BACKSTORY THAT POPS

Okay, so we’ve decided that including a little backstory in the right place and right way in your story won’t kill anyone. Now. What to share?

I would like to propose that the second half of the “it’s good to use some backstory” equation is, “But it needs to be the RIGHT backstory.”

In this world of commercial fiction, tight deadlines, and ever greater pressure to write faster, it’s not always possible to write out in grisly detail the entire life history of every character in your book.

Don’t get me wrong. That’s a great exercise in understanding where your characters come from and how past and present relate in story. All writers should try it a few times. But for me, writing upwards of a hundred pages a week when I’m working at full speed, I don’t have the time to spare.

So, what am I to do? I still want my characters to feel REAL. To pop off the page like rich, complex, plausible people. To have fully realized life stories. But I have to do something more efficient than write out the entire memoir of each character.

Here’s what I do.

I make a list for each of my main characters of the eight to twelve most important, life-changing, character defining events of their lives. You know. The big stuff. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, losses, traumas, crimes, tragedies, and triumphs.

Then I ask myself what life-changing lesson my character learned from each of those events. I take into account how old the character was at the time the event occurred, and I’m not afraid to have characters draw unwise or even flatly wrong life lessons from these big events.

And then…and here’s the critical bit…whenever I dip into backstory for my characters as I’m writing, I ONLY take it off that list.

My reasoning is this. If a backstory detail is not important enough to make the Top Ten list of most important past events in this person’s life, why would I bother to interrupt my pacing and drag my reader away from the main story for it?

Go ahead. Use backstory. But don’t waste your reader’s time with it. Make sure it’s the really important stuff out of your character’s past.