beginnings and back story (in which the pandas teach me a lesson)

So I'm rewriting. Starting over. Or, at least, planning to. Once I can figure out this story, and stop writing (and re-writing) the first page.

For many drafts – too numerous (and depressing) to count – I've struggled with this character's back story. I want to start the story when she arrives in it, when the story actually starts – in this case, it's during a trip to a different country. Still, we have to know a little bit about her life back home. But does that mean we actually need to start while she's still at home? Do we need to see her home, her family life? It impacts the character, of course, but do we need to see it in real time?

The back story was this huge albatross hanging over me, weighing my story down. But then when I thought about the most important points – the why of her trip, the who she left behind – I was able to boil these down into two rather succinct paragraphs. I can fit these into my opening, easy.

But ghosts of craft books of my past gnawed at me – particularly Hooked by Les Edgerton and Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. In his book, Maass says not to include any back story in the first 50 pages of your manuscript. 50 pages! Seriously? That is a tall order. And I've just got these two little paragraphs. I can slip those into the action of the first scene, can't I? I've read plenty of books that have done so. And then I can move on with my story without dealing with these particular details of back story. Wa la!

Then I was having lunch with my writer-friend Anna. We have often bemoaned the "50 page" rule as too difficult. But when I told her about slipping my paragraphs into the first scene, she grimaced (in a very endearing way). She suggested that I think of my first page and how it would read on First Page Panda, our site which features the first pages of new and soon-to-be-released books.

As soon as she said this, I started thinking of the pages I've read on FPP, about what grabs me in a first page. I revised my first page, and I kept moving those paragraphs of back story down the page, until they weren't on the first page or in the first scene at all. I don't even know if they'll be in the second scene. Maybe part of it could be broken into separate sentences, and sprinkled throughout.

It's still an ongoing struggle, this back story thing. It depends on the book, and the writing style, and all of that. But writers: beware of your back story! The danger is this: it may be informing the character, the action, but it's not actually moving your story forward.