In a post on Writer Unboxed, Barbara Linn Probst offers advice on using backstory, the less the better. “When we meet someone for the first time in real life, we get clues about their history and the events that shaped them from the information we receive right then and there—how the person reacts, moves, speaks,” she notes. “We aren’t handed a long biography. We don’t need it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
The same is true of readers and our stories. Our readers receive information about our characters from the way they speak and act. “In most cases, there’s plenty of information, at least for the moment,” Probst writes. Do we need to know about the protagonist’s parents, ex-husband, or high school bullies? Not usually, and rarely in the moment. “We might, later, if there’s a story question that this information would shed light on,” Probst adds. “If so, then her memory of the past event will need to intrude into the forward-moving story in that very scene.”
The key is whether the information is necessary in the moment. “Backstory information shouldn’t be presented simply because the author wants to tell the reader stuff that she thinks it would be helpful to know,” Probst says. Instead, the memory should be triggered by something in the present or it should be the trigger for a character choice or action. “If we think of remembering as a link in a causal chain, not as a way to convey information to the reader, then it’s clear that remembering is an active event, not a passive one,” Probst explains. “The act of remembering—along with the emotion and insight it brings—enables the character to do something that she needs to do, in order for the story to move along.”
To portray memories in the most effective way, think about the way you remember events from your past. You probably don’t talk to yourself about things you already know, Probst notes. You may have a quick sensory flash that reminds you of the entire event, or you might get lost in reliving the event, tuning out what’s happening around you. “In a novel, those sensory flashes are usually embedded in a scene, without halting the action,” Probst writes. “Reliving, on the other hand, can be quite detailed and prolonged, requiring a departure from the present into a scene that takes place at an earlier time.”
Memories – or backstory – can be portrayed in different ways. Something innocuous, like song lyrics, an aroma, or an image, can trigger a detailed memory. “These whiffs, images, and phrases serve as a kind of shorthand for the memory as a whole,” Probst says. “In real life, the experience comes first and the ping-back comes later (obviously). But in fiction, it can work either way.” These triggers can also prompt a “sidebar” scene, where the POV character moves out of the present to think about an event from the past. The trigger serves as a bookend – drawing the character into the memory and leading them and the reader back out.
You can also depict the scenes chronologically, showing the backstory first, then recalling it later. “Successive recollections can be increasingly brief, because the reader has a context and knows what is being referred to; the part evokes the whole,” Probst writes. “In this way, a single memory can be reused, with increasing emotional power, as each new iteration also benefits from the accrued resonance.”
You could also develop the backstory incrementally, dropping hints that become more detailed as the story progresses. “This works well when it is the protagonist herself who is gradually remembering the entire event—so that confronting the full memory represents a pivotal moment for her, bringing about the act or change she’s been moving toward,” Probst writes.
