Backstory sends so many queries to the reject pile. One reason Prologs became unpopular was that they are often a backstory.
Backstory is for the writer, not the reader. Our job is to tell our tale from one point to another, but often we cannot resist taking the reader back to another point in time.
A little backstory may be necessary, but when it turns into an Info-Dump, they can be tedious. Readers get involved in the story, want to know what is about to happen, and here come three pages about another time, and often introducing people new to the reader. If it goes too long, the shift back to the story is a jolt, and the reader has to stop and think, “Wait, where were we?”
I am using Betsy Byars Good-bye, Chicken Little as an example. Byars wrote MG books for years, won prestigious awards, and knew her stuff.
Byars has a single sentence in Chapter 2 that tells so much about Jimmy Little’s former life, and it takes place just as Jimmy’s Uncle Pete falls through the ice to his death. The line doesn’t interrupt anything; it magnifies this moment in Jimmy’s life. I give you the before and after, so you can see how Byars slips backstory into the narrative. The backstory sentence is highlighted in blue:
The ice cracked a third time, and Uncle Pete started toward them. Jimmie closed his eyes. It was an instinct he had acquired when he was little—to close his eyes when there was something he could not bear to see. In this way he had avoided seeing his dog Fritzie hit by a truck and his father’s body brought out of the coal mine.
Eyes squeezed shut, he heard the scream of the crowd. It was such a unified, unearthly cry that there was no question what had caused it.
(Byars, Betsy. Goodbye, Chicken Little . Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.)
Byars could have gone into a long description of the coal mine disaster, the mother’s grief and Jimmy being a sad little boy. But, “less is more.” Readers can imagine what it would be like to see your father’s body carried out of the coalmine. No backstory needed. We get it. And we know Jimmy is experiencing another life-changing moment in the story, right now.
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