How to Convey Backstory Without Bogging Down Your Novel
In our last Craft Chat, we discussed how to develop relevant backstory for your characters, their circumstances, current situations, and world to fuel your plot and enhance your character arcs.
Today, we’ll discuss how to convey that backstory without stalling the story with endless exposition, info dumps, or flashbacks that yank the reader out of the story. We want to weave our backstory as seamlessly as possible.
What’s The Point of Backstory:
Conveying backstory is only necessary if it helps the reader understand the present moment and move the story forward. If the backstory is irrelevant to the character’s present situation or circumstances, it does not need to be there.
The Golden Rule for Delivering Backstory:
If you share a piece of backstory with your readers, it must be because they need to know it right now. It must move the story forward or deepen the reader’s experience and understanding of the character to make them invest in and commit more deeply to the novel.
A Reminder of How Relevant Backstory Impacts Your Characters:
Every character has a backstory, a history that has shaped them into the person we meet on page one of the novel. These past experiences are not just events, they are the building blocks of your character’s actions, behaviors, reactions, emotions, thoughts, dialogue, appearance, characterization habits, and preferences in the present. This depth and complexity, influenced by their backstory, is what makes your characters relatable and intriguing to the reader. Keep that in mind as you craft your scenes.
When to Deliver Backstory:
Simple – only when the reader needs to know it to make sense of the present moment.
Okay, it’s not that simple. Let’s pull that idea down from the clouds and put it into practice.
Think of any scene in your novel. Identify the scene’s viewpoint character and what they want from this moment in your story. Then, ask what the reader needs to know (right now) to get the point and understand the character’s motivation and how they are being affected.
Three Methods to Deliver Backstory:
There are three methods to deliver backstory to your reader: Context, Memory, and Flashback. We will discuss context and memory here and save flashbacks for our next craft chat because there's a lot to them.
Context
Context is bits and pieces of dialogue, narration, or interiority that give us a more global view of the situation.
Context illuminates the present moment in small snippets, and sometimes, it makes us ask questions that lead us down a yummy breadcrumb trail to the next juicy piece of information that will paint the picture of what is happening in the scene. It can be delivered via interiority, word choice, or nonverbal cues. You can show it with action or emotion or tell it with exposition. But you don’t want the reader to notice it like a sore thumb, as with an info dump. Instead, you want to weave it into the present moment so the reader accepts it as part of the larger story experience.
Example of Backstory Context from Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Pages 1-2 (See bold type.)
Consider the situation for this opening scene and ask what the reader needs to know right now to make sense of it and be intrigued, so they want to keep reading to learn more.
Situation: The character is anticipating that they will die today.
What does the reader need to know right now? What’s happening (the situation), the events that brought us here, who the character is, why they expect this particular outcome, the setting, and a hint at the overarching conflict.
The backstory context, as I’ve highlighted in bold and explained in italics, is crucial to provide the necessary information for a comprehensive understanding of the opening scene.
Conscription day is always the deadliest. Maybe that's why the sunrise is especially beautiful this morning– because I know it might be my last. (What the character is anticipating: the situation–she might die, but it’s also making us ask a question–what is Conscription Day, and why is it deadly?)
I tighten the straps of my heavy canvas rucksack and trudge up the wide staircase of the stone fortress I call home (setting and character info). My chest heaves with exertion, my lungs burning by the time I reach the stone corridor leading to General Sorrengail’s office. This is what six months of intense physical training has given me– the ability to barely climb six flights of stairs with a thirty-pound pack. (A hint about why the character has the expectations they do, but we are also asking another question–training for what?)
I'm so fucked.
The thousands of twenty-year-olds waiting outside the gate to enter their chosen quadrant for service are the smartest and strongest in Navarre. Hundreds of them have been preparing for the Rider’s Quadrant, the chance to become one of the elites, since birth. I've had exactly six months. (Part of the events that brought the character to this situation plus more on why the character believes she may die, also expands on what the character is training for.)
The expressionless guards lining the wide hallway at the top of the landing avoid my eyes as I pass, but that's nothing new. (Starting to learn who this character is.) Besides, being ignored is the best possible scenario for me.
Basgiath War College isn't known for being kind to…well, anyone, even those of us whose mothers are in command. (More setting and more about who the character is.)
Every Navarrian officer, whether they choose to be schooled as healers, scribes, infantry, or riders, is molded within these cruel walls over three years, honed into weapons to secure our mountain borders from the violent invasion attempts of the kingdom of Poromiel and their gryphon riders. (Touching more of the situation and a piece of the core conflict) The weak don't survive here, especially not in the Riders Quadrant.The dragons make sure of that.” (Adds to the conflict and situation but also makes us ask more questions–what do dragons have to do with this?)
The backstory context in this scene is delivered via character interiority. Notice how seamless this is; the details provide depth and dimension, and the world is taking shape.
The story is moving forward. Through the combination of stakes (this character thinks they are going to die), character desire (to live through it), and relevant backstory revealed via context as the character marches toward what we assume is their doom (action), we are hooked. We get what is going on and why it matters. The next question on our mind is what will happen to this character, and therefore, we must read forward!
Suggested Exercise:
Open a novel you’ve already read and know pretty well to page one.
Ask yourself what the reader needs to know (right now) to understand what is going on and the moment’s impact on the character.
Then, pull out your highlighter and see if you can identify the bits of backstory context that help convey that information.
Memory
Characters can also convey relevant backstory through memory.
Memories are flashes and fragments of the past shown in the present. In a story, memory aims to illuminate something significant in the present situation, set up and deepen the character’s arc of change, or both. It’s not to reminisce. It’s not to pass the time.
A memory will always be tied to what is currently happening to the character, thus the reason for them to delve into their past. There is a trigger in the story present, which can be anything: a scent, a phrase, a place. But it’s relevant and happening now. Like us, our characters are triggered to reflect on their past to help them make sense of their present or future.
For example, imagine a recently separated woman whose husband wants to reconcile and “fix” their marriage, but she’s not so sure. While walking to work, she sees a happy couple on a park bench, and it reminds her of her first date with her husband and the love they once felt. The couple on the bench is the trigger for the memory to occur, and because she reaches back for that memory, it helps her decide what to do about her present. She decides to call him back after work to “talk.”
The key to sharing a memory is to make it move the story forward by helping the character realize something, make some sort of decision, or deepen the reader’s understanding of the character’s emotions and motivations, providing context for how they came to be in this situation.
A memory can be delivered through bits of remembered dialogue or expressed through a character’s thoughts.
Again, the key is to weave this seamlessly so we don’t want to flag it by saying things like “The memory flashed before her eyes” or “the scene unfolded like a movie in her mind.” Those statements pull us out of the story.
Example of Memory from The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab
For context, this story is about a woman from 18th-century France who bargains with a demon for her freedom. The deal: she gets eternal life until she can no longer stand the cost of it—the fact that everyone she meets will immediately forget her existence as soon as she leaves their presence—after that, she belongs to the demon.
In the opening scene, our character Addie, who goes by the name Jess, has just woken up in Toby’s bed after spending the night with him. She knows he won’t remember her. They never do. That is her curse, bestowed by the darkness, but she holds a thin thread of hope that it might be different this time.
She wakes first and watches Toby sleep, justifying her decision to return to him night after night as another girl while she helps him compose a piece of music because that is the only way she can make a mark on the world—the only way she can be remembered—by invisible association. She is also rationalizing why she chooses people who resemble the being that cursed her.
Here’s the setup and the memory: The memory is in bold.
…Toby begins to stir, and she feels the old familiar ache in her chest as he stretches, rolls toward her—but doesn't wake, not yet. His face is now inches from her, his lips parted in sleep, black curls shadowing his eyes, dark lashes against fair cheeks.
Once, the darkness teased the girl as they strolled along the Seine, told her that she had a “type,” insinuating that most of the men she chose—and even a few of the women—looked an awful lot like him.
The same dark hair, the same sharp eyes, the same etched features.
But that wasn't fair.
After all, the darkness only looked the way he did because of her. She’d given him that shape, chosen what to make of him, what to see. (This is backstory context.)
Don't you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke?
Darling, he'd said in his soft rich way, I was the night itself.
Now it is morning, in another city, another century, the bright sunlight cutting through the curtains, and Toby shifts again, rising up through the surface of sleep. And the girl who is— was—Jess holds her breath again as she tries to imagine a version of this day where he wakes, and sees her, and remembers.
As you can see, the memory of the darkness teasing her, triggered by Toby’s appearance, does several things: it helps Addie justify her bedroom choices and convey who she knows the darkness to be and the magnitude of her problem. She made a deal…a deal with a devil.
Takeaways For Crafting Memory:
A memory will always have a trigger stemming from the present moment that sends the character back into the past, and it’s for a reason—to make sense of what is happening in the present. It’s not random. The memory should illuminate something about the character’s current situation or experience and ideally move the story forward.
A memory can be a fragment of recalled dialogue or longer recollection of a previous event or situation, but it is not a full scene. It does not have a firm beginning, middle, and end.
If the scene is written in the present tense, the memory will be delivered in the past tense.
Flashbacks
We’ll save flashbacks for next time because there’s a lot to be said, but they are very similar to memories. We have a character in a situation with a desire, a trigger that pulls us into the past, and then we go into a partial or fully developed scene from the past involving tense changes for the specific purpose of illuminating something in the present.
Takeaways from Today’s Article:
Backstory should only be conveyed if it aids in understanding the present moment or propels the story forward.
Remember the Golden Rule: Backstory should be delivered only when necessary to make sense of the current situation or character motivations.
A character's backstory shapes their actions, behaviors, emotions, and motivations in the present.
The Three Methods of Backstory Delivery are Context, Memory & Flashback.
Context: Integrates backstory seamlessly into the narrative through snippets of dialogue, narration, or character actions. Context is bits and pieces of dialogue, narration, or interiority that give us a more global view of the situation and illuminates the meaning of the present moment. .
Memory: Memories are flashes and fragments of the past shown in the present. In a story, memory aims to illuminate something significant in the present situation or setup and deepen the character’s arc of change or both.
Flashbacks: Fully developed scenes from the past that offer deeper context and understanding, they are always triggered by present circumstances and must contribute to the advancement of the narrative.
Stay tuned for our next craft chat, where we’ll dive deep into how to craft a flashback that works!
