Treat Backstory as a Living Current, Not a Dump
Readers crave momentum. They don’t want to stop mid-scene to read a résumé disguised as memory. When handled well, backstory flows like an undertow: subtle, powerful, always moving the present forward.
Secondary details become meaning when they alter the reader’s perception of what’s now, not what’s then.
- Why it worksBackstory earns its keep when it reframes action instead of interrupting it. Think of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle—the reader learns history through tone, contradiction, and omission. Each clue reshapes how we see the narrator without ever pausing the plot. Effective backstory changes context, not pace.
- How to do itUnfold history the way memory intrudes in real life—momentary, sensory, and often inconvenient. Let a smell, a phrase, or a wound reopen the past, then pull the reader back to the present before comfort sets in. Ask: what truth does the character want to hide, and why does it surface now?
Do
Thread details through emotion, not exposition. A character recalling the burn on their hand during an argument tells us everything about the memory and their temper.
Use backstory as tension—what the reader learns should complicate how they feel about what’s happening.
Avoid
Stopping the story cold for “three paragraphs of childhood.”
Explaining motivation before readers have a reason to wonder about it.
Treating flashbacks as filler instead of friction.
From My Work
“My hand hovered above the switch. I’d turned off thousands of lights in my life, but never this one. It hummed like the memory of Ray’s voice—sharp, final, waiting to be obeyed.”
In Salt & Bone: Reckoning, that memory surfaces once and never again, but it changes how readers interpret Jack’s silence later. We don’t linger in his childhood; we only feel its echo. That’s the goal—backstory that hums through the present instead of hijacking it.
Let the Present Earn the Past
Backstory feels indulgent when it arrives before readers have any reason to want it. Curiosity is currency—spend it too early, and the story goes broke.
Let questions build first. When readers finally need to know, the revelation lands as reward, not lecture.
- Why it worksCuriosity anchors engagement. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl works because every flashback in Amy’s diary comes with a question attached: what’s real? The reader doesn’t just learn the past—they interrogate it. The difference between intrigue and overload is desire.
- How to do itHold back until the moment of emotional collision. Reveal history only when the character can’t continue without confronting it. The timing turns exposition into transformation. If the past doesn’t change the next choice, save it for later—or cut it entirely.
Do
Let backstory answer the question readers are already asking.
Time revelations to coincide with choice, failure, or confession.
Avoid
Opening chapters that read like ancestry charts.
Front-loading trauma before readers know who it belongs to.
From My Work
“I opened my mouth, ready to argue, but the words caught on the smell of antiseptic. My hands remembered a hospital I hadn’t worked in for years.”
In Salt & Bone: Ashes, memory arrives on a sensory trigger—fast, specific, and gone again. Readers glimpse enough to feel history’s weight without halting the scene.
Show What History Costs
Every character drags the past into the present—it’s the baggage that bumps every doorframe. But readers only need to see what gets dropped, not the entire suitcase.
- Why it worksSelective revelation mirrors human behavior. We remember what hurts or helps. When the author curates memory around consequence, every detail feels earned. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin reveals backstory through cultural tension—what characters misunderstand tells us more than a full chronicle ever could.
- How to do itCut ruthlessly. Keep only what influences emotion, morality, or decision-making in the current timeline. Everything else belongs in your notes, not the manuscript.
Do
Let scars shape action instead of description.
Show what the past costs the present.
Avoid
Flashbacks that repeat what readers already know.
Explaining pain instead of letting behavior betray it.
From My Work
“Brendon laughed too hard. The kind of laugh you rehearse in mirrors. It wasn’t until the sound broke that anyone realized he was remembering something else.”
Even without context, the reader feels the shadow of history. That’s enough. Backstory shouldn’t fill silence—it should haunt it.
Final Thoughts
The past matters most when it won’t stay buried. Readers don’t need the full map—just the landmarks that change the way they travel.
If your story breathes through what’s unsaid, you’re doing backstory right.
Extras
- Read about Salt & Bone (WIP)
- Sign up for the newsletter to get weekly tips
- Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin