Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Back Story

Back Story

One of the things I always find fascinating about writing is the back story that underlies the tale being told. Sure the author gives you glimpses to keep you current with the story line but an exciting piece of literature makes you wonder about a whole lot more than you are being told.

I have come to the conclusion that a writer’s life is inexplicably tied up in the stories they tell. This is not to imply that someone who writes about a serial killer has a deep seated desire to kill, but rather if that is a part of the story he/she takes their own life experiences, to the degree that they can, and uses these experiences to give credibility to the subject being told.

As a writer, about the only thing you have an intimate understanding about is the life you’ve led It’s sort of like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. She wrote about a fantasy world but the characters were anything but figments of her imagination. The lion, scarecrow, tin man the witches were all adaptations of people she knew in life. This is the way it is with successful writers. They write characters that draw much of their authenticity from people they’ve known. In your minds eye you already know these characters. They come from a stable of the people we have known and once the writer settles on a particular model, then all they need to do is refine the image. If they have a photo of the real deal that is an excellent starting point however, a character does not have to be a mirror image or a carbon copy. As I search about for a mental image I ultimately stumble on a picture, a cartoon, a caricature, a porcelain figurine or painting and when I see it, I know it . “Ah ha!” I say to myself….That’s Bedelia or that’s Manny Hardin.

So the back-story really begins in the writer’s life experiences and the characters become real if they are modeled upon real people, someone you once met them at at point in time and really gave you an eyeful.

Another thing I like to do is find an object my character is fond of. It might be a cane, or a weapon, or a hanky dropped by his lady love….whatever it is I get a replica and keep it handy. I touch it, examine it closely and become familiar with it. In the house I carry it around pretending it’s real and p[retending it was once one of my character’s prized possessions. Your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between what you imagination says is real and what the physical world claims reality to be. Huh? It’s true, think about it.

Then I get the characters to talking and while they ramble on at first, they eventually get around to telling me the story….A story that fits into the greater context of the back story. Now it is OK if you embellish the character, perhaps give his life a different turn, however you start with the mold and keep in check your desire to venture too far into “Never Never Land.” As long as I sitck to a world I know something about I always seem to be on fairly solid ground.

When I was younger I read the Hobbit, then the Lord of the Rings and sometime afterwards the Silmarillion, which was a history of the Elves. The Trilogy which I thought was huge and sweeping turned to be but a page in the history of the Elves. Tolkien spent his life living in this imaginary world… a piece of his awareness dwelled there and even though it was a fantasy world his characters rang true because they were modeled after those he saw around him.

So I understand that my tale is going to be a small piece of a bigger world I already know. Now comes the hard part. Here the writer has to learn how to show the reader enough of this world so they understand the environment of the story and what happened earlier that has helped shape what is getting ready to happen. The trick is how you go about doing this without putting your reader to sleep.

If you devote the first three chapters to back-story I can all but promise you that the reader is not going to finish the book. Then again you can’t wait until halfway thorough before you start providing some back story. So what are you going to do…Ah hah you say…I’ll use “FLASHBACKS“ That’s certainly a technique and a possibility that works for many.

The reality is however you have to start feeding in the essential back-story from the beginning. The operative word here is “…feeding in.“ Don’t go on from page one ad nauseous cranking out back-story. Start with some action and work it in as you go, a little bit at a time, giving the audience enough of an understanding so they know what’s going on but not so much it bogs the story down. It might even tweak their curiousity.