{"id":9603,"date":"2022-03-29T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9603"},"modified":"2022-05-05T08:20:01","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T12:20:01","slug":"where-writers-ideas-come-from-slivering-the-backstory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9603","title":{"rendered":"Where Writers’ Ideas Come From: Slivering the Backstory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Authors are constantly admonished not to get sucked into the quicksand of backstory\u2014especially early in a book or at the introduction of each new character\u2014yet there are aspects of a character\u2019s prior experiences that writers really do want readers to know. There are relationships and episodes from the past that help in understanding who the character is in the today of the story. You can recognize when there\u2019s too much backstory when your mind wanders. And \u201ctoo much\u201d doesn\u2019t refer to word count, but to relevance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A great many authors have steered around that particular hazard and made it work for them. Richard Osman did in The Thursday Murder Club<\/a><\/em> with his character Joyce\u2019s diary\u2014a natural place for someone to record observations about the past; in Ann Patchett\u2019s clever The Magician\u2019s Assistant<\/a>, the backstory is<\/em> the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since my character, Archer Landis, is about age 60 in 2011, he was in his early twenties as the Vietnam War was ending (I\u2019ve done this arithmetic about a hundred times, convinced I have it wrong!). The war, the draft, the demonstrations would have been very much top-of-mind for him at a crucial and formative stage of life, and their impact would have been indelible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t need a deep dive into his war experiences\u2014like Michael Connolly did so well in his first Harry Bosch novel, The Black Echo<\/em>, or as Frederick Forsyth did in The Avenger<\/em>. Characters in both of these novels were tunnel rats, and their Vietnam war experiences shaped their subsequent lives and futures. Understanding their war experiences in depth was appropriate. Those scenes were so powerful and immersive that each time the story returned to the present day, I was briefly disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I didn\u2019t need that. Instead, I doled out Landis\u2019s war memories in small bites. He returns to his Vietnam experiences at three points in the novel. I hadn\u2019t realized it as I wrote, but in each case, those experiences recapture his attention when he\u2019s in the greatest immediate danger. It\u2019s as if the intensity of the hazard resurrects them. In one example, anticipating a possible violent confrontation, he contrasts his experiences confronting the Viet Cong with his options in the present-day situation. This memory triggers a reflection on the kind of person he has become. It isn\u2019t a digression to tell a war story; it\u2019s showing who he is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These snippets are reminders that Landis engaged in the issues of his day, in the past and the present. He was a part of those past events, just as he\u2019s aware of the world of 2011. Such fleeting references help me\u2014and the reader too, I hope\u2014see Landis as a fully rounded person who has a past, but is not dominated by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image by Vinson Tan for Pixabay.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authors are constantly admonished not to get sucked into the quicksand of backstory\u2014especially early in a book or at the introduction of each new character\u2014yet there are aspects of a character\u2019s prior experiences that writers really do want readers to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Backstory needn't be quicksand. It's Show, Don't Tell all over again.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2uT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9605,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9603\/revisions\/9605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}