Backstory - less is more

(This was originally posted on another blog, but I reposted it here.)

Backstory, for me, is any kind of “telling” about something that happened at any time but the present moment of the story.

For one, the “telling” aspect of backstory jolts me right out of that lovely fictional dream. Most of the time, “telling” backstory also disrupts some really interesting dialogue and I don’t want to read some paragraph of narrative—I want to get back to the conversation!

For example:

She opened the door.

“Jake.” The name burst from her mouth, almost like an expletive. Her blood pulsed at the base of her throat, blocking her windpipe with its rapid-fire tempo. She was going to pass out—she gasped in a bolus of air.

He smiled, highlighting the dimple on his left cheek. “Hey, darling.” He leaned more against the doorframe so that he towered over her.

She shuddered, but couldn’t get her feet to move backward. “What are you doing here?”

“Come to see my favorite girl.”

He acted as if he hadn’t dumped her at the altar six years ago for his other “favorite girl,” her best friend, Marcy. She still remembered how devastated she’d been, waiting at the back of the church for a full thirty minutes after the ceremony was supposed to have started, trying not to cry and ruin her mascara, avoiding the gazes of her bridesmaids. Only to finally get a text message from him with the words, “Sorry, can’t marry you. Forgive me. Jake.”

A charcoal suddenly flared under her breastbone, and her hand whipped out, smacking his shoulder. “You slimeball. Go away and stop dirtying my porch.”

The boldface is backstory, in case you didn’t know.

It’s telling. Pure telling. It’s like sitting in the audience at a play and suddenly have one of the actors stop acting, turn to the audience, and start telling you what happened six years ago, and why she’s so surprised to see him.

You wouldn’t enjoy the play very much if that happened, would you?

At first glance, the backstory doesn’t seem too bad, does it? After all, it’s only a paragraph, and the reader needs to know why she’s upset at Jake, right?

Um…maybe not.

Why not eliminate the backstory entirely (now breathe…don’t hyperventilate…it’ll be all right, I promise) and create some mystery for your reader? Wouldn’t that be a more effective way to keep them reading?

She opened the door.

“Jake.” The name burst from her mouth, almost like an expletive. Her blood pulsed at the base of her throat, blocking her windpipe with its rapid-fire tempo. She was going to pass out—she gasped in a bolus of air.

He smiled as if six years ago hadn’t happened, highlighting the dimple on his left cheek. “Hey, darling.” He leaned more against the doorframe so that he towered over her.

She shuddered, but couldn’t get her feet to move backward. “What are you doing here?”

“Come to see my favorite girl.”

A charcoal suddenly flared under her breastbone, and her hand whipped out, smacking his shoulder. “You slimeball. Go away and stop dirtying my porch.”

In this example, the reader is asking, “What happened six years ago? What did he do to make her so mad? I’ve got to keep reading to find out!”

Some of you probably won’t agree with me, and that’s fine. But I do know from several published debut novelists that they eliminated as much backstory as they could when they submitted, and after they sold that manuscript, sometimes the editor would ask them to put some backstory back in.

My point is, personally, I’d rather have too little backstory and have my manuscript be contracted (but have the editor okay putting some backstory back in), than to have too much backstory and risk not being contracted at all because the editor thinks you have too much “telling.”