The Power of Backstory
Turning back the storyline.
Have you ever been in the middle of a story and the main character acted a certain way, had a certain phobia, refused to talk about a certain topic, or would change the subject when certain topics came up, and you thought, What’s up with that? Sometimes, you just chalk it up to a certain quirk that a book character has. After all, we all have these types of quirks, right? And we don’t always go around explaining them away to people we meet. Others just begin to associate that trait with you and accept it without needing to know anything further—even if they do wonder. For example, if you have a fear of spiders, do others need to know whether it’s just an irrational fear or that when you were three you fell into a ditch infested with hundreds of spiders and you totally freaked out? No, they just need to know that you don’t like spiders. Most will just accept that without having to know the details of your phobia. However, other times, it is important that your friend (or perhaps your therapist) knows the why behind your fear. That is true in stories as well. Hence, the need for backstory.
Backstory can give more insight into a character (their perspective, motivation, or personality) and establish a more intimate connection between the character and the reader. It is a technique that is typically presented in one of four main ways.
Backstory as a Preface
Sometimes your readers need to understand something about a character, a city, or a setting before the main story even begins. This can help set the tone for your main story that would otherwise be difficult to create in the main storyline. It can give the reader insight into a character’s proclivities, social mores, or unique background. If done well, backstory in a preface can be quite effective. Yet, it has two main drawbacks to be presented in this manner. If it is too long, it can have your readers invest in an alternate storyline that is not really part of your book, and they may feel jarred, and even disappointed, going from something you explained a decade or more before your main story starts causing the reader to feel cheated because of the time and emotion he or she just invested in that older storyline. Or, being a preface, they may skip it altogether. To prevent this, or at least, decrease the chance of a reader skipping it entirely, it should have a hook in the beginning to draw the reader in, be relatively short and concise to convey the necessary information you want the reader to know without being elaborately detailed. It needs to be interesting but not necessarily engrossing.
Backstory within your Story
To prevent the possibility of someone skipping a preface of your backstory, you may decide to have that backstory within your story. Maybe your character is somewhat sinister, and you want to provide some level of connection for the character to have with your readers so they won’t despise him or her but come to at least better understand why he or she behaves a certain way. After you get your readers invested in the story, providing backstory can give them that insight needed for them to invest in your not-so-lovely character. This is probably one of the more common ways of using backstory. However, one must be careful not to have it be too long as it does take the reader out of the present environment and immerse them in another, completely different, environment. The reader needs to maintain connection to the present situation even as they understand the past. Sometimes, dispersing the backstory in blocks throughout the main story is a way to do that without taking your reader out of your main story altogether.
In my book, Promised Kingdom, I use this type of technique to help readers as well as characters within the story understand the past. Rather than writing a long discourse of how bad things were before the coming of their universal king, I provide many mini backstories to convey this past knowledge to my readers as well as to some of the characters within the story itself, those who were born only after the current king became well established. When the main character, Kalem, talks to an elderly woman who was born prior to the Refreshing, as she describes the time before the king arrived, she tells him how things on the earth were when she was young. Another main character, Edvin, talks about a war within the city of Jerusalem which caused his wife to die at childbirth just before their king arrived and changed the environment of the earth to the more idyllic state in which they currently live. This helps readers understand and contrast many of the horrors that existed on the earth prior to the king arriving and changing the world to a more Edenic state.
By Author Randy C. Dockens from Stele Prophecy Pentalogy
Backstory as a Completely Different Book
Many times, when a book is a backstory to another novel, it is often used as a reader enticement or used as a bonus for the reader if they buy the main book. However, it can also be used to provide readers with information about certain characters or situations in the main novel that they really care about and can add additional insight into characters of the main storyline. This is often written as a bonus for author fans who enjoy insight into the characters they have fallen in love with.
In my series, The Coded Message Trilogy, three of the main characters (Luke, Jeremy, and Natalia) have history together. This is obvious from their conversations and interactions within the book’s storyline, but specific details are never provided. In addition, there are two characters (Oliver and Viktoria) who are married but have an extremely unusual arrangement as Natalia is a type of soldier who cannot remember certain events from one day to the next. Some information is provided as to how their relationship works but no specific details are provided.
Backstory by Author Randy C. Dockens to The Coded Message Trilogy.
Therefore, I wrote two backstories to this series. One is the backstory of the relationship between the characters Luke, Jeremy, and Natalia. It explains how their relationships became so tight with each other as they met in college and had several experiences together which at first strained their relationship but then they made a conscious decision to remain friends, and they did. The other backstory is about Oliver and Viktoria, explaining how their relationship began and how Oliver became involved in the mystery they are all now trying to solve.
Backstory by Author Randy C. Dockens to The Coded Message Trilogy.
Backstory as a New Series
Sometimes, one series has a tie-in to another series and can help explain backgrounds of characters from one series as they are also characters in a completely different series. While each series has a different plot, scope, and storyline, certain characters do overlap between book series. This technique can help explain the background of a character in one series because it is about that same character but from another aspect, focus, or stage of their life. Such a backstory strategy can help provide continuity between series and give readers aha moments they would not otherwise have.
For example, in my series Stele Prophecy Pentalogy, there is a character, Tiberius (Ty) Moretti, who is instrumental in the book, Promised Kingdom, in getting scientists of various fields to locate together into one facility so that they can better explore the current environment of the earth since the world had recently changed due to worldwide disasters which occurred rapidly in succession to each other. This entire series is focused on how the European countries deal with this worldwide phenomenon. In my book, Mercy of the Iron Scepter, in the same series, it is noted that Ty spends much of his time in America but his work there is not covered in detail since the main focus of this series is Europe. This same character reappears in my series, The Cities of Light Series, which gives the American side of this same worldwide disaster and how this character ties into the Stele Prophecy Pentalogy series from his work in America. This gives the readers more insight into this character, how he came to be the person he is with the position and influence he has, and how he is tied to the disasters and the exploration of their occurrence. The third book from the Cities of Light Series, Darkness Invades, gives more details about Ty and his connections to these disasters. This also provides more aha moments for readers to enjoy.
By Author Randy C. Dockens from Cities of Light Series.
So, as you can see, backstories are important concepts for authors to utilize to add not only information but additional drama for readers to enjoy and in which to engage. When done well, this technique can provide readers with another layer of enjoyment for an author’s work.
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Visit Books & Words to Inspire by Randy C. Dockens