There are dozens of articles online about “how” and “when” to use backstory.
In addition, some will say never use backstory.
Huh?
I’ve read enough manuscripts and novels and nonfiction books over my many years of teaching and coaching writers to know there is definitely a time to use backstory, and that can be anywhere you need it! Including page one. (Gasp, I know. So be it.)
What matters is that information about the past ENGAGES the reader and helps underpin or make believable what’s unfolding on the page.
Revered authors such as James Lee Burke will use backstory on the first page and ensuing pages to set up a novel or character. (See The New Iberia Blues.)
Other authors will feed readers backstory via a nugget or sentence at a time throughout a novel.
Still other authors bring in backstory information at the famous and common “Fatal Flaw” areas of the Midpoint Crisis and/or the Climax/Resolution. I agree that those are important places where backstory fits well and is usually accepted well by readers. Backstory can fill in the “why” of things happening.
As a writing coach, I say this: Anything can be edited. If bringing in backstory on page one or any page helps you “feel” the story or “find” it, use backstory. Later, you can pare it back, move it, edit it for style, or drop it.
Don’t let “rules” and “advice” about backstory make you pause too much.
Keep your creativity cooking. Sometimes using backstory to “find our story” is helpful in early drafts.
Sometimes action for the sake of action is so dry as to be a “pass” by readers who might also be your agent or publisher. A car chase on page one is a ho-hum affair unless we have a hint as to why this may be important to somebody. Are these drivers old friends? Enemies? Why? Sometimes one pithy sentence about the mysterious backstory will make us laugh or gasp and turn the page. I don’t mind that sort of sneaky backstory. And of course sometimes that sort of thing isn’t backstory but just a needed fact. Don’t agonize over its label; keep writing the story!
It’s true backstory can stop the story’s plot progression if the writer gets sidetracked with it or over-writes. Be judicious.
Backstory is a tool. Much of it might go where its name implies: in the “back” of the story. Or no place at all. You choose.
If backstory gets you into your story and it helps you find your “voice,” go for it.
Write. Okay? Just write. Find the story.
Anything can be edited and changed.
Critique partners, workshop buddies, professional editors, beta readers can help you gauge your usage of backstory.
Keep writing and enjoying the journey.
Christine DeSmet: Author 