Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

Backstory and flashback
The lifelike short story
Short-form genres

As noted, when you start a new story, you need to get the reader into the conflict as soon as possible. But you also need to bring them up to speed on what’s happened with the characters up to that point. This is usually done through backstory or flashbacks.

DEFINITION

Backstory is a summary of an incident that has happened in the character’s past. Flashbacks take the reader to the past incident and show it to him through action and dialog.

Backstory is almost always necessary because the reader needs to know where the character is coming from. Flashbacks aren’t always necessary, but sometimes the reader needs to be in the moment to truly understand the character’s position. The key is to get that history across without interfering with the momentum of the story.

A story needs to have forward momentum, meaning it needs to unfold at a steady pace. Flashbacks (and sometimes backstory) stop or inhibit that momentum. They take the reader somewhere else and get them involved in a different story. Then that stops, too, and we’re brought back to the real story. If this happens too much, it can frustrate the reader because he or she is being pulled in too many directions at once and left wondering when it’s going to be time to get back to the “real” story.

In general, it’s smoother for the reader if backstory can be conveyed in a sentence or two. This is hard to do, but it’s worth it because the reader won’t be skimming ahead to find the real story again. In this case, less is definitely more because it has a greater impact on the reader.

Flashbacks are trickier because they can’t be conveyed in a sentence or two. If a flashback is absolutely necessary, a good way to keep the reader from feeling moved around too much is to start the flashback at the beginning of a story. The catch here is that you’ll need to make it clear from the beginning that this is a flashback. Either put all the flashback text in italics, give a date or time frame of when this happened in the past, or change the point of view. This way, the reader will settle in without any confusion and will also be expecting to switch back to the real story later on.

Many writers avoid flashbacks altogether because they’re very hard to get right. Likewise, many make a conscious effort to limit backstory to no more than two sentences. This helps keep things from sounding like an info dump. However, as with so many of the techniques I’ve introduced in this book, you’re going to have to discover the best ways for backstory and flashback to work for you—if, in fact, you decide to use them at all.