Backstories and bios

 I remember reading a novel some years ago in which theauthor plainly thought that his background notes about each main character shouldbe included at some point in the book. This led to an absurd climax where everythingstopped while the author gave us the backstory for one of his characters rightin the middle of the action. Not just a paragraph or two, but pages.

 

Writers often create long, detailed backstories fortheir characters, and it’s a great temptation to put most of this into the ...