yet.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been watching the HBO series Girls<\/i>, which is definitely without a doubt for adults. One of the girls, I don\u2019t have the names down yet, the one with the British accent, is so far unfailingly unkind to her friends. I can\u2019t figure out why they like her, and no amount of backstory would condone her bad behavior for me.<\/p>\n
And lets go back to Elizabeth and her judgmental mother and disengaged father. Well, plenty of people have terrible parents and they rise above them. The moral is: Be judicious with your backstories. You can put them in (you may need to) in early drafts but try your story without them as you revise.<\/p>\n
If the backstory is important and you\u2019re sure you don\u2019t want to cut it, consider telling it in forward time. Start the tale at an earlier moment. In Fairest<\/i> again, I could have begun the book with Aza\u2019s arrival at Ontio castle and slipped her earlier life in through flashbacks and thoughts and dialogue, but that would have been tricky and it might have given the book a jumpy quality I didn\u2019t want. Same thing has happened to me with other books. I start somewhere and then I move the beginning back and back and back. You can too.<\/p>\n
Here are four prompts:<\/p>\n
\u2219 Write from the POV of the umberti crab who kidnapped Marianne\u2019s brother and work in the backstory of these intelligent creatures. Do they come from outer space or are they mutations of ordinary crabs? Why do they hate humans?<\/p>\n
\u2219 Invent a backstory for each of the sleepover girls. Telling the sleepover in the voice of an omniscient narrator, insert each backstory through thoughts, narration, and dialogue. Cause an argument among the three and have the backstory come into play.<\/p>\n
\u2219 In the crab story, invent a backstory for Pamela and include it in the marching scene. After the army reaches the crabs, Pamela and a crab face off in hand-to-claw combat. Have Pamela\u2019s backstory influence her fighting.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Ina is a writer. Whenever she meets people she makes up their backstories. Her boyfriend brings her to dinner at his parents\u2019 house. She\u2019s meeting his family for the first time, and she engages in her pastime. Write the scene and make the imagined backstories get her into trouble.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On October 31, 2011, writeforfun wrote, …how do you know where to put those important backstories, the ones that are pivotal to a character? Is there any way to know, or do you just put it where it seems \u201cright\u201d?There are lots of ways and places and times to work in a backstory, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}