In-Depth Character Backstories Won’t Make Your Book A Bestseller
What I learned from Aaron Sorkin about getting to the point and making it stick
You don’t need a good backstory to tell a good story. So much in stories is assumed, and sorted out by the reader as you go through the story — and that’s perfectly okay.
One thing that I’ve always loved about C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series is the amount of mystery embedded in the stories.
While sometimes frustrating, the fact that we’re just thrown into the midst of a fast-paced tale and only given bits and pieces of a backstory to the world we’re learning all about is intensely fascinating, far more captivating than dozens of pages on what happened before what we’re reading now.
If that backstory was all that important, it wouldn’t be backstory — it would simply be the story.
Obviously, sometimes we have to give context, but context isn’t backstory, and your readers don’t need context as much as you think they do.
Your audience is smart. They can figure things out.
In the opening scenes of Star Wars Episode IV, we’re given shots of Luke Skywalker in his day to day life. We get the idea pretty early on that he lives with his aunt and uncle, in a farming town on a farm, and that he dreams of racing and flying and doing adventurous things.
That’s all we need to know. That’s the writers of the story making a promise that what he’s leaving behind pales in comparison to what lies before him in the episodes to come, and boy does George Lucas deliver in a frenzy of Star Destroyers, droid friends, bad guys and plot twists alike.
Good writers assume that their readers are smart and that they’ll be able to figure some things out along the way.
Instead of making your reader care with backstory, make them care about the story itself. Tell them what they need to know, get them up to speed, and send them on their merry way into your incredible story.
They’ll end up thanking you for it.
