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Joined: 10/22/2011
Posts: 7
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One of my biggest obsticles is writing background details about my characters. I want the audience to get a good understanding about why my characters are who they are, but I don't want to bury them with a "info dump", thus, making them stop reading. Any suggestions about how to know when enough is enough, at any given point in a story?
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• One of my biggest obsticles is writing background details about my characters.
Background is for you, not the reader. They want to know what’s happening, not what happened.
• I want the audience to get a good understanding about why my characters are who they are
Okay, then show them. It’s how we get to know people in life, and a novel is a simulation of life, not the history of a fictional character. And since you’re not an active character in the story does the reader really want you to stop the action in progress to give them gossip about the character? How real can a story be is the actors often stop what they’re doing and politely wait as the author comes on stage to give a history lesson.
You’re thinking in terms of facts, events, and character sketches. Those are the setting and the conditions in which the story takes place. If a given character is a coward it does a reader no good to know they are, as a fact. They have to believe that, and belief will come more through experience than anything else.
Look at a small example. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz we hear the lion tell us he’s a coward. But when it counts he’s never cowardly. It’ confidence that he lacks, and when the wizard points that out we’re nodding knowingly, because it’s what we’ve been made to believe through the lion’s behavior (or at least recognize enough that when it’s pointed out we’ll agree. Would it have been as interesting had we know that because we were told it as background on the character? No.
Think of a film. No one tells us about the character yet we make our conclusions on that, and actors work hard to learn how to convince the audience. A sly look when delivering diologue and we know he’s lying, without someone having to tell us. And since, in your story you have a cast of characters, let them do the same, and you have to tell them nothing, as yourself.
In the end, if the characteristic you want to tell about isn’t obvious enough in the character’s thoughts and actions for the reader to notice, they’re not worth mentioning. And if they are, there’s no reason to mention it.
There are tricks to showing what you’re trying the make them know, of course, as there are tricks of the trade in any profession. So, some time spent digging them out and making them your own might pay big dividends. My personal favorite, and the book I most consistently recommend is Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, but there are many books available that can show you the ways in which you can make the reader “notice” the things you think they need to know.
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Joined: 10/22/2011
Posts: 7
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Thanks Jay. You've brought up some very good points. When I'm editing my work, I've got to constantly ask myself, "Does the reader care about that?" or "Is that a vital part in moving the story forward?" You have these characters that you are trying to flesh out and going overboard with details is easy to do. Well, it's easy for me to do anyway.
Thanks for the good advice. I'll be sure to give Dwight Swain's book a read through.
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Joined: 9/24/2011
Posts: 2
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Another suggestion is to reveal the character's history through dialogue. For example, instead of telling us the main character was poor and grew up in a trailer, have someone call him trailer trash and ridicule him for it. His response can reveal some of the detail you're talking about - why he is the way he is.
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Joined: 10/22/2011
Posts: 7
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Good suggestion. I always enjoy writing dialogue the most, and I feel it's my strongest attribute as a writer, so you'd think I would gravitate toward that as my normal practice. I guess bad habits are hard to break. I think I especially get too wordy at the beginning of the story. It's almost like I want to get all the background out of the way. Instead of peppering the details in throughout the plot, I write it all out at the beginning. Thanks for the input!
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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What you're describing is perfectly normal. It's called writing a first draft. You just comb through it on a rewrite and take out the stuff that's for you but not the reader.
It works this way in nonfiction too. I used to tell my rhetorical writing students to write a page, then throw it away and start over. That draft gets you going. You're learning about what you want to say. THEN you say it, gracefully.
I like to use dialogue as a way to reveal things too, but you have to be careful not to let that dialogue come off as artificial or stilted. Too often in both books and films, I find myself rolling my eyes at dialogue that is really nothing but exposition rendered in a really clunky way. You have to be sure the conversation makes sense. Would two people sit down and openly discuss characteristics of their society or political culture, for example? Probably not, though they might critique elements of it or argue about it briefly, in a way that assumes they understand the details already.
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Joined: 10/22/2011
Posts: 7
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Good points. See, I think my dialogue comes off as pretty genuine, but I think it's hard for writers to truly judge their own work. Lots of people say "Read it out loud", which is a decent practice, but having other trained eyes read over the dialogue always works best, I think. Much like you said, I read an agent's website once, which posted "Large information dumps in a story are annoying, but it's even more trying when it appears in the form of dialogue".
Since I write with a specific audience in mind (Teen/YAs), sometimes that may alter how I write my dialogue. I put a fair amount of action in my stories, so putting in background/details by using dialogue is not easy. Nobody runs away from a dragon while they're telling other characters a little bit about themselves. Maybe that's a pacing issue?
Thanks Lily!
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Joined: 10/22/2011
Posts: 7
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Good points all around. Thanks for the helpful words.
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Joined: 10/13/2011
Posts: 12
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I have the opposite problem. I have a ton of backstory for my characters, and I have it all written out in my 'show bible.' But I wanted my story to be at least a trilogy, possibly more, so I hinted at a lot of it but revealed little. In a lot of reviews, though, readers were frustrated that they did not learn more of the backstory. I found that reaction a tad frustrating myself...
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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Uh huh! I know what you mean. Prequel?
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Joined: 10/13/2011
Posts: 12
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I have been toying with that idea. Actually, I have already written two shorts stories for anthologies that fill in some of the main character's backstory. It's a pretty rich vein, so I plan on mining it!
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Joined: 3/14/2011
Posts: 44
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I think that background, like world building, should generally be revealed on a "need to know" basis. What does the reader need to know to understand this character's reaction or society's restraining effect? When does the reader need to know it, so the author isn't leading them on with false mystery? Readers generally don't mind being surprised, but many loathe being fooled.
I overwrite terribly in my first 25,000 or so words. Thorough descriptions of place or custom, long flashbacks or memories or descriptions. And then, around 40,000 words, I go back and chop. What isn't relevant to the plot anymore? What characteristics come through in the character's actions, reactions, or dialogue that don't necessarily need to be told anymore? Things that look like clever concepts at the beginning may not by the time the plot is rolling.
Readers are excellent for telling you what they don't understand - which doesn't always mean you didn't do a good job with explanations, unless you have a consensus among multiple readers that something is vague. They aren't always so good at telling you which parts they skimmed or zoned out on. Ask your readers to highlight or note those parts so that you can either trim, eliminate, or relocate them.
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Joined: 12/1/2011
Posts: 35
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I am big on flashbacks myself, with the caveat that they are organic to the story.
For example, in my current story I have a younger female character who at one point is bound, hooded, and tossed into the back of a wagon. Terrified, she flashes back to another wagon ride she took on the day she and her sister were taken from their family to be servants to the royal family.
The attributes of my characters are shown primarily through their actions and words, and also through the thoughts of the other characters they interact with. Flashbacks serve more as insight into those attributes.
Just don't go all "Lost" with flashbacks (or flash-forwards, or flash-sideways) and they can be very effective.
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