On writing: backstory

[Stanfield2025]

Well, now I kinda wanna play too...

******

The breeze picked up in the clearing; a soothing caress on Ayala's hairless, sweat-slicked skin. She tipped her baseball cap forward and let her bald head rest against the smooth, chalky bark of the quaking aspen. She'd walked a couple miles to get there, already out of breath and in desperate need of a break. Before her life had imploded, it had been the easiest hike in the world. But four months of surgery, chemo, puking, and being bedridden had changed all that. And for her suffering, she'd been rewarded with the doctor telling her, "I'm very sorry, Mr. Hartley, but it's already spread pretty far. Any further treatments would give you weeks, at best, and..."

She'd tuned him out shortly after that. She was done. The universe was hilarious, giving her testicular cancer in a body that didn't fit her, and never had. She actually laughed in the doctor's face when he told her the male organs so anathema to her sense of self were killing her. Removing the offending testicle had been a secret relief. She'd never told anyone she was really a woman. Too many people she knew wouldn't truck for that sort of thing. The secret had eaten away at her for thirty-nine years, then killed her.

High points for irony. Low points for widespread metastases.

Her sisters had told her to keep fighting, that God would provide. Which had been when Ayala snapped and come out as a woman. The look of abject shock on their faces, their uncharacteristic silence, that'd been all she needed to confirm a lifetime of suspicions about how they would feel upon learning the truth. Without another word, she'd stormed out and slammed the door behind her.

No way she could go back to face them now. Not after that. And, honestly, she didn't want to. Let them clutch their pearls and pray for her misguided soul to be saved, to be exorcised by goodness and light. No, that was petty. Her sisters wouldn't be approaching her from a place of malice. They weren't vile bigots; they genuinely cared for her well-being and didn't want her damned to Hell. They'd told her as much as kids, whenever she'd done something sinful and her family would pray for her. It wasn't judgement, it was love -- no matter how misguided. But she didn't have the patience or energy to spend what little time she had left having her sisters try to drag her to Pastor Dan to convince her it was all in her head, or brain damage from the cancer, or the Devil, or whatever reasoning they'd cling to in order to explain what they thought was a revelation from the blue; not realizing it was a lifetime coming.

Ayala took a sip from her water bottle as she rested against the tree. She'd loved coming here as a kid, out in the middle of nowhere. She'd told the woods her secrets, the animals her heartbreaks, the sky her triumphs. It was the one place she was free to be herself. Not Jonathan or Mr. Hartley or Sir. Ayala.

And now was probably one of the last times she'd have the strength to come here. She had a month, tops -- almost certainly less. Lungs, brain, liver, all being chewed away by a traitorous body. Maybe a week before the symptoms became so debilitating that she'd be in palliative care.

Not an expert, but this seems like a mix of scene-setting and info dumping to me.

However, the info is super engaging. The backstory stuff is so interesting to me, and I think that's because of the fact that it's something that is affecting the main character right now, and it's dire. So this isn't stuff I'll forget soon if I keep reading. It's stuff that makes me invested in the main character.

 

[Stanfield2025]

It’s veering into tropey territory. And at this point I’m realizing you didn’t ask for a review, just an info dump vs scene setting. So it feels - without having read how you pay off any of this stuff - a little heavy handed.

Huh. I guess I like reading heavy-handed shit.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Huh. I guess I like reading heavy-handed shit.

De gustibus non disputandum est.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Here's my attempt, the intro to that WIP I mentioned:

That excerpt is 398 words, down by more than 200 from what it was like two days ago.

This discussion seems to mostly be focused on introductions to stories, but of course you can have infodumps anywhere. I can think of some sci-fi/fantasy authors who'd take multiple-page pauses in the action in between one battle and the next to exposit about the ruling dynasty's history or something.

Yeah, I'm with @Stanfield2025, it's using tell to get us to current events, rather than scene setting or info dump. Standard intro. It reads scene setting, but we get whisked through several events and summarized through things, hence why I wouldn't really consider it setting the scene so much as catching us up to speed.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Not an expert, but this seems like a mix of scene-setting and info dumping to me.

However, the info is super engaging. The backstory stuff is so interesting to me, and I think that's because of the fact that it's something that is affecting the main character right now, and it's dire. So this isn't stuff I'll forget soon if I keep reading. It's stuff that makes me invested in the main character.

You are a writer of great taste and discernment.

 

[EmilyMiller]

You are a writer of great taste and discernment.

Shall I translate that for a general audience?

 

[anthrodisiac]

Shall I translate that for a general audience?

General audience on Lit or general audience writ large?

Let it be known that I'm acutely aware of what I wrote

 

[EmilyMiller]

General audience on Lit or general audience writ large?

Let it be known that I'm acutely aware of what I wrote

I had assumed

 

[Djmac1031]

Im usually a "sprinkle it in here and there" type. Generally I like to start the story with the inciting event, then at some point after the characters are introduced and everything is set in motion, take a pause and perhaps add some backstory on who they are or how they got to this point.

I started coming up with a backstory for my She-Demon character Cozbi while writing The Devil And Angel Em but didn't include it, instead opting to use it for the prequel story The Seduction Of Darkness. Because it absolutely would have cclogged up the original story and ground the thing to a halt for no reason. It was unnecessary and too complex to just be an info dump.