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Don't Beat Your Reader Over the Head with Backstory
Sharing character backstory can be one of the most difficult parts of writing a novel, particularly for new writers. I think this is because, often, a writer spends a lot of time getting to know their characters before they start writing a book.
They may have filled out a character sketch or bio, and maybe even written detailed accountings of the character’s past and how it got them to where they are today.
Don’t get me wrong. Writers should be doing some or all of that. At the very least, they should know their characters’ backstories. They just shouldn’t be including all of it in their book.
Wait, what? Why even go to all the trouble of creating a character backstory if you don’t bother to tell the reader about it all? They need to know these things!
Well, actually, they don’t.
Why the Writer Needs to Know Backstory
Before we get into discussing relevance and timing in relation to when to share your character’s backstory with readers, first let’s dive in to why the writer needs to know what happened to their character in the past.
We, as humans, are a product of our pasts. How we think, how we act and react, what we do, who we are, is all a result of our lived experiences. This goes for your characters too. So, as a writer, you need to know them as well as you know yourself…if not better.
All of this past experience creates a “filter” (for us, and for our characters, but I’m just talking about characters, for the sake of ease), through which we view and progress through life. Kind of like a colored lens on a camera will change what the world around us looks like.
Whatever your character does, every reaction they have, everything they say and do, is processed first through this filter. For example, a character who has always had a healthy body image is going to think differently about eating a giant hunk of cake than a character who struggled with an eating disorder in the past. A character who was verbally abused by a former spouse may be more sensitive about criticism from a new partner than someone who has always had good relationships in the past.
A writer needs to know all this, to know how a character will interact with others, respond to events, make choices, or even how they treat other characters.
So, why, then, shouldn’t the writer just lay it all out on the line right up front, within the first chapter or two? If they tell the reader all this about the character’s past, then the reader will know them better, right? Not so fast.
Why We Shouldn’t Info Dump
Have you ever met someone new in your life, who was an “over-sharer”? Someone who practically defined the term “TMI”? They turn around to say hello in the checkout line, and the next thing you know, they’ve told you about this rash they’ve had in their groin for the past three years that’s making it really uncomfortable to stand in line this long? Or they tell you about how sad they are that their dog just died, telling you in detail about what kind of dog, as well as all the other dogs they’ve had in their life?
Talk about uncomfortable! Nothing is worse than a complete stranger telling you everything they can about themselves in the first five minutes you’ve met them.
It’s also really boring. You don’t know this person and aren’t likely to care about them yet, so why would you need to know all this? You don’t.
And neither does the reader. Not until it’s the appropriate time to relay backstory to them.
Revealing of backstory comes down to two things, relevance and timing.
Relevance
Again, writers create backstories for their character, so they can get to know their character. They need to know about that time, in fourth grade, that they got bullied for wearing thrift store clothes, because that informs how they dress now at age twenty-eight. The reader, on the other hand, only needs to know that if how the character dresses now is relevant to this particular story. And if it’s never important why they dress the way they do, then it should never be in the book.
And telling readers things they don’t really need to know can be problematic.
In her book Story Genius, author Lisa Cron says: “Readers tacitly assume that everything in a novel is there on a strict need-to-know basis. If they didn’t need to know it, why would you waste time telling them about it?”
She was referring to subplots at the time, but I think it applies just as much to backstory. You should only tell your readers what they need to know, and readers will assume, if you’re telling them, that they need to know this information for some reason.
In the case of my example, that means the character better either meet that fourth-grade bully again in this book or be taking that thrift store-shopping expertise and turning it into a million-dollar design company.
So what happens if you tell the reader something they don’t really need to know? Well, says Cron, they will “eagerly second-guess you, assigning it story significance on their own—significance that is, by definition, wrong, because in truth, there is none.”
Back to our example, if the fourth-grade bully doesn’t show up to be taken down a notch, or the main character didn’t become a successful fashion designer out of a sense of revenge, then we probably don’t need to know about that grade-school bully.
Consider what would happen if you revealed a lot of unimportant stuff about your character that never again came up in the book. If the readers’ assumption will always be that, if you tell them about it, it must be relevant, when they get to the end, and those things were never relevant, there’s going to be a sense of something missing for the reader. Even if they don’t remember the details, they’re going to feel an emptiness.
You’re also cluttering the reader’s mind with irrelevant facts, which means they might be paying attention to the wrong thing, or not focused on what’s happening now, because they’re too busy trying to digest all that you dumped on them.
But back to our character’s preference for thrifted designer duds. What if how the character dresses is important and relevant in the book? Then, when to reveal that part of the backstory is all about timing.
Timing
Often, writers decide to lay it all on the line up front, with multiple paragraphs (or even pages!) of narrative, revealing everything they know about the character’s past. They explain about their childhood, their relationship history, big events, etc. When all this (likely irrelevant at that moment) information shows up in the book, we call this an “info dump.”
An info dump is just what it sounds like…a big ol’ steaming pile of info that nobody needs to read right now.
Info dumps slow the book pacing down, taking us out of what’s currently happening in the character’s life and dragging us back into the past, with the assumption that we need to know all this now.
However, if you explain about a character before the reader cares about the character, the reader won’t pay attention and will likely be bored. You have to time it right.
Again, go back to that idea of meeting a new person in your life. If you had to read a full history and multi-page analysis of the person's personality and important life events before you’d barely interacted with them, you wouldn’t care and would likely be so bored, you wouldn’t stick around to get to know them. At best, maybe you’d skim the information, trying to get back to getting to know them in the present.
Consider, though, if you met someone new and interesting. You become friends and, eventually, spend more time together. All the while, you’re getting to know them gradually. You are likely still going to be finding things out about them years into your relationship. One day, you go shopping together and ask them why they only buy designer clothes, so they tell you about that time in fourth grade when they were bullied for wearing thrift-store clothes, which was all their single mother could afford.
When you finally learn that, two years into your friendship, it would have relevance (because you’re shopping for clothing), and the timing is now right. But if they’d told you, during the first hour after they met you, that they only wore designer clothes because of being bullied in fourth grade, you’d likely be uncomfortable and maybe wonder why in the heck you needed to know that right then.
You need both relevance and timing to be just right before laying it all out there, or it will likely be boring at best, or cause the reader to stop reading at worst. Revealing backstory when it’s relevant is great, but the timing also has to be right.
Getting It All Right
Let’s look at another example. If your main character’s boyfriend asks her to marry him at her sister’s wedding reception, and instead of saying yes, she bursts into tears and runs away, the answer to why she did so (likely based on something in her backstory) is relevant. But the timing of that big reveal might not be right if she’s called up to give her toast to the happy couple at that moment.
On the other hand, the timing might seem right for providing backstory, but it might not be relevant. For example, if the main character’s mother shows up in the story for the first time, as the person who comes to tell the main character she needs to give the wedding toast, it might seem like the perfect time to reveal that single-mother-could-only-afford-thrift-store-clothing thing from the main character’s past, but it’s just not relevant at that moment. Both elements have to be in place.
Whenever tempted to reveal backstory about any of your characters, put it to the test: Is this bit of backstory relevant right now in the story, and is the timing right? If you can’t answer yes to both of those questions, put that character bio away and wait for the right time.
How to Fix Backstory Issues in Your WIP
Have you been told by someone—an editor, a beta reader?—that you have some info dumps or too much backstory in your work in progress (WIP)? If so, it’s time to remedy the situation.
A great way to do this is to read your manuscript and highlight everything that’s backstory. Once you’ve done that, look at each highlighted area and ask yourself if the information is relevant and timely.
If you find big swathes of backstory, along with asking that question, also ask yourself if there’s a way to spread it out over more time. The relevant/timely question will likely weed some of it out, but if you find that some of that information does fit the criteria, look for how it can be revealed in the most natural way.
Be really ruthless when vetting the details to see if they belong at that particular point in the story. Also remember that readers can read between the lines. They don’t need to know every detail to get the gist.
For example, you may need the character to think about being a C student in school, so the reader understands why they feel ill prepared for a big test they have to take. They’re not likely to think of names of teachers and a list of grades they received. There’s likely no reason to beat the reader over the head with the nitty-gritty details, when revealing that they were a C student is sufficient. Reveal just as much as needed to get the point across, but don’t go overboard.
Finally, if you still feel you need help visualizing how to effectively reveal backstory to readers, take a look at one or two of your favorite novels. If you have an ebook format, for example, highlight anything that’s backstory and see where exactly those character-defining details are shared (and not shared!). It will likely surprise you how little backstory is on each page, while still leaving you feeling like you’re getting to know the characters in a more organic, less overwhelming way.
Hopefully, this has given you some clear guidelines to use in the future, which will assist you in cutting back on oversharing and TMI. Revealing backstory when it is both relevant and timely will help your readers get to know your characters in a more natural way, while also keeping them engaged in the current story.
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