On Writing: Backstory be gone! (Or at least later on.)

I was finally able to make the “Last Thursday of the Month” Pennwriters meeting in Robinson Township. Timons Esaias presented on plotting and I was furiously taking notes all over his handouts, especially when he started talking about backstory.

As writers, we struggle with dumping in too much backstory up front, which drags a story down. I’ve always understood this in theory, but I still had a tendency to think, “But the reader needs to know this!” Tim shared one sentence that frees me up:

The reader will assemble the logic in linear order — no matter what order we share it in.

Think of the movie Memento, where the entire story is told backward. As viewers we were able to hold on to various pieces of information and drop them in linear order as we figured things out. In the meantime, we were glued to our seats. Which is exactly the point (and power) of delaying backstory.

Move story forward, move backstory back.

Here’s Tim’s recipe for backstory success:

Take three paragraphs of backstory and cut it into tiny pieces. Drop those pieces into dependent clauses sprinkled throughout the manuscript. “He slid into his loafers — the same pair he wore the day she left him.” We now know a bit of backstory: he’s been dumped. But we don’t know why. Or when. To find out, we’ll need to read on.

Tim suggests keeping a notebook when you read, and jot down when (on what page) authors drop in these little tidbits of backstory.