How to Avoid Too Much Back Story in Your Fiction

How to Avoid Too Much Back Story in Your FictionHow to Avoid Too Much Back Story in Your FictionDo your short stories tend to get bogged down in back story? Do certain scenes seem to drag, even to you? This writing exercise will help you take advantage of these lessons to create forward-moving fiction, thinking of a scene visually, strictly adhering to the present moment, to eliminate unnecessary back story. Exercise Choose a scene from one of your short stories or novels that seems to drag. Scenes designed to be more action-oriented are particularly well-suited to this exercise.Rewrite the scene as a play or screenplay. In other words, tell the story using only dialogue and brief descriptions of action and characters. (If you arent familiar with screenwriting or playwrighting formats, dont worry. It isnt an exercise in formatting, but in thinking visually.)Practice economy. Think strategically about how acharacter can be revealed through action and dialogue. (Syd Field has excel lent examples of how this can be done in his classic book, Screenplay.) Instead of telling the reader what a character is like, find a way to illustrate character as the plot unfolds. Rewrite the scene in prose, abstaining from backstory and long descriptions, and incorporating some of the details you have added in writing it as a screenplay.Take a few days off from the work and return to it later, noting how the pace of the work has changed. Tips In some instances, backstory will be necessary to the plot of a story. Determine whats necessary and what the reader can surmise from the dialogue and the action. Readers generally pick up on and remember more details than you might expect. Remember if something is important, then you want to play it out in-scene if it is less important, sum it up in exposition.Dont confuse forward-moving fiction with fiction written for the screen. Its possible to write rich, literary work that also has movement. Its easy enough to reinsert any necess ary information later. When you start to get feedback on the work, people will let you know if anything is confusing. Be sure to take note and be receptive to feedback (as opposed to defensive). Sometimes it doesnt matter if you mentioned something in the prose, but how you mentioned it, and how it is being read. Sometimes you will have to give more time to a certain fact in order for your readers to grasp it. What You Need A story or novel that was written within the past few yearsA pen and paper or a computer