Note: These chapters I'm writing on backstory are based off of a fantastic book I'm reading called "Build Better Characters", by Eileen Cook. She's a counselor and a writer who approaches character-building from a psychological standpoint. The group she works with, Creative Academy, has a whole website of resources for writers at https://creativeacademyforwriters.com/.

In the last chapter, we learned about advanced interrogation methods you can perform on your characters in order to learn more about their past (with no torture involved...yet 😉). But there's no possible way you can fit all the backstory mentioned before into your book, unless you're writing a super long series (and even then, it'd be spaced out across multiple books). So how do we decide what's important to include?

"Joye, my character is in an apocalypse and her favorite music is hip-hop and she has purple hair and her dad was killed by zombies and she just broke up with her boyfriend after one date and..."

Hold up! I'm going to stop you right there. I mentioned info-dumping when it comes to worldbuilding, but it's also very important to artfully weave in backstory in a way that won't cause your readers to buckle under all that information. Why? Because they'll forget your character's backstory. And a character without a memorable backstory is a boring one, and one that the reader won't like and may get frustrated with.

This, like writing emotion, comes as instinct now for me, so I did some research. In the book I mentioned in the author's note (which you should read - they have many more helpful tips I don't list in the interest of avoiding plagiarism) are two methods I learned. Let's take a look at them, and I recommend using both in your story. They're very helpful for different things.

1. Use A Timeline Tool

In Build Better Characters, Eileen Cook discusses how in her counseling sessions she'll have her clients make a timeline of the most important events in their life, with the earliest ones starting at the top. Events they perceive as negative go on the right, while events they perceive as positive go on the left. 

This tool is useful because it boils down information to the most important, defining moments in a character's life (this will help you a ton when deciding whether it's worth mentioning that your character's first job was a grocery cashier). It also creates depth of perception in your character. For example, one person who gets diagnosed with a chronic illness might mark it on the right as a negative thing. However, another might mark it as a positive thing because of the things it taught them about friendship and forsaking their own pride. 

Below is an example timeline I made for Shadow Weaver. It's written with the first scene of Starwalker as the end, so please be on the lookout for vague Alura spoilers.

2. Ask the right questions

Cook also includes a set of questions one can ask if they want to decide on a case-by-case basis what's important to the story. Below is a quote from the book, originally from page 91.

● "How does what happened in the past link to what's happening in the main storyline?

● Are there details that the reader must know in order to understand the plot?

● Is your character's reaction to something in the past so unusual that the reader may not understand it unless you show it on the page?

● Other than backstory, how does your character's motivation come through? 

● With the backstory, what is the minimum the reader needs to know?

● If you cut the backstory from the manuscript, would the reader notice it?[*]"

*Note from Joye: you may want to get some beta readers to look at this specifically.

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So, now we have some basic guidelines of what to do in order to weave in backstory well, but how do we weave it in? There are three main ways to do this: dialogue, actions, and flashbacks. There are other methods such as parallel storylines, but the ones listed below are what most writers use, and I would recommend you as a newbie follow in their footsteps till you're experienced.

1. Dialogue

When you get to know someone, you're able to share your heart-of-hearts with them. This involves sharing aspects of your past that may seem uncomfortable and weird. Having been sexually harassed, it took me a while to open up to anyone about it, and even longer to feel comfortable sharing my story publicly. But once it did, it gave those I told a better understanding of who I am and why I act the way I do in certain situations.

The same goes for your characters. If they're not close with one another, or they don't have a reason to be discussing backstory, don't reveal their backstory at that time. One of the most cliché examples of this problem is the villain telling the hero their plans when they have no motive to doing so. You want your dialogue to make sense, so limit the deep conversations to people who know one another well and have a good reason to bare their souls.

2. Action

There are two facets to this: internal monologue and the way the character reacts based on their backstory. Have you ever watched or read a piece of fiction where a character did something that "felt wrong"? (One example I can think of personally is Katniss in the Mockingjay movie instituting the Hunger Games again with the Capitol's children. I never did understand why she wanted to do that.) This is an example of acting out-of-character, and it's when a character's choices and actions don't mesh with their previously established backstory, heart's desire, or motives.

If your character has been physically abused or manipulated, it's likely they have an aversion to physical touch or mistrust it at the very least. You could hint that someone's touch doesn't feel genuine to them, or have the character worrying it'll turn from a hug into a slap. Conversely, if someone hasn't ever experienced this, they could be overly trusting until it's too late to escape a bad relationship.

3. Flashbacks

Flashbacks are the final way to reveal backstory. Two words of caution, though: first, make sure that the flashback is absolutely necessary, and that it can't be revealed in a more subtle way. I've judged new writers' books who have a flashback every other scene, and it causes lots of hiccups in the flow of their writing. Remember that small details about a character's past can be revealed piecemeal in the ways I mentioned above.

The second word of caution: avoid or severely limit the use of dreams as flashbacks. Dreams don't often make sense in real life. Going back to my example with sexual harassment, I often dream about my harasser, but the dream rarely if ever involves the actual times I was harassed, and the reactions of other people in the dream don't make sense with how any decent person would react. (A detour on dreams...if you remember your dreams, write them down in your journal. They're some of the best story fodder I've ever encountered.) Dreams shouldn't be used as a cop-out for showing flashbacks, though for experienced writers they might be able to pull it off.

Instead, I'd advise you to transition to the flashback in a different way. Maybe the main character is recounting the backstory to someone, and the reader needs to know the thoughts and feelings of the storyteller in the original context of which they happened. Maybe the character is thinking very deeply about the incident, or journaling about it. You can also include flashbacks as separate scenes sparingly in the story, provided they aren't clogging up the story's flow.

One more bonus warning: when you write flashbacks, don't write flashback to 8 years ago or whatever as the heading. Either craft a heading artfully, like Eight years earlier... or don't include a heading at all. (This goes for points of view, too. Don't say Jason's POV - either artfully show his name at the top, or just make it clear in the scene that's it's his point of view.) You should also italicize flashbacks, as it's a good reminder to the reader that they're not in the present timeline of the story.

In the next chapter, I'll discuss how backstory fits in with the heart's desire and with motivation, and how you as a writer can develop a compelling motivation for your character. 

JennyRaylen adds: I'm including the occasional flashback in Skywalker: The Force Calls, but the sequences are very long (like the length of a normal chapter), so instead of italicizing them, I've decided to split them into their own interlude-type chapters and have a heading that says "__ YEARS EARLIER." So there's an alternate option if your flashbacks are longer. (Just be very careful not to make them TOO long, and make sure they're absolutely necessary to the story.) In my opinion, writing long sections of text italicized just gets distracting at a certain point.