By John Gilstrap

Backstory is an often undeniable temptation for inexperienced writers. We see it all the time in First Page Critiques submitted and reviewed here at the Killzone Blog. And I’m not just talking about the throat-clearing data dumps that poison those first paragraphs. Unnecessary backstory invades minor moments as well, and handled improperly, those moments stop the story one hundred percent of the time.

Backstory is the crutch that explains everything. It’s like the Chorus in ancient Greek plays that represents the epitome of telling and not showing. With a sprinkling of backstory, we can tell our readers why a character flinches, why she drinks too much, why he doesn’t trust authority.

Here’s the tragedy of squandering that slice of real estate on the page: the reader doesn’t care why a character thinks something or does something until the rationale is important to the story. But the worst part of the wasted real estate is that you’re ruining future tension. The fact that a character has a signature tic is cause to keep reading. Once the mystery is solved, interest evaporates.

This is a difficult concept for me to explain, so stick with me as I try to work through that which I was never taught, per se, but have been told I do well.

Backstory should arrive as consequence, not as explanation. Earn the reader’s curiosity before presuming to answer a question he hasn’t yet asked. If your character checks the locks three times before going to bed, don’t explain it. Let it sit there. Let another character notice it. Let it cause friction. Let it slow characters’ actions down when speed matters. Now it’s a problem, not a quirk.

A book is a limitless canvas. Take your time. Make the reader beg to know before you grant them knowledge.

Backstory is best revealed when it is pulled out of a character. It falls flat when it’s pushed onto the character by the author. Conflict is your delivery system. You want your characters to feel real, right? Well, real people don’t sit around in the middle of a crisis and reveal historical details of why they feel the way they do. (Okay, they did that very thing in The Breakfast Club, but that was the eighties, and we should all strive for better than that.)

Some elements of backstory needn’t ever be explained. Why does Charlie have a scar across his cheek?  Why does Agnes walk with a limp?  If it’s not critical to the story being told, there’s no need to explain. That’s a lot harder to do when Charlie or Agnes are your POV characters, but even with them it’s doable. Imagine an exchange like this:

“Hey, Charlie. I’ve always wondered where that scar came from?”

“I go it in a fight with the last guy who didn’t mind his own business.”

That’s a complete reckoning, and it does everything you want a plot to do: it builds mystery, establishes character, and even advances the relationship between the two characters.

Then there’s subtle backstory. I don’t particularly like quoting my own work, but here’s a passage from my current WIP—the one that triggered the idea for this blog post:

Irene parked her cruiser at the curb in front of the streetside door that she knew to be locked and walked around to the right, where the side entrance served as the ceremonial portal with its covered entrance and double doors.

This presents backstory in an implied way that doesn’t get discussed very often in classes. This little passage tells us that 1) Irene has been here before; and 2) she’s comfortable in what she’s about to do. The point here is that backstory can be implied as well as being called out.

Then there’s this from a paragraph or two later:

As she crossed the threshold into the forced faux comfort of a giant living room for the dead, she winced against the mixed aromas of flowers and formaldehyde that she’d come to associate with such places.

Here, we got some emotional history as well as physical recall. We know that she’s been to funeral homes, the tone delivers that she’d rather be someplace else. We don’t need to know the reasons for those previous visits.

Some shortcuts for hiding backstory inside the front story

Let expertise reveal history. Avoid telling us what a character used to be. Show us how they move through their world now. If your character constantly checks over his shoulder for approaching strangers, or he notes where exits are, that’s plenty to tell us that he has an interesting past. You don’t need to reveal what that past is until that story beat has an immediate impact on the main story.

Reveal character details through third-party observation. And here again, only to the degree that is necessary. Consider a retake on the issue of Charlie’s scar:

Adam pulled Baker into an empty office. “Do you know where Charlie got that scar?”

Think of all the opportunities here. Choose your favorite:

“I have no idea. I asked him once, and that didn’t go well at all.” This one is sort of dismissive. It shows that Baker is either afraid of Charlie, or just isn’t interested in the drama.

Or

“Something about Afghanistan. Traumatized the crap out of him. I think it’s what makes him angry. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and I don’t push.” Here, we learn an extra nugget of information about Charlie’s scar, but we also read respect mixed in with the fear of confronting Charlie. Baker has previously shown curiosity, but nods to Charlie’s desire to be left alone.

Or

“Yeah, I do, and it’s none of your damned business. When you’ve endured half the crap Charlie’s put up with—what he’s survived—maybe you’ll understand that when a man says he wants to be left alone, it’s a survival skill to leave him the hell alone.” Here Baker not only projects respect for Charlie, but also loyalty to him—apparently an earned loyalty. It also shows Adam to be pretty small for asking.

Or

“Ten years ago, when Charlie was in the Army, his unit was assigned to clear out a building. The place was packed with bad guys . . .” This one is a data dump disguised as dialogue. While it provides backstory, it is, I believe, hands down the worst of the options. Unresolved questions drive tension, tension drives conflict, conflict drives character, and character drives plot. Data dumps are just piles of words.

I’ve written here before that I think it’s a mistake to study the writing process as a series of component parts. Setting, plot, character, dialogue, backstory, chaptering and all the rest need to be reduced to a stew, not a list of ingredients. I don’t think about any of those things when I write. I just . . . write. That’s the blessing and the curse of being self-taught.

It all boils down to this in the end—the only true, inviolable rule of writing commercial fiction:

Never Squander Drama!

In any writing project, every plot point presents infinite choices derived from infinite variables. If you over-think it, you’ll spend ten years rewriting Chapter One. If you’ve ever been part of a writing group, you know at least one of those people. My suggestion to everyone reading this is to consider one challenge:

For each of the choices you make, choose the one that reveals as little as possible while simultaneously piquing the greatest interest in the unknown.

So, TKZ family, does this make sense?

Last night I was working on my presentation for the Pikes Peak writers conference scheduled for May. My oldest daughter, the Redhead, was on the couch with her laptop, miraculously inserting the slides as they popped up on my screen at the same time. In addition, she was adding bits of period music here and there in real time.

Kids can do this, even the ones who are now 38 and the mother of two. Technology ain’t my friend, and I’m counting all the ways My Road to Publication and Other Great Disasters presentation can screw up with an electronic hiccup.

At some point in this program, and I never know when because I kinda wander around without notes (which is going to be a problem with slides in and music in a specific order), I reach a point where I discuss the thousands, nay, the millions of rejection notices I received through the years from editors and agents alike.

I wish I’d kept them all, but in a fit of self-pity just before my first novel was accepted, I threw two paper boxes full of them into the dumpster. Okay, it wasn’t millions, but it was a lot.

Some were so faded you couldn’t read the faint blue letters because they were cheap mimeographed notices that said, “Thanks for your submission, but they do not meet our needs at this time.”

Of course the first thing I did after opening the envelope, each and every time, was sniff the mimeograph paper as all kids did back when we were in school. I still try it today. Back then, the whole class did it as one, and it became so iconic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High created that same scene. Lordy, we were probably high ten seconds after all that methanol and isopropyl alcohol hit our lungs.

The teachers were probably buzzed pretty good themselves after returning from the workroom with their own lungs full of those same vapors, and nerves jangling with enough nicotine and caffeine to jolt a dead elephant back to life.

On top of all that, if you were a good kid (me), you got to sometimes make those copies for them back there, inhaling the heady aroma of chemicals and second-hand smoke.

What a time to be alive.

However, back to the rejection notices. Many of them were mimeographed boilerplate blowoffs, and I soon learned it by heart.

Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately it doesn’t meet our needs at this time.

As the years progressed, the letters became more formal, probably because I wasn’t hand-writing them and had graduated to typing. Some were form letters, but others were hammered out by the literary agents or editors themselves.

In one personally written rejection, the agent dismissed my submission with a clear and cutting declaration . “This manuscript has trees in it. I don’t do trees.”

Somewhere around two thousand, I’d reached a point in my attempts to sell a novel and was done and the box was gone that afternoon.

I immediately regretted it.

Desperate for some kind of positive affirmation, I decided to cold call Joe R. Lansdale and ask if he’d suffered the same continual stream of No Thanks. He answered his land line, I told him who I was and how I was a fan, but despite success as a newspaper columnist and magazine writer, I was done.

He didn’t know me from Adam, or even Eve, but he spent nearly an hour on the line, talking me out of stepping off the ledge.

Only weeks letter, I received an email from my starter agent accepting my first manuscript and I quit second-guessing myself.

Rejection letters are a guaranteed stumbling block for all authors.

Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, received 30 rejections.

Animal Farm was rejected and the editor wrote, “it’s impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.”

Tell that to James Herriott (All Creatures Great and Small series) and Watership Down (Richard Adams).

Even Lord of the Flies was turned down a number of times and one editor declared the manuscript was “absurd and uninteresting.”

J.K. Rowling’s original manuscript for Harry Potter was rejected by 12 different publishing houses. One literary agent warned, “You do realize, you will never make a fortune out of writing children’s books?”

John Steinbeck, well –––.

The secret is to grow a thicker skin and keep working. Neil Gaiman, English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre, and screenplays, suggests that rejection slips will always arrive, and, if you get published, you can pretty much guarantee that bad reviews will follow as well. Just learn how to shrug and keep going or “you stop, and get a real job.”

Let’s end with this quote.

“Starting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn’t realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn. Then, during the late forties, I actually began to sell short stories and accomplished some sort of deliverance from snowstorms in my fourth decade. But even today, my latest books of short stories contain at least seven stories that were rejected by every magazine in the United States and also in Sweden! So, dear Snoopy, take heart from this. The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so.” — Ray Bradbury

So how many rejection notices have you received? Dozens? Boxes delivered via dolly? Or is there one drawer in your desk that is the Dead Zone?

No matter. Keep at it and never give up

Truncating Phrases
Terry Odell

Image by Sabine Kroschel from Pixabay

Language changes over time. Ask anyone who’s tried to keep up with a teen’s usage. But it can be more than words. As writers, we might be having our characters use what seems like a common phrase. However, a lot of these phrases have been truncated over time, and their full meanings have changed. Here are some examples:

“Curiosity killed the cat.”
The full saying: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The full version actually redeems curiosity, but we usually quote only the first half, turning it into a warning.

“Jack of all trades.”
The full saying: “Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than master of one.”
The original praised versatility, but the shortened version now implies mediocrity.

“Great minds think alike.”
The full saying: “Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ.”
The full saying actually balances the idea with a caution against conformity.

“Money is the root of all evil.”
The full saying: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” — The Bible
The missing words change the meaning from greed being the issue to money itself being evil.

“Blood is thicker than water.”
The full saying: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb..
The original meant chosen bonds can be stronger than family ties — the modern version says the opposite.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it burned in one.” (later addition)
The addition adds a twist about destruction being easier than creation.

“The proof is in the pudding.”
The full saying: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
The original means you can only judge something by experiencing it, but the shortened form is often misunderstood.

Starve a fever, feed a cold.”
The full saying: If you starve a fever, you’ll feed a cold.”
The complete saying was a warning against undernourishment, not medical advice.

“The exception proves the rule.”
The full saying: “The exception that tests the rule.”
“Proves” originally meant “tests,” not “confirms.” The modern reading flips the meaning.

“Nice guys finish last.”
The full saying: “Nice guys don’t always finish first.” (from Leo Durocher’s quote)
The original was contextual, but it’s now used as a cynical generalization.

Any surprises in this list? Any to add, TKZers?

Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Deadly Ambitions
Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most.
Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”