How to handle a character’s backstory is a universal struggle for all of us writers. How much should we include? How long should a flashback be? When is it okay to give a character’s backstory? Is backstory even necessary?
As an editor, I’ve seen it all. Books that start with a long flashback, books that don’t provide the reader enough footing in a character’s past, and books that nail the balance of keeping the front story moving while sprinkling in backstory.
First, the undeniable truth: Whether we like it or not, backstory is necessary. Otherwise, that inherent feeling that your character needs whatever you have planned in the front story isn’t there, spurning your reader on to find out if this story will help them be okay. Backstory is the battery pack that fuels your novel, giving it purpose.
The good news is that you only need to develop that which is relevant to whatever made the character not okay in the first place.
Long-Form Flashback
Crafting the origin scene is virtually a must in order to establish exactly what happened in the past and to explore the misbelief (also known as the wound or baggage) your character has. In knowing the character’s trauma and how it’s shaped them, you’ve given yourself a road map for what your front story needs to undo.
After that, it’s helpful to develop a few relevant memories that might help your character reach aha moments within the front story. Events that they look back on with new eyes and that afford them perspective shifts as your front story progresses. These might be past incidents that seemed one way at the time. But now, thanks to your front-story plot, the character sees them for what they actually were. The fear they once had is noticeably diminished, earning them inner growth and change.
Shorter Flashbacks
Let’s talk about developing your character’s backstory through shorter flashbacks, even within single sentences. Rather than presenting the reader with fully-developed memories, you might break the flashbacks you develop into digestible chunks that could be scattered throughout your story.
How to Choose the Form and Length of Flashbacks
It helps to think of the depth of the trauma as proportionate to how long you wait to share backstory and how much of it you share. In other words, if the trauma is deep and awful for your character, we will need time to be readied for its reveal, just as the character needs time to confront it. And then, when it comes, you might need to give it breathing room through what’s more of a flashback scene. Things like being held captive, losing a loved one, making a deadly mistake, or witnessing a violent act warrant may fall into this category.
But if the trauma is something less dramatic (a best friend moving away or losing a sentimental object, for example), it’s likely not necessary to wait to share the past, nor should it earn tons of page time. In fact, waiting to share this sort of backstory or doing so in long form will likely backfire because the reader will gauge that withholding and pontificating weren’t necessary for something on that level. It may even feel melodramatic at that point.
No matter your backstory reveal form, whether it be long-form or short bursts of memory, it helps to tap into your left brain. Something I always encourage clients to do is to scene track. This exercise not only helps you outline your novel’s scenes in a bare-bones way, it allows you to keep your eye on all those plates novel writing asks you to spin. Using this task to monitor backstory reveal can be truly helpful to ensure you’re on the right track.
Some Final Backstory Tips
It’s largely advised not to include lengthy flashback until something like 10% or beyond in your novel. The reader needs time to slip into the flow of your front story. If we’re asking the reader to orient themselves in the front story and then to step away to backstory too much or too frequently, the reader can’t settle comfortably into your more current timeline.
Look within your front story for little seeds to generate one-line backstory hints. If your character was in an awful car wreck in the past, maybe you’re showing their hand trembling as they reach for the car door. Hence, a backstory clue is born and you keep the front story moving. Maybe they were robbed by someone wearing a red knit cap in the past. Within your front story, we see your character take a different route to work after someone with a red knit cap appears ahead on the sidewalk. Boom—an interesting clue emerges, pointing to the past. You can use details in the current timeline as springboards for hints of the past based upon how your character reacts when encountering them.
Keep flashbacks as tight as you possibly can. We’ve all been in stop-and-go traffic. Each time you weave backstory in, it’s akin to hitting the brakes on a lovely car ride. The energy of your front story wobbles and the reader starts asking, “Are we there yet?” They itch to get back to the current timeline.
Show, don’t tell. And yes, this rule applies to flashback. The more you evoke what it was like for your character to be in that pivotal moment way back when, the more your reader feels like you’ve transported them to the past.
What backstory methods have you used successfully in your own writing? Are there stories you feel achieve the balance of backstory?
Happy writing!
Marissa

Marissa has been a freelance editor and reader for literary agent Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency for over seven years. In conjunction with Angelella Editorial, she offers developmental editing, author coaching, and more. Marissa feels if she’s done her job well, a client should probably never need her help again because she’s given them a crash-course MFA via deep editorial support and/or coaching. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Marissa below.
Hi Mike,
You’re making excellent use of backstory by sprinkling it in because that makes the most of readers’ natural curiosity. When we give them a big flashback all at once, it can often (unintentionally) undercut that need to read on. Our readers love assembling those little “backstory clues,” almost like puzzle pieces to a larger backstory picture. I love the way you’ve used interiority and compressed time in your sample, by the way. We feel close to your narrator and we have the benefit of not veering from your active scene for very long. Huge wins! Thank you for sharing your work with us and for chiming in on this topic!
I have a trilogy in which I do a pretty brutal flashback in the first book for the protagonist’s love interest, but not for the protagonist. I wanted to show that aspect of the other character to emphasize why the protagonist feels so strongly about that character. I’m not sure, though, if I made a mistake not doing this for the protagonist. None of my alpha or beta readers thought the protagonist needs more backstory.
Hi, Paul. I think your choice to rely on beta readers is a fantastic one. So often, it really is a subjective thing and the “rules” can be broken without a reader noticing. Your instincts are wonderful in knowing that we need to understand why a character feels the way they do about another character–good or bad–and bringing those emotions to life through a scene is the most effective way to do it. If you feel you’ve shown your readers what they need to know about your protagonist’s backstory, I wouldn’t feel pressured to add anything else. It sounds like you know what you need, and in spots where you might need to revise, you have those beta readers to chime in. That’s a recipe for success! Thank you for stopping by and adding to the discussion!
Good answer! Now if I can just get it published …
Thanks, though. I’ve been working on this for years, and it’s easy to get to a point where you second-guess everything you do.
Preach! So many of us identify with that sentiment. Keep going, though. The only way to guarantee not getting published is to completely walk away. You’ve already committed yourself so wonderfully, and I trust that’ll continue. Sending you tons of positive thoughts!
I do back stories in tiny pieces as they fit in with the story. But I introduce my heroine (first person narrator of the series) at the end of chapter 2. I’m pasting it in here. She’s with a very non-human alien she has rescued.
I lay there in the dark talking to her. I asked her questions. Where are you from? Why did you come here? What happened? What was your life like? How old are you? I got no response, of course. Wasn’t sure she was still alive.
I told her my entire life story. I confessed many things that I’d never revealed to anyone else. Including myself.
How I was strong and self-assured on the outside, but inside? Not so much. How I’d come to the road less traveled, but had stayed on the freeway.
How I had dumped the only guy I’d ever truly loved because of my stupid music career, and all my tours. How I often studied myself in the mirror, standing sideways, wondering if I should bother trying to keep myself slim and in shape, or whether I should let it all go and enjoy my cheeseburgers. How I knew I could never go for Clay, even though I knew he had a big crush on me, and he’d be a damn good catch for an aging chick like me.
How I’d never even tried to publish the songs that were the most important to me because I didn’t think they were marketable, and instead churned out all these maudlin ballads. Which of course made me a shitload of money, and allowed me to buy my dream property here on the coast, psychically as far as possible from La La Land. But which left me with this empty hole here near the core of my being.
I began to hum this one melody I’d written years before, and had never performed in public. It was my internal anthem—the music for my secret self.
My alien companion, lying in the dark covered by a horse blanket, in a tiny, squeaky voice, hummed along with me.
Hi Mike,
I’m posting this reply to you again because I made the error of posting it to the full thread where you might not get an alert to it at all. My apologies.
You’re making excellent use of backstory by sprinkling it in because that makes the most of readers’ natural curiosity. When we give them a big flashback all at once, it can often (unintentionally) undercut that need to read on. Our readers love assembling those little “backstory clues,” almost like puzzle pieces to a larger backstory picture. I love the way you’ve used interiority and compressed time in your sample, by the way. We feel close to your narrator and we have the benefit of not veering from your active scene for very long. Huge wins! Thank you for sharing your work with us and for chiming in on this topic!