The BEST–and WORST–ways to use back story

Ten Ways to Create Unforgettable Char... I FINISHED My Novel So Why Do I Feel ...

The BEST–and WORST–ways to use back story

You DON’T want your reader to throw your novel at his sleeping cat.

TEN WAYS TO CREATE UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS

#1 BACK STORY

It was a dark and stormy night. Ellen felt her way across the room in the shadows and reached out to turn on the light. Someone else’s hand was already on the switch.

Ellen had been afraid of storms ever since her grandfather went out to fix a shutter flapping in the wind and was never heard from again. He had come to America from Scotland as a lad after his father was mysteriously murdered by the Black Watch because he had six fingers on his left hand. He had inherited the extra digit from his mother, whose own father accused her of being a witch because she looked just like her grandmother, who had …

AGGGHHHH! Enough with the shutters and fingers and witches already! Whose hand did Ellen feel on the light switch? (Imagine the whooshing sound of your novel flying through the air toward a sleeping cat.)

You DON’T want your reader to bump her head in your story.

The preceding is an example of an info dump and the likely reaction to one by Loyal Reader. An info dump is the hands-down worst way to introduce back story into your novel—for several reasons, the most notable being that it totally disrupts the flow of action. Any time you cause a reader to bump her head in your narrative, you’ve screwed something up and you need to go back and fix it. Info dumps are notoriously low ceilings.

I’m not saying you don’t use back story in your fiction. Of course you do. It is crucial, one of the ten ways to create unforgettable characters. Loyal Reader wants to know what happened in the hero’s life that made him arachnophobic, why the heroine hates men and what made the wimpy teenager decide to become a Navy SEAL.

What I am saying is that back story is like jalapeños, colonoscopies and other people’s pets. A little goes a long way. Your task regarding back story is two-fold.

First, you must decide what is the bare minimum back story you can provide in order for the reader to understand the character’s motivations and behavior. Don’t think snowsuit, think bikini—one that’s the size of two Band Aids and a hockey puck. Yeah, it’s cool to wax eloquent about the hero’s experiences spelunking in Peru or how the little old lady drove a tank during World War II. And if you’ve really done your homework, you know all that stuff because you have actually made up a complete history of each of your characters for your own use. But as soon as you type “It was a dark … ” you must decide how much of that information is necessary/enlightening for your reader.

And after you figure that part out, you must decide how you’re going to dispense that information through your story. Info dump is out. Scratch that one. But there are three other methods.

1. Prologue

Writers debate prologues like meteorologists debate global warming. Some writers hate them. Some writers can’t live without them. Some writers can’t live without hating them. We’re not going there. Perhaps you believe that before you start your story, it’s essential for your reader to know certain information or history. Or maybe you want to hook the reader with drama that occurs later in the book. Either way, the prologue is the only piece of real estate prior to Chapter One where you can park it.

I used prologues in three of my seven novels. Five Days in May is the story of four people who have penciled in death in one form or another on their calendars for Friday. Chapter One starts on Monday, but I wanted to hook the reader with the drama of a tornado that will change all the characters’ plans on Friday—so the tornado is in the prologue. In The Memory Closet, I wanted the reader to see before Chapter One the incident that marked the loss of all the memories from the first decade of the main character’s life because the story begins with the heroine’s bold plan to remember.

2. Memory

If something that happened in the past explains your character’s behavior in the present, the character can remember it. Done well, memories are glorious devices because they can be rendered internally or in dialogue. The important thing to keep in mind about memories is that they are totally a product of how a character perceived what happened. Two characters can recall the same event with totally different memories.

3. Flashback

While a memory is filtered through the point of view of the character and what is going on in the active story, a flashback is an instant replay, the event exactly as it occurred. A flashback will only work if it flows naturally from the narative. The present-day action is what the book’s about. I’ve read novels in which the action served as nothing more than a life-support system for cool flashbacks. If the past is more interesting than the present, set the book in the past.

4. Seasoning

You can sprinkle back story into your novel, a little here, a little there. It really does help to think of back story as salt—too much and you’ve ruined the soup.

Or you can give your reader back story based on the criteria the government uses to allow access to highly classified documents–on a need-to-know basis. When you’re dispensing back story, only tell the reader what he needs to know to be able to understand what’s going on at that point in the story.