Backstory/

Backstory (background information about your main character’s past), can be compelling when positioned in the correct sequence in your story. You can express it through emotional memory recall rather than just telling it.

Backstory is a shadow that looms always in the background of your character’s mind. If you’ve done your job right, readers can see what effect the backstory (past) has upon your main characters, but they don’t always need to know all the details.

• Backstory does matter. But, if it doesn’t help move the plot forward, it doesn’t need to be told.
• It must be cleverly placed within the story so that readers understand its significance to the plot, and the readers can’t wait to discover the secrets in your character’s past that may be holding him back or driving him forward.

If you can involve readers imagination in helping you tell the story and fill in the blanks, then half your battle to engage your readers and connect with their emotions has been won.

A backstory is a series of events that writers need to invent to help drive your plot. They need to be presented at various events (scenes) that happened before the inciting incident and altered your character forever.

Backstory is a narrative history written in chronological order. In other words, it’s the history of the main character before all the drama began.

Backstory can help build depth or believability in the character and story.

A great way to introduce backstory is through dialogue. Just make sure you don’t start your novel with half a page full of backstory. No one wants to meet someone for the very first time, and all they tell you is their past. That can get boring. Introduce backstory in bite-size pieces and use it to drive your plot forward.

Backstory can be introduced to your story through flashbacks, dialogue, direct narration, summary, recollection, and exposition. If backstory doesn’t help move that scene forward by creating motion, then leave it out.

Even though authors of fiction use backstory. To keep today’s reader hooked on your novel, don’t overuse backstory.

Just remember this. If your character’s memory helps to prompt him to make an immediate and hopefully, logical decision, then that memory, in turn, must have been inspired by a recent event.