Backstory could be understood as…<\/p>\n
\n“…part of the story that happened before the present story and usually includes the characters’
\npasts and conflicts which influence the current story.
\n<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0—Gordon Kessler*<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nGordon Kessler also lists three ways to deliver the backstory: flashback scenes, reminiscences, and dialogue.<\/strong><\/p>\n
FLASHBACK SCENES<\/strong> fill in the blanks of the person’s past. This means taking the reader to a given place or time using the past perfect verb tense.<\/p>\n
Also, the character’s REMINISCENCES <\/strong>can be used. Some object or location triggers a memory and the character tells enough to draw in the reader to important experiences. In a story written in the first person point of view, it would sound like a retelling to the reader. From a 3rd person point of view, it would come across as time travel.<\/p>\n
Further, DIALOGUE<\/strong> can be used, if you place the characters in a context or setting in which the information could flow naturally and in a timely manner with the plotline.<\/p>\n
\nBackstory is made up of experiences that help shaped a character’s personality or
\nthought pattern [worldview] or it relates to a situation
\nthat is important to the understanding of the plot.<\/strong> –Gordon Kessler<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\nMost authors and experts on writing would agree that a great deal of the backstory belongs in the first 25% of your text. In this first section of the story development, we need to empathize with our main character. Backstory is a wonderful way to develop this connection between the reader and the characters in the story or the connection between the reader and the author (memoir).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nGordon also explains how some of the backstory can be withheld from the reader until the end of the story<\/strong>. However, most must be “hinted at much earlier in the story in order for it to resonate, seem valid and believable t<\/strong>o the reader.”<\/p>\n
*All quotes from Gordon Kessler’s manual called STORY MASTERS: Advanced Notions in Novel Writing<\/em><\/p>\n
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