Crafting Backstory Without Slowing Pace
Explaining a character's backstory is sometimes essential to demonstrate their motivations or mindset. However, it's crucial to learn how to write backstory without letting your book get bogged down in constant flashbacks. Here are some tips that I hope will help.
The 5 w’s of story – where, what, why, who and when – can all change to create variety and interest. None of these elements must change. The characters in your novel or your setting could remain fairly constant. Yet change opens up possibilities for new developments and intriguing new scenarios. These keep your novel exciting and interesting. To avoid your story stagnating in a single location, shift somewhere new – another town or country, from the city to the countryside or vice versa. Make sure any change of setting makes sense in relation to the story.
If the middle feels sluggish, don't fear trimming it.
This is just the first part of a series on writing and developing backstories. I'll be happy to share more tips in future articles. Don't forget to leave a comment and let me know what you'd like to discuss in other articles!
Edward
It’s great that you share these tips with young and aspiring writers. Even though they may not be writing novels, I believe it will be very useful for them to learn something new from a really skilled writer like you. I’d be glad to hear some recommendations on how a writer can develop the plot without cutting down chapters (I often see it in the books of young writers). Anyway, thank you for this post, it is very informative!
Nina
I completely agree with your last point, but I also think it would be great to find the right way to develop relationships between protagonists. This will be very interesting.