The Trouble with Backstory

Inevitably, I get stuck whenever I start a new book trying to talk myself into a prologue. Why? I want to give you the character’s backstory. How did they get where they are? And inevitably, I end up trashing the prologue in favor of slipping small snippets of information throughout the story.

Info Dumping
It’s easy to want to introduce your characters right away, to tell everything you’ve learned about them, from how they grew up to who their best friend is to what made them the way they are. But readers these days do not want you to dump all that information in the first chapter. In fact, they don’t want you to dump that information at all. They prefer to be spoon fed little bites at a time. Nothing glazes over the eyes faster than wasting precious words that don’t move the story forward.

But wait? Isn’t backstory important? Absolutely! But filtered in. It’s seasoning, and you know what happens when the cook adds too much salt to the stew.

Backstory Serves a Purpose
As an author, sometimes it’s good to get that prologue written—and then moved to a different file. It helps me, as the author, get to know my character and ground myself in what makes them tick. I understand why my character acts the way she does because she has shared her life history with me. Conversely, the reader is more interested in the action, and less in the history. Save the history lesson for when it makes the most impact.

Example: “She hadn’t been through this part of Ohio since she was a kid.” END OF BACKSTORY. This gives the reader enough information to know the character has been to Ohio. But it might come into play later in the story, so the reader will tuck that tidbit of information away, so that when you go back to that and say something about Ohio, the reader can then feel smart when they connect the dots. “Oh yeah, she was there when she was a kid.” And that return to Ohio should be something that moves the story forward, and the character’s previous experience, something that colors her view.

In the prologue version of this information, I might start writing, “She grew up in Ohio,” and go on to detail the whole experience which left a mark on her. It’s good for me to know as the author, but the reader doesn’t necessarily care about her past until it makes a difference to her story TODAY, the “why is she acting that way?” response to an everyday occurrence.

Backstory is important. Everything we do impacts how we respond to different stimuli and different situations. A good story starts with the stimuli and the potentially over-the-top response. Or the conditioned response. This raises questions to the reader about why the character acts the way they do, and then a dribble of information helps them to understand until, over the course of the story, the character is able to overcome whatever makes them respond differently. To grow beyond their own backstory.

Backstory - when characters come to life

 The plus side of writing a series is that you get to know your characters so when they make cameos in subsequent books, you already have a handle on who they are. The down side is that when the spotlight turns to them, you need to know MORE about them. I had the basic information on the main characters in EPITAPH 3, but as I started to write (and I've made significant progress into the writing of this story), the characters started to reveal things I didn't know in the previous books.

The structure to every book is that your characters need goals, motivation and conflict. The hard part is clearly defining those things. I know the conflict, I know the goals. The motivation often comes from backstory, and that is what I've been concentrating on before I go further into E3, and let me tell you, it's keeping me up at night! Why would my heroine allow herself to be manipulated? What does the antagonist hold over her? How antagonistic is he going to be? And the hero? How much does he know and what is he going to do with the information he has? Will he get in the way or will he be able to "save" the heroine? How much help will a strong woman allow a man to give her? As I consider these questions, I have to weigh whether what I've written to date will fit with the answers or whether I have to start over. The basic storyline hasn't changed, but the "how do they get there" has.

For those readers who have asked me about the rest of the series, EPITAPH 2: THE TWINS (Siobhan's book) is off to the editor, so yes, its on schedule (actually, its ahead of schedule). Hoping to see the cover this week. The plan is to release it the beginning of April. Stay tuned.

I'm hoping to have EPITAPH 3 (Garth's book) ready by July. After that, I have four more siblings standing by. I'd also like to write another Northwest Suburbs book, but since I can only write one book at a time, I'm concentrating on finishing this one first.

For those of you who've read Epitaph, what do you think? Which sibling do you want to read about next?