By:
Roz Morris
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There
are two fundamental questions with back story. The first is how to present it
(e.g., a vivid flashback), and the second is whether those back story events
should be used as part of the main plot.
Here
are 4 ways that back story might be sabotaging your novel’s effectiveness.
1.
Your novel’s most
engaging events are buried in a summary of back story.
I
often see manuscripts where the writer has invented a detailed and dramatic
back story for a character, but the main story events lack impact and substance.
There is no meat left for the book’s real-time plot and so the novel seems
empty and static. Of course, the story may be precisely that; the character
might be coming to terms with past mistakes. The focus might be the finer
detail of living with a burden, or leaving behind a golden period that is gone
forever. But just as often, this approach is not deliberate and the writer is
scrabbling around, trying to find stuff for the characters to do. They don’t
realize they’ve already got fantastic ideas, but hidden them in the back story.
Could
that back story be used as a fully fleshed flashback so the reader could
participate? Or, more radically, could those same ideas be extracted from the
past and reworked as a forward-moving plot? Consider whether your back story
ideas should be front story.
2. Your novel
relies on back story and secret wounds instead of character development.
. .
.
Read the full article HERE!
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