Backstory

What is it and how does it work? Well, backstory is what has happened to or with a character when he/she isn't front and center in the action. It's something that isn't described in the story but contributes to the character's development.

Some authors, one of my favorites among them, will sit down and write an entire biography of a character and pick and choose things in the bio to throw into a story to color the character. In my novel, Questionable Interests, Drummond 'Butcher' Rand, has been out of town attending the wedding of his half-brother's daughter. He mentions it in passing and reflects on the hard feelings between him and his half-brother without really detailing the source of the hard feelings. It also shows that despite the difficulties of his relationship with his half-brother, he is thoughtful enough to attend the girl's wedding and give the happy couple a generous wedding gift. It gives him a history without the tiresome info-dumps that can drag down the flow of a story. It's economical and gets the information across.

Sometimes, the author may have had people wondering about a character's backstory and be pressed into using more of it in a later novel to feed the readers' curiosity regarding the character. Of such are pre-quels born.

For more instances of how backstory can be used, simply read a few of Hemingway's stories. He was a master of the lightly alluded to backstory. His use of the tool managed to give the reader a sense of understanding more than he knew from the story. Perhaps that description is a little tricky but it gets the point across.

Did you ever pick up a book and begin reading it, only to find passages in it that made you think that you had gotten into the middle of a series? That's backstory. The character has a history, the reader is aware that there is a history and it tends to make the reader more interested in learning about the character.

Now, I said when I began this blog that I am not qualified, and will not attempt, to give any how-to lectures on writing. However, I did say that I wanted to give the reader some idea of how I worked. This is it. Take from it what you will.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Dolly Games, Gulf of the Plains and Congruencies