Last week we talked about the kind of infodump in which the character’s full history is dropped in one big block. Often this information—or pieces of it, anyway—does belong in the story. It just needs to be winnowed down to the minimum, and it needs to be woven organically into …
Tag: Backstory
Your character needs backstory, but don’t dump it
I want to take some extra time to go into one point on the Elements of Fiction Editing Checklist in detail: ☐ Personal histories are brought into the story organically Backstory is usually a bad word among writers. But the truth is, it’s necessary—to you. Knowing your character’s history is good. …