Exposition/Backstory in Short Fiction

Dom Perkins

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How do you incorporate backstory into a short story, in your opinion?

I've been working on a short story for a while, and though I'm not finished yet, I've been working on revising the beginning. Currently, I have the backstory at the beginning. The backstory is incredibly important for the rest of the story, however, people say never to start exposition with backstory. Although, they're usually referencing novels, I'd assume it would be the same for short fiction.

The backstory is explained a few paragraphs into the story, right after I established the setting and atmosphere. It's a few lengthy paragraphs long, with some present action in-between to break it up. It finishes at less than a thousand words, and overall, I estimate that the entire story itself will fall between 4.5k to 7k words. However, without the backstory at the beginning, I feel that the rest of the story would be irrelevant or uninteresting.

What are your thoughts?
 

Denevius

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It’s *almost* totally based on each individual story.

The problem isn’t backstory, per se. The problem is that many writers don’t know how to handle backstory in exposition, and they often get it wrong. And the results of this is usually quite momenteous on reader engagement.

Backstory in the beginning of a story, if handle ineptly, risks losing readers and makes the story harder to find a publishing home. I think this is why the suggestion usually given is blanket advice: Avoid backstory. Too many writers can’t do it in a way that doesn’t lose readers.

Whatever technique you’re using “works” when it sufficiently engages readers. If it’s not sufficiently engaging readers, odds are it doesn’t work.

Also, backstory voice is usually “tell” instead of “showing”. It’s the PoV narrating past events, and this slows down the narrative pace, potentially losing readers.
 

Polenth

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The only way to know if it works would be to get people to critique it (and not here... you can post in "Share Your Work" when you have enough posts). In general, I'd say that what authors think the reader needs to know right at the start is often far more than the reader needs to know. I always view early backstory with a critical eye in my own work, because often it isn't needed right at that moment. Or only a small bit of it is needed at that point. Once people are getting into the story and interested, the backstory becomes more relevant, and it's easier to sprinkle it in without it being boring.

Interest is really the key to whether it works. If it requires reading some boring paragraphs to get to the real story, you've already lost people. If the backstory is an interesting part of the story, it won't be a problem.
 

LucySnowe24

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I think it also depends on roughly what word count you're aiming for. If it's a very short story, obviously the challenge there is making the world of your story, including your character's backstory, real with a few strokes. If it's a longer form you can use more novel-like paragraphs to include the backstory.

I think here as ever it's a good idea to show not tell - including a few telling details can illustrate the backstory without blatantly telling the reader. If I may toot my own horn for a moment, I once wrote a short story (which was shortlisted in a competition!) where the protagonist is a young gay woman, and she's talking to her new love interest about whether they're out to their families. Describing her inner thoughts, I wrote: "Her mother had thrown a Charles and Diana wedding mug at her head when she'd told her. She hadn't been back since." I'm quite proud of that line as I think it works much better than saying "She was estranged from her mother because of her homophobia" would have done.

I also just read this short story by Tom Howard, which I really liked: https://mastersreview.com/new-voices/hildy-by-tom-howard/. It's about a brother and sister living wild in a post-apocalyptic world. He uses a few select details to give a hint of everything from how the world's population died out, to the fact that the children hated their stepfather, and lets the reader imagine the rest.
 

Outofcontext

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As pointed out above, it depends on the story, but in general I avoid backstory. I start the action in the present, with the situation and the characters formed as they are. That's how it is in real life when we encounter something new. We project upon the situation whatever it is that we bring with us in terms of experience and our emotional reaction. Whoever narrates can shade the story with hints that may help to explain what is going on (or went on), but in a short, that's not always necessary. So long as there is a beginning, middle and end, with a plot that moves forward, that's what counts. Just avoid creating a vignette where nothing happens (unless that's your goal and that's what the story editors are looking for, which is not very often).
 

Paul Lamb

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Can you cut the backstory into pieces? If you can move parts of it to later in your story, say a quick reference to some small detail that has big resonance, that would reduce the amount of backstory at the start.
 

CJEvermore

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I often fall into this trap too. In fact, the short story I'm working on at the moment features an MC who is very much alone. She internalizes a lot because she doesn't really have anyone to talk to. Rather than just listing what she has been through to get to this point, though, I've had her mulling over and reacting to the thoughts inside her head. It's only a first draft, so this might change further down the line. But for this particular story, it's quite important that we know who this character is and what she's been through. I certainly think, as Paul above says, it would be ideal to break up the backstory into pieces and present it to the reader bit by bit.
 

barbarairvin

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Short stories are difficult to write because they are so compact. You are limited in terms of length, so details must be spread out. I recently took a Creative Writing class, and all of my assignments involved creating either scenes for short stories or writing an entire story. Backstory can be easily woven in through flashbacks. Character can be revealed through dialogue and action. Only include information that is only necessary to the plot. Those are the things I learned.

Barbara
 

Biffington

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The rule I've run across (and I don't know that it has a name) is that you'll usually want about 750 words times (characters plus locations) in your story. You can get away with telling rather than showing a bit more in short stories, so if you can cut the backstory down to a sentence or two, it could work.

Is there a way to weave the backstory into the story? Have characters reference it?

Instead of talking about a guy making a mistake and killing his girlfriend in a scifi heist, you could reference it, and the audience would get the point. As a sleep-deprived example,

"Hey, John, any way you could kill the power, like you did in Denver?" Mark leaned around the corner and fired another laser at the robots.

John held his head down. Jessica danced through his mind, and he couldn't stop tears from flowing. Never again.

"No," John said, "too much of a chance they could go berserk before they shut down."