Backstory Balancing Act

How to handle a character’s backstory is a universal struggle for all of us writers. How much should we include? How long should a flashback be? When is it okay to give a character’s backstory? Is backstory even necessary?

As an editor, I’ve seen it all. Books that start with a long flashback, books that don’t provide the reader enough footing in a character’s past, and books that nail the balance of keeping the front story moving while sprinkling in backstory.

First, the undeniable truth: Whether we like it or not, backstory is necessary. Otherwise, that inherent feeling that your character needs whatever you have planned in the front story isn’t there, spurning your reader on to find out if this story will help them be okay. Backstory is the battery pack that fuels your novel, giving it purpose.

The good news is that you only need to develop that which is relevant to whatever made the character not okay in the first place.

Long-Form Flashback

Crafting the origin scene is virtually a must in order to establish exactly what happened in the past and to explore the misbelief (also known as the wound or baggage) your character has. In knowing the character’s trauma and how it’s shaped them, you’ve given yourself a road map for what your front story needs to undo.

After that, it’s helpful to develop a few relevant memories that might help your character reach aha moments within the front story. Events that they look back on with new eyes and that afford them perspective shifts as your front story progresses. These might be past incidents that seemed one way at the time. But now, thanks to your front-story plot, the character sees them for what they actually were. The fear they once had is noticeably diminished, earning them inner growth and change.

Shorter Flashbacks

Let’s talk about developing your character’s backstory through shorter flashbacks, even within single sentences. Rather than presenting the reader with fully-developed memories, you might break the flashbacks you develop into digestible chunks that could be scattered throughout your story.

How to Choose the Form and Length of Flashbacks

It helps to think of the depth of the trauma as proportionate to how long you wait to share backstory and how much of it you share. In other words, if the trauma is deep and awful for your character, we will need time to be readied for its reveal, just as the character needs time to confront it. And then, when it comes, you might need to give it breathing room through what’s more of a flashback scene. Things like being held captive, losing a loved one, making a deadly mistake, or witnessing a violent act warrant may fall into this category.

But if the trauma is something less dramatic (a best friend moving away or losing a sentimental object, for example), it’s likely not necessary to wait to share the past, nor should it earn tons of page time. In fact, waiting to share this sort of backstory or doing so in long form will likely backfire because the reader will gauge that withholding and pontificating weren’t necessary for something on that level. It may even feel melodramatic at that point.

No matter your backstory reveal form, whether it be long-form or short bursts of memory, it helps to tap into your left brain. Something I always encourage clients to do is to scene track. This exercise not only helps you outline your novel’s scenes in a bare-bones way, it allows you to keep your eye on all those plates novel writing asks you to spin. Using this task to monitor backstory reveal can be truly helpful to ensure you’re on the right track.

Some Final Backstory Tips

It’s largely advised not to include lengthy flashback until something like 10% or beyond in your novel. The reader needs time to slip into the flow of your front story. If we’re asking the reader to orient themselves in the front story and then to step away to backstory too much or too frequently, the reader can’t settle comfortably into your more current timeline.

Look within your front story for little seeds to generate one-line backstory hints. If your character was in an awful car wreck in the past, maybe you’re showing their hand trembling as they reach for the car door. Hence, a backstory clue is born and you keep the front story moving. Maybe they were robbed by someone wearing a red knit cap in the past. Within your front story, we see your character take a different route to work after someone with a red knit cap appears ahead on the sidewalk. Boom—an interesting clue emerges, pointing to the past. You can use details in the current timeline as springboards for hints of the past based upon how your character reacts when encountering them.

Keep flashbacks as tight as you possibly can. We’ve all been in stop-and-go traffic. Each time you weave backstory in, it’s akin to hitting the brakes on a lovely car ride. The energy of your front story wobbles and the reader starts asking, “Are we there yet?” They itch to get back to the current timeline.

Show, don’t tell. And yes, this rule applies to flashback. The more you evoke what it was like for your character to be in that pivotal moment way back when, the more your reader feels like you’ve transported them to the past.

What backstory methods have you used successfully in your own writing? Are there stories you feel achieve the balance of backstory?

Happy writing!
Marissa

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