The Business of Writing: The Importance of Backstory

By: Linda Rohrbough

Most new writers get a story idea, plan a little about how the story will go, then start writing. I started that way. But I learned by working with my bestselling friends that the first step to development of a story is to create a backstory for my main characters. Then build my story.

Let’s start by what I mean by backstory. The question to ask is what brought the character to this moment in time where the story begins? What baggage are they carrying? What past experiences made them who they are today?

That’s backstory. It doesn’t have to be distant past. It can be what happened in the last ten minutes. But what makes the story interesting is when I, as the story teller, reveal backstory in layers.

Let me give you an example. I recently looked over the manuscript of a talented author who gave me a backstory dump in the first four to five paragraphs of a novel. The main character is a surgeon walking out of the operating room after struggling with a difficult surgery for five hours. The story started after the surgery, when the doctor went over all the difficulties in general terms, how his staff was worried, how tense things were, for about five paragraphs. I didn’t get engaged until this doctor started going over in his head how much this patient reminded him of his own daughter, and his reflections on the way down the hall afterward of what to tell and how to handle the waiting family. So rather than keep all that surgery backstory, I reduced it to one sentence fragment and started the book with this line, “Five grueling hours later, Dr. So and So walked out of the operating room.”

The chapter ended with our doctor telling himself there were certain things he purposely left out of the conversation with the family, and he’s rather forceful about it. And we don’t know what or why. And I loved that part and left it alone because I’d turn the page.

As the reader, I don’t need, and probably won’t hang around, for five paragraphs of general discussion that the surgery was difficult and there were unanticipated problems and everyone in the OR was worried. So I cut to the chase.

I’ll tell you what I told this author. Assume your reader is smart enough to fill in the blanks. Pull the reader straight into the action, instead of meandering around it. And then plant hooks that have the reader turning the pages. The end of the chapter had a great hook. The problem was without the change I made, it was iffy that the reader would make it to the great hook at the end of the chapter. And we want the reader to get to the great hooks.

And yes, I hear you. Bestselling authors, especially those with series books, give the reader a backstory dump all the time. I’ve spent the first two or three pages, sometimes most of the first chapter, reading those backstory dumps in best-selling novels. But keep in mind, those authors have earned that right. And they’ll tell you just as they told me when I pointed it out, it’s better -- optimum -- in fact, to sprinkle the backstory in as flavor the way you put salt on food. Sparingly. In small doses. But sometimes they feel they just have to do it that way so they can get on with the interesting stuff. And their readers trust them, so the reader will stay for the scenic route.

You and I don’t have that luxury. And I’m not sure I’d take the scenic route even if I could. My favorite part of a book is getting a reader curious, grabbing them by collar and hauling them into the story with things they remember later. In the writing world we call that kind of writing “sticky” – stuff that stays with you when you’re doing other things and you want to get back to the story.

The other danger, though, is not enough backstory. Readers will eventually give up on authors who create so much mystery the story is hard to follow. So there’s a balance here.

What I’ve heard, and I like this idea and try to use it myself, is to layer the unresolved conflict questions. Sprinkle in some backstory or create one or two conflicts or mysteries, and as those get closer to resolution, add one or two more. So you always have some conflict or problem going but things are also getting resolved.

And the problems don’t have to get resolved favorably for the main character. Most of the time it’s better if the resolution isn’t great and creates another problem. I see this as a kind of a leap frog approach where the problems layer over each other and build to the climax of the story. Like in our surgeon example. The surgery was difficult, the surgeon has a conflict about his own past and he has to talk to the family. We follow him to talk to the family but the next layer is there’s another issue he’s not telling them about and we don’t know why or what he plans to do about it. So one problem got resolved, talking to the family, but we still have the issue of how the patient reminds him of his own troubled past and the daughter he loves, and now there’s this new layer of mystery. Layers. That’s the ticket.

It takes patience and some planning to do this. And working out the backstory beforehand, then knowing when to add it and when not to is an art form.

Here’s something I didn’t know. Some authors don’t work out the details of the story before they start. They work entirely on the backstory and don’t worry about the story except for a general framework, until they start writing. And they sell books that way. I know some writers who sell their books on a proposal that is almost entirely the backstory of the characters. Especially when the author is selling a series of books around a group of characters, like a series of three romance novels that feature the story of each of three brothers in a family.

I must say, when I saw that style of fiction proposal, I was surprised. I didn’t know you could do that. But when I read the proposal, it was easy to see from the backstory that conflict was brewing, there were difficulties ahead, and I could see several directions for the stories to take. My author friend said very little about where she was planning to go with the three books she proposed. But she sold the series for a nice advance.

After she showed me the proposal, she asked me where I thought the books were going. So I told her. She made note of my comments and then said she wouldn’t take any of the books in the directions I'd outlined, but she would use my input. She said the trick, of course, is to play with those obvious directions, then surprise the reader by taking them someplace they didn’t expect to go. She said that’s when it gets fun.

I think if it’s fun for the author, it’s fun for the reader. So work on your backstory first. Know your characters and where they came from. It’ll make your work richer and help you sell.


About the Author:  Linda Rohrbough has been writing since 1989, and has more than 5,000 articles and seven books to her credit, along with writing for television, and seven national awards for her fiction and non-fiction. Find her on Facebook as "Linda Rohrbough - Author" or visit her website: www.LindaRohrbough.com.

Backstory Reverb

by Deb McLeod

Recently the issue of backstory came up again with a client who is writing a YA in the aftermath of a pandemic. The horror is over and the story is about how they will live from here forward. About the society they will create and how they might do it differently this time. The writer, working on her first draft, was feeling the pressure of writing backstory and wanted to talk about whether it had a place in the novel or not.

As I’ve said here before, there are writers who insist no backstory is the right amount. But I disagree. I think it depends upon the story, of course. But there’s more to that feeling of needing backstory that deserves to be looked at as part of the writing process.

Thinking about my client’s story I wonder how backstory can not play a role in the front story. What happened during the pandemic to each of her characters is relevant to how they respond to the changed world. The complete loss of any kind of control in the face of a global disease, an invisible foe, has to change the people that lived it and the society they will create the next time. It will also reverberate for generations to come.

For example, I think about whether or not my mom living through the depression had an effect on me. Here’s a story that illustrates exactly what I’m talking about. During the depression, my mom was poor. She lived with her immigrant grandparents because her mother died at twenty-four and in those days men didn’t raise children, especially widowers who didn’t marry someone else right away. So my mother and my aunt moved in with their grandparents.

My great-grandfather was injured at work in 1930. In those days, sans any kind of compensation, he was simply out of work. My great-grandmother cleaned the house of the factory owner and they had to accept subsistence from the government. They lost their house. The girls wore heavy, black, government shoes that were delivered by a big truck that stopped in front of their house to bring food and supplies. When the truck came my mother and her sister would hide. To be supported that way was shameful.

Certainly in any story I would tell about my mother, that time in her life would reverberate, always. The backstory would have an effect on the front story. Formative experiences always do.

But I have wondered what strings from my mother’s experience of living poor are threaded through my life and into my daughter’s. During my conversations with my writer-friend I thought about what my mom’s life event meant to the current story.

One conclusion I came to was that both me and my daughter learned my mother’s extraordinary ability to “make do” which I believe is a direct result of the depression years she lived through. The women in our family make do to a fault. And I'm not just talking about groceries. It's been more along the lines of accepting and getting along without, rather than fighting to get what we deserve. Does that make sense?

And that bleeds over into other areas besides money or jobs. It's an attitude I've been fighting since I realized how unhealthy that is and exactly what it says to the universe about getting my needs met. It's sort of like neglect on a spiritual level. I believe I can trace it back to my mom’s experience with poverty and I can see it in my daughter, too.

So how much of that backstory would make it into a novel about my story or my daughter’s story? Perhaps none. But isn’t the writer better informed if they’ve taken the time to explore those issues in their character’s lives and to write about how the backstory still reverberates?

Perhaps the definitive answer for my friend’s novel is to write the backstory in the first draft exploration. Spend time wallowing in the Why of it all so she knows what influences her characters and their story. Perhaps she should look for the threads that still live in all of their lives, how the backstory changed the front story and what it says about the future stories. The individual reactions to that pandemic will reflect in each person differently, in each family differently and it will have a societal 'flavor' as well. Perhaps even different in different parts of the country.

Here’s an illustration. One day during a dinner when both my mother and my mother-in-law were present, the subject of the depression came up. My mother-in-law, raised in Cape Cod in a wealthy family (think coming out balls and Sarah Lawrence college), lamented over the loss of their summer home on the beach during the depression. My mother’s lips pressed to white and she said nothing about the government shoes. Still steeped in shame.

So thematically, I think all stories deserve a time playing with backstory. Then even if you don't use the actual scenes you write in backstory, or use only some of it, you understand your characters and their world better and you might find themes that will serve as the bones that holds your story together.

How to Kill Your Scene: Writer as Director, Part 3

By Deb McLeod

Way back in the early days of my writing – yesterday, literally at my critique group yesterday – I suffered from the syndrome called 'Writer as Reporter.' I still have bouts of it, especially when juggling a complex scene where I am focused on imparting information the reader has to have. I often get bogged down in the best way to feed that information and forget to keep the emotional roller coaster moving.

Have you faced that problem? How can you insert an info dump that sets up the next plot point or how can you feed in backstory without losing the reader?

Here are a few things you can do:

1. Write the scene (novel) for you. Next step: now write it for the reader. 
2. Be absolutely sure the reader really needs that information.
3. Trust the reader to get it. 
4. Plan out where you drop bits of information rather than dumping it on the reader all at once. 
5. Remember, you’re writing a scene. Use sleight of hand to impart information. 

1. This might be bad news, but it’s a hard truth I see over and over again in critique groups and with my clients. You have to write the scene, or maybe even the whole novel, at least twice. Once to tell yourself the story; to know when you need to have planted information and when you need to figure out the backstory that leads to the moment that’s really important. Allow yourself permission to write the first time through just for you so that you know the whole story, then you can go back and write for the reader. Orchestrating the emotional journey usually comes after the first draft is done.

2. Be absolutely sure that the reader really has to have that information and that they really need it now. Is there some way you might weave it in further back? Just a drop here or there, so when the reader gets to the place where they need to know something it resonates with what went before? Can you cut it altogether and still have the story make sense? How lean on information and backstory can you go?

3. Learn to trust your reader more. Don’t write to the lowest common denominator. Chances are, if you’ve hooked them into the story thus far, they will go with you a little ways, even if they’re confused. Get some beta readers. Some “reader” readers rather than “writer” readers. Ask them to tell you where they got confused or closed the book. They likely won’t be able to tell you why. But that's okay. Writer readers are the ones that will tell you why. Writer readers are wonderful to have when you’re putting it all together. But there comes a time when the story outgrows writer readers. It’s very revealing when you give pages to a reader reader and realize how much you can actually get away with.

4. I use Scrivener and am writing a multi-viewpoint and layered story. I have assigned keywords for subplots and character interaction. I can sort by subplot and look at all the scenes that deal with that subplot. If I realize I should have set the reader up better I can go back through all the scenes in that subplot and plant clues. Even if you don’t use Scrivener, there might be a way for you to do this on your own. It's been an invaluable way to plant the seeds of information that need to be planted and to avoid the info dump.

5. While you may have every intention of feeding information into a scene, remember the first priority is the scene. Conflict. Movement. Twist. Info is secondary and should be delivered subtly.

In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder outlines the principle behind burying exposition in the story. I’ll summarize it here.

The technique is called “Pope in the Pool.” For the script of The Plot to Kill the Pope by George Englund, some vital backstory needed to be imparted. The story is a thriller and they couldn’t risk slowing it down for an info dump. So they slipped in the information while the Pope was swimming laps in the Vatican pool. There’s the Pope, bathing suit and all, swimming his laps while representatives who came to see him give us the information we need. We’re interested in the Pope and the pool in the Vatican and are focused on that, but getting everything we need to know without plodding through a boring info scene. Sleight of hand by the writers. 

Remember, readers don’t want information! Readers want a story. They want to be transported to the world you’ve created. Sure, you have to make them understand, but how you make them understand is key. Learn to spot when you’re in the midst of an info dump. Cut what you can, weave it in behind this scene and disguise the rest.You'll end up with a better story.

  About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

Formula for Backstory

By Deb McLeod

I know some there are published authors and professors out there who when asked how much backstory is OK to use, will answer with an emphatic: NONE. I get where they’re coming from. It’s important not to break the flow of the story by taking us off to a different time and place, not to mention a different character, really. Who the character is now is not who the character was then. And if you haven’t yet “seated” your reader firmly into the present story, you risk losing them by taking them back. If you have hooked them firmly enough into the story, then why take them back? 

In my practice, I have seen stories that have so much backstory it makes you wonder why the writer didn’t just write the story in the past. In that case, I have found it often signals an author who is keeping a safety layer in place between himself and the emotion of the story. Oftentimes then, too, the backstory is narrated and not in scene. The backstory explains rather than creates a fictional world the reader can experience. Head stuff over gut stuff, if you know what I mean.

It’s easier to narrate a painful scene and explain it than it is to put yourself into the scene in order to write it. But as authors, that’s our job. To face the emotions unflinchingly every single time we sit down to write. That’s why readers read. They want to be in the story. We owe it to them to give them that.

It’s a matter of why
I firmly believe that there are at least two drafts of a manuscript that need to be completed before the writer seeks out opinions on the work – except for mine, of course! There are many reasons I believe that but I won’t get into groupthink books, or protecting your voice or bashing anyone’s writing group. For the purposes of this blog, I want to point out that the first draft of the work is for the writer. We’re writing along and figuring out the story and putting everything into the draft to see what the story might want to be. That is a great way to write a first draft. The author needs to know the why of all of it.

But does the reader? You don’t have to answer all their questions. And you especially don’t have to answer them before they’ve begun to ask. If you’ve succeeded in getting the reader to suspend disbelief long enough to get to the place where you might feed in some backstory, maybe you don’t need the backstory at all. Remember, you’ve got them hooked. Don’t break the spell.

Let me explain. When readers are hooked in the first scene, they’ll keep reading. If you break it to say: Hey, I know what he just did was really strange, and you’re probably wondering why a guy would do that, let me explain. One day when he was five…. See how it breaks the flow?

Do you remember the structure of the “workshop short story?” Open in action, backstory for explanation, conclusion. Ad nauseam.

When you need backstory

Sometimes you may need backstory. In my revision class, one of my clients is writing a story of a woman’s journey to find herself and break away from an abusive husband. By the time the story starts, the husband is thoroughly despicable. In the timeline of their marriage he has slowly descended into madness. When the story starts she has just fled for her sanity and for her life.

If my client doesn’t put any backstory in to reveal what life was like before and to document at least part of his descent, the reader may wonder what on earth the main character saw in this guy in the first place. Why would she marry a guy like that? His being a fully fleshed out villain reflects on her. This situation might make the reader question whether they really want to follow such a clueless heroine. Or even worse, it might make the reader wonder if she has some sort of victim wish. And who wants to read about that?

So it’s necessary for my client to include some backstory. Once they were in love. Once he was the golden boy she fell for. His possessiveness and his actions with their children and his job and his family weren’t there when she first met him. So now that she knows she has to give us some of the why of it or the how of it, how should she do that?

Narration is the way of the first draft. Oftentimes a writer might be tempted to narrate the whole timeline of events and explain the why of it. But narration keeps both the writer and the reader in observer role and outside the soup of it. When you choose to narrate a scene, especially a backstory scene, remember that if the writer is one layer removed, how far out from experiencing the story is the reader?

Motivation and timing

A better way might be to have something motivate her to remember in the current story. Something triggers the memory and then both she, and the reader, are in a flashback to the past. A mini-scene might be called for. Just like a memory, a mini-scene is not the whole of it. When you remember a person or an event, you remember a glimpse of something from the past.

When I think of my best friend from childhood, the first thing I think of is the night we were out way past bedtime. (Did we sneak out? I have no recollection, Senator.) What I remember is walking down to the end of our street, which ended in the woods. There was a full moon. It was a cool summer night. As we crossed from the quiet street onto a path into the woods, I said, “It’s a perfect night for a murder.” And we proceeded to tell each other stories that scared the pants off us. I even remember in my senior yearbook she wrote that she would always remember ‘the perfect night for a murder.’

It’s a flash of a memory, not all the sleepovers, not all the games and phone calls or how we grew apart in the end. If I were including that night with my best friend in a story, I’d take the reader back to that night in a mini-scene at least. I’d work on creating the titillating fear of being out when we shouldn’t have been. I’d tell one of the stories we told and bring the reader along to stifle a scream when we heard a rustle in the bushes. But that’s all. Then I would move back into the current story that presumably had some reason for me to flash back.

So, in order to keep the reader in the emotion of the story, my client might choose a mini-scene that illustrates the golden boy years. In this case it might be the first time she met him. But it’s in scene, in real time and not in narration.

So now she has a great, gaping gap between the mini-scene of backstory to the golden boy and the character he is now. Again, she can choose to narrate some of the time that he spiraled downward. But maybe a more effective strategy would be to write more mini-scenes and disperse them throughout the story. A handful. Less than a handful. Timed when there’s a reason for her to remember.

What would you add to this about backstory? Have you successfully created a strategy for backstory in your work? I’d love to hear about it!

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

Dig Deeper for Your Characters

By Karen Albright Lin

We hear it all the time: create characters that are sympathetic, at least interesting. But how exactly do we do that? Consider these ideas for going beyond that simple formula.

Avoid subtlety. Many of us feel more comfortable when we dodge conflict and high risk behavior. We often don’t want to stand out, especially if it involves ruining our reputations. We want life to be easy. But instead of attempting to make a character’s choices safe and believable, make them bigger than life. Just as readers crave living vicariously in worlds in which they can’t live, readers want to take a 300-page journey with people who will do things they would never do. Shoot for cataclysmic decisions, external or internal. It may feel uncomfortable to put your characters through what would be horrifying to you. It may feel too big, but write it big with the knowledge that you can always trim it back. And take Donald Maass’s advice: make your character do what he would never do.

Go beyond the basic history we learn through sprinkled-in backstory. Create “headlines” for your characters, even your secondary characters. Think of a “headline” as a personal theme. Examples might be: Ann reacts to situations the way Jesus would. Paul was raised with, and acts out of, guilt. What unique experiences have they had that few others have had? These will often inform their thoughts and actions.
Consider his moral code. Is he sober, trustworthy, impulsive, principled? What are her dreams and ambitions? Is she like the character, Juno, who wants to find a good family for her out-of-wedlock baby? Even if those goals don’t play out in your plot line, readers will sense them. What’s her inner life like? Her self-talk, her fantasies? How does she express herself?

Even your hero has a shadow side. What are his demons and difficulties? Where is he powerful? Is it his sexual prowess? His alpha nature? Are these his real strengths or his feigned strengths? Is there a cultural component? I’ve modeled characters after my husband and his family members, all very superstitious because the Chinese have accumulated countless magical beliefs over the course of 5,000 years. Consider writing a meaning web. How do their beliefs and opinions, politics and religion meld or conflict? How do their careers guide or inhibit, enhance or burden their lives?

A great trick that can enrich a personality theme is to give the hero at least a smidgen of the worst trait you find in the antagonist. That way it’s like he’s battling himself. That gives you one more potential inner conflict and possible arc.

Will your protagonist meet his goal? He doesn’t have to. He can instead learn that it shouldn’t have been his goal. In When Harry Met Sally, Harry’s original goal was to prove women and men couldn’t be just friends. She believed they could. By the end of the movie, Harry and Sally have worked through numerous conflicts over attempts to be friends and come together as lovers.

Use plot tricks to enlighten us about your protagonist and antagonist. These will lead to arcs. Try creating a conflicted character or situation and work backwards. Change points of view at key moments. Consider sprinkling humor throughout a serious book and somber moments in humorous novels. Whatever traits you’ve given your characters, use them to guide their actions and be sure there is payoff.

Have big surprises, plot twists and reversals come from the actions of the hero, not by accident. In the course of the book, reveal something about the human condition; give readers the opportunity to laugh, cry, worry, feel uplifted, or inspired to be someone better.

Understand what is exceptional about your protagonist, antagonist, even your secondary characters. Readers forgive plot difficulties, but if they aren’t interested in your characters they’ll put the book down. You want them to stay up all night reading and then immediately buy your next one. Fascinating and nuanced characters will do that.

About the Writer:  Karen is an editor, ghostwriter, pitch coach, speaker and award-winning author of novels, cookbooks, and screenplays. She’s written over a dozen solo and collaborative scripts (with Janet Fogg, Christian Lyons and director Erich Toll); each has garnered international, national and regional recognition: Moondance Film Festival, BlueCat, All She Wrote, Lighthouse Writers, Boulder Asian Film Festival, SouthWest Writers Contest, and PPW Contest. Find out more at www.karenalbrightlin.com.

More on Flashbacks: Backstory - Part III

By Karen Albright Lin

In my last two posts I discussed backstory as told through narrative, dialogue and flashback. Then I explored flashbacks more fully: 1) How to use one to add depth to character, story and the writing itself. 2) Reassured that sometimes the benefits of using flashbacks outweigh the sacrifice of immediacy. 3) When they work. 4) Clarifying time sense (present, past and past perfect). 5) Transitions. 6) And important things to consider when choosing when to use them.

Now it’s time to face hard truths. 

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN A FLASHBACK JUST DOESN’T WORK, such as when:

• It comes too early – first chapter flashbacks are discouraged.
• It’s so long that your real story is likely in the past.
• You do it too often (irritating) unless you are telling a story like Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
• It seems like only an info-dump (backstory in dialogue is notorious for this).
• You wait too long to give the flashback (frustrating to reader).
• You give so much backstory that the novel lacks suspense.
• You use it to “run away from conflict,” James N. Frey warns in How to Write a Damn Good Novel.
• It stops or slows the pace of your book (probably your biggest risk).
• It isn’t tightly linked to the front-story.
• If it confuses the reader about what exactly the story is. (Cure: set up the rule early as Tim O’Brien did in The Things They Carried.)
• It interrupts the momentum you’ve built.
• It happens in an action scene like running from a murderer.
• You go from one flashback into an even earlier one (this taxes most readers’ brains).
• A conversation between characters can impart their life stories more elegantly.
• You provide more information than is necessary.
• It could be more clearly provided in the form of a prologue, thus keeping it separate from the rest of the story. (There is a risk to this, however. Some agents/editors hate these.)
• It follows a weak scene (or sequel)
• It is confusing (better not to do it than to do it poorly). Some authors choose to put them in italics.
• It is before we know a character pretty well since we won’t care about his past.
• It is put into the first chapter at a time when the reader hasn’t yet invested in the ride you are taking him on –  let alone what happened previously.
• Your narrator is omniscient. That generally won’t work since there can’t be as much psychological impact. Deep third person and first person work well.
• The reader can surmise the same information from the dialogue and action of current story.
• You don’t orient the reader – time and place and who is present.
• You fail to use clear ( like dreams), elegant, or subtle techniques like Match Cut to lock in visual motifs.
• You fail to clearly let the reader know that you are leaving the present.

REVIEWING TENSE CLUES:

Ex: “She remembered the day her mother signed her divorce papers. She had crumpled them in her sweaty hands….” Then use past perfect “had” one or two times, then past tense within the longer flashback, and clue the reader when coming back to present by using past perfect tense again before heading back into past tense. “She had vowed never to do what her parents had done. But now wasn’t the time to think about her mother. She needed to plan the wedding and…”

Short flashback:

Past-->past perfect-->past

Longer flashback:

             Past-->past perfect-->past within flashback-->past perfect-->past

or

       

Present-->past-->present

WHEN YOU DECIDE TO USE A FLASHBACK

DO:

• Use the insight to fill in gaps.
• Be sure you are clear about what you are trying to accomplish within a given scene.
• Make careful choices about what to reveal and what to leave out.
• Make it riveting.
• Use it to clarify how your world works.
• Use it following an action-filled strong scene.  Then it can act as a sequel if it isn’t equally riveting as what just came before it.
• Use when connected to your present action.
• Use when the reader wants or needs to know more about the past.
• Keep it short if possible.
• Dole out pieces of information in bits and pieces, making your readers want to read on to learn more.
• Avoid leaving characters dangling while you go into the past.  Be sure to connect it to their current story.

EDITORS AND AGENTS AND READERS

Readers are often the most accepting of this technique. 

In contrast, acceptance of Flashbacks by agents and editors is all over the board. 50 years ago it was typical to use flashbacks. Now, they are often resisted because they are believed to crush the impetus of your story chronology, slow the read, and/or they are considered “old news” in your story. 

They must be done very well to be successful in today’s market of immediacy.

IF TOLD YOU SHOULD GET RID OF YOUR FLASHBACK:

• Be sure your adviser is right and not just blanket-prejudiced against the technique.
• Check with your critique partners to be sure you agree with the assessment.
• Revise the chapter to remove the flashback completely.
• Develop a timeline for the story and consider starting the action earlier.
•  Delete the first three chapters if you’ve begun too early, and weave the backstory into the novel through dialogue and dramatic narrative.
• Have the POV character spend less time alone thinking (Too much thinking often leads to unnecessary flashbacks). 
• Add a character that can help you integrate backstory implying it through dialogue (not on-the-nose dialogue).
• Use dramatic narrative NOT just a summary of facts.
• Don’t include it all; the reader doesn’t need to know as much as the writer does. (Historical writing can have too much detail, thanks to loads of research, and fantasy writers need to realize that the world of the story will loom larger in your head than it will on the page.)

I hope you’ve found helpful my posts offering hints about deciding whether to use flashbacks and how to write them if they are called for. Looking back over the three posts, the amount of information and considerations can seem overwhelming. Luckily, those of us who are avid readers (which should be all of us, right?) will find much of this instinctual. If aspects don’t come naturally for you, study how other authors work the magic of flashbacks.

May words come easily and flashbacks be effortless. 

About the Writer:  Karen is an editor, ghostwriter, pitch coach, speaker and award-winning author of novels, cookbooks, and screenplays. She’s written over a dozen solo and collaborative scripts (with Janet Fogg, Christian Lyons and director Erich Toll); each has garnered international, national and regional recognition: Moondance Film Festival, BlueCat, All She Wrote, Lighthouse Writers, Boulder Asian Film Festival, SouthWest Writers Contest, and PPW Contest. Find out more at www.karenalbrightlin.com.

                                                                                     

Effective Use of Flashbacks: Backstory - Part II

By Karen Albright Lin

In my last post I addressed that trickiest of challenges, the flashback. Tricky because using one can bring to a screeching halt your dramatic action, enlightening narrative, or compelling dialogue. But if done well the benefit of using a flashback outweighs the sacrifice of immediacy.

A FLASHBACK WORKS WHEN:

• Getting across backstory through dialogue would be cumbersome or unrealistic.
• “Show versus tell” makes narrative less appealing.
• It is unobtrusive and allows front story to press ahead.
• You enter the flashback at the last possible moment and leave as quickly as you can.
• You’ve made the reader want to know the past, especially if it relates to a desperate goal.
• The reader absolutely needs certain information from the past.
• Your current plot is to some degree the product of events that came earlier.
• You keep it short.
• You only put it in where you integrate it into the current story and where it informs reader about current actions. (Ex: If we see a man performing an exotic ceremony before killing his daughter, we’ll want to know what that was all about.)
• It is fascinating to the reader apart from the information being conveyed.
• The flashback is in first person or deep third person and from the perspective of the character who has the most to lose.
• A story element is gracefully worked in. (Ex: starting with a murder then jumping ahead two years to Jim’s probation hearing would be clumsy.) And usually it is a cheat to use a prologue to sneak in backstory.

Used with skill, flashbacks can be rather long (even whole chapters), but you are less likely to compromise the momentum of the story if you keep them SHORT AND SWEET. One way to get across a lot without stopping the current story in its tracks is to break it up into smaller chunks. For example: in my novel, Mu Shu Mac-N-Cheese, we learn that the protagonist‘s grandfather‘s ashes are in her coat closet and that she doesn’t want her visiting mother-in-law to know that. As the story unravels the reader learns about the Chinese reverence for the ancestors through brief flashbacks. The first glimpse of her fear of exposure creates the mystery.

Regardless of why you use a flashback, it is important to KEEP THE TIME SENSE CLEAR, the different gradations of the past:

If the story is told in past tense à when going into the flashback use past perfect (“she had…”) to clue readers into the time frame in the past (one or a few sentences as a transition into and out of past tense again in the case of a long flashback) then return to à past tense again clues the reader in.

If the story is told in present tense à when going into flashback use past tense to clue readers into the new time frame à then return to present tense when the flashback ends.

Regardless of the tense you use, TRANSITIONS will make entry into flashbacks more clear. Using an object to trigger one is helpful. Example: She squeezed the rough sleeve of her shirt and closed her eyes.  Suddenly she was ten years old again.  Her Dad threw her favorite shirt into the fireplace….

Flashbacks are a complicated topic; there’s plenty more to consider. Next time I’ll discuss how to successfully add flashbacks, when they don’t work, and what to do if you are told to get rid of them.

Come back next month for Part III of Karen's Backstory series.

About the Writer:  Karen is an editor, ghostwriter, pitch coach, speaker and award-winning author of novels, cookbooks, and screenplays. She’s written over a dozen solo and collaborative scripts (with Janet Fogg, Christian Lyons and director Erich Toll); each has garnered international, national and regional recognition: Moondance Film Festival, BlueCat, All She Wrote, Lighthouse Writers, Boulder Asian Film Festival, SouthWest Writers Contest, and PPW Contest. Find out more at www.karenalbrightlin.com.

I Remember When: Effective Use of Backstory, Part I

By Karen Albright Lin

One of the trickiest challenges for writers is conveying backstory. We’re in the midst of dramatic action, enlightening narrative or compelling dialogue and, OH MY, we realize that we need to let our reader know something that happened in the past. Instinctually, we want to talk to our readers as we would over wine and cheese. “If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in.” Conversations in real life are often backstory: gossip, commiseration, bragging, praising, bitching, and so on. When writing our books, however, it’s wise to think twice before jumping back, leaving the current story, or confusing matters by turning your attention 180 degrees away from the peak of that hill you are climbing, thus diminishing momentum and some of the power of your strategically placed foretelling.

Most of us are familiar with the dreaded backstory that is the data dump we’re convinced must be given right up front in order to understand our characters’ coming adventures. How many times have we heard we should lop off that first chapter and begin with the inciting incident or even start just after the action that is essential for the story to exist? What we chop off is likely backstory.

Despite using the terms chop and lop, I don’t mean to make backstory sound like some evil craft error that writers must avoid at all cost. On the contrary, when used well it conveys important information that adds layers and texture to your current story. It can even support your theme and add subplots. 

My editing clients struggle with it more than almost any other aspect of their writing.

How do we offer important background? 

One way is to impart vital information from the past using FLASHBACKS (in which readers are thrust back into an actual scene – living it vividly). We can use NARRATIVE, internal commentary or a layer that allows the writer to become a subtle (or not so subtle) part of the story. We can also offer up knowledge about the past through DIALOGUE. Each has its pros and cons, its potential for brilliance and its risks of stepping into painful traps.

Backstory through CONVERSATION is best if indirect. On-the-nose dialogue will come off as plastic and an obvious info dump: “As you know, Beth, I spent three years in Japan.” Indirectly conveying that same information will get the idea across in a more organic manner and enlighten on character: “She won’t think I’m still that Ozark hick when she sees what three years of bowing, chopsticking, and Sumo diaper folding has done to me.”     

Using DRAMATIC NARRATIVE to enlighten on the past is not simply offering a list of facts. It’s an exciting and colorful summary that brings yesterday into the present: Someday he’d tell her what it was like to wrap thirty feet of cloth around four hundred-pound men with albacore breath. 

Note: any backstory imparted about our character’s time in Japan shouldn’t be just an interesting fact. It is there because it’s essential to the story in some way, informs what is happening now.

The trickiest form of backstory to pull off is the FLASHBACK. It recounts previous events by taking readers back in time to an actual scene. A none-too-subtle example is Harry Potter’s Pensieve (the stone basin that reviews memories).       

WHY WOULD A WRITER CHOOSE TO USE A FLASHBACK?

To add depth to a character: 

• To enlighten about relationships from the past and bring current ones into sharper focus
• To better understand personality and current motivations, fears, barriers to love, and to create sympathy or empathy. A character’s desperate goal keeps readers hooked.
• Seeing an important scene in real time offers us the opportunity to get two perspectives, that of your character and that of his younger self. Think of Forest Gump. 
• It helps describe a character before and after a trauma. In Nora Roberts’s Angels Fall her protagonist was witness to, and injured in, a mass murder changing her forever.

For the story’s sake:

• It fills in gaps with active scenes that engage.
• Introduces facts from the past that readers need in order to understand current events.
• If it is a framed story—like A Prayer for Owen Meany— one can begin the story after the action is over.
• It offers clarity about how the world works.
• Reveals obstacles
• Raises stakes. In The Fugitive Harrison Ford’s character’s freedom is at stake because he was accused of murder and is being chased by the law.
• It helps to make the stakes personal. Again in The Fugitive, Harrison Ford’s character saw his wife killed (through flashback).
• If the story takes place all over the temporal map, flashbacks may be essential. One could argue that The Time Traveler’s Wife is written entirely in flashbacks.
• They offer opportunities to create buttons that, if pushed, are obstacles to your character. Think of Marty McFly in Back to the Future and his aversion to being called a chicken.

For the writing sake:

• To show instead of tell backstory, creating a fully realized story world.
• To add dimension to the writing and create richer drama
• To add suspense. For example, in one of my books I add suspense by gradually unfolding important backstory: first showing that my character avoids the media, later we learn of her fear that her true identity will be discovered by the public, later we learn her mother disappeared when she was a young girl and that she blamed herself, later we learn that she was a witness protection kid and she has long believed that her mother was killed because she told a friend her real name, and now she fears exposure can make her own daughter vulnerable. Unraveling the past sheds light on the present.
• Flashbacks help contrast events, people or objects in fiction. In No One Asked the River, a screenplay I wrote with Janet Fogg, the archaeologist protagonist lost his son in an accident on a dig. He still blames himself. It affects him when another young boy dies on his watch. This contrasts this POV character before and after a traumatic experience. Contrast is a powerful tool.

Sometimes the benefits of using flashbacks outweigh the sacrifice of immediacy.

Next post, I’ll address when and how to most effectively use flashbacks.

Come back next month for Part II of Karen's Backstory series.

About the Writer:  Karen is an editor, ghostwriter, pitch coach, speaker and award-winning author of novels, cookbooks, and screenplays. She’s written over a dozen solo and collaborative scripts (with Janet Fogg, Christian Lyons and director Erich Toll); each has garnered international, national and regional recognition: Moondance Film Festival, BlueCat, All She Wrote, Lighthouse Writers, Boulder Asian Film Festival, SouthWest Writers Contest, and PPW Contest. Find out more at www.karenalbrightlin.com.