Backstory: The Story Before The Story

[Walter Cummins]

Let’s distinguish between two kinds of backstory: 1) Situational information that relates to the characters’ ongoing condition and 2) specific past happenings that inform the dramatic issues of the present story.

Situational information can emerge just from descriptive statments.  For example:

Stephanie reached across the rich leather seat of her Porsche for her Gucci bag.

Alma Sue felt the rattles of the old pickup truck in her bones as she drove down the dirt road to the feed store.

Those sentences tell us quite a bit about Stephanie and Alma Sue’s worlds and their life styles.  It’s almost impossible not to give that kind of information when writing fiction. In fact, it could be argued that these examples are not really backstory because they don’t appear to relate to any dramatic issues.  But if the sentences that came next were the following, the stories would have the basis for conflict. 

Stephanie found just a five-dollar bill in her wallet.  She didn’t know how she would make the monthly payment on the car’s lease since Donald ran off with the au pair and emptied their bank accounts.

Alma Sue broke into a broad smile.  Now that they’d discovered uranium on the farm, she’d junk that old rattletrap and get herself a Porsche.

Those sentences refer to events that happened before the present story began to bring the two characters to this new point in their lives. The reader knows each women has experienced a significant change but not yet how those changes relate to the specific issues the stories will dramatize. More setup is necessary.

Let’s consider another scenario in which an opening does merge situational informational with details of a dramatic tension to be worked out in the full story. 

Just before turning the corner to Ophelia's flat, Harvey changed his mind. When her invitation had arrived, sure she had sent it by mistake, he immediately decided to show up and bring nothing to her party. But at the last minute it struck him to backtrack to an off-license on the High Street for a bottle of the cheapest Chilean plonk, rummaging through a bin for the ugliest label he could find, dull gray with barely readable lettering.

This opening conveys a lot of information, indications that the story is set in England, where the main street of a town is usually the High Street, where an off-license sells alcohol for consumption off the premises, and where plonk refers to an inferior wine. Much more central to the plot is the tension between Harvey and Ophelia, why he is so determined to appear at her party and insult her. 

The story will need at least one specific incident of backstory to reveal the source of that enmity. Where it appears will be a major plot decision. It could be the climactic culmination, or it could come at some midpoint. If midpoint is the author’s choice, it will explain the tension but not resolve it. Something dramatic will have to happen between Ophelia and Harvey afterwards. 

Let’s try a midpoint backstory. Before that happens the author will have to present how Ophelia greets Harvey and, especially, how she reacts to the wine. One possibility is the look on her face when she opens the door and sees him. It could be surprise, as if she has forgotten she had invited him, or it could be feigned delight that carries over to her reaction to the wine. Then she would turn and abandon him, leaving him in the midst of a group of people he knows only casually, with his sense that they are uncomfortable having him there.

 Ophelia reappears with a wine glass for him, saying loudly for all to hear, “Harvey brought this. It’s Chilean.” Then she would ask him, just as loudly, “Where’s Rosamond?” He would mumble, “Rosamond was over months ago.” “How sad,” Ophelia would say, “You made such an appealing couple.”

This point is the transition to actual backstory. “I’m surprised you know her name.” Harvey would say. Then the summarized story would go like this: 

At the last of Ophelia’s parties, where he had been eager to introduce Rosamond, Ophelia insisted on calling her Vicki, apologizing for the mistake at first, then doing it again and again every time she feigned introducing Harvey and his date to more people, finally sputtering laughter and blurting, “I can’t help it. Harvey and Vicki were married for ever so long. Her name just pops up automatically.” Rosamond, more and more furious, finally hissed at Harvey to take her home. They did try one more dinner after that, but it was stiff, and he knew she would never be able to transfer her anger from him to Ophelia.

An alternative for revealing the backstory might be to have a tipsy couple come up to Harvey, remembering how funny they thought it had been last time with Ophelia constantly calling Harvey’s date Vicki. They tell him they had laughed about it for a week. This approach would have the backstory come out through dialogue.

With the revelation of the source of the Ophelia-Harvey tension mid story, something important must happen to bring that tension to a climax, something that arises from the backstory explanation of that tension. Why did Ophelia want him there? It’s up to the author’s creative imagination to decide why that will be.

Flashback: A flashback is a form of backstory more appropriate for the length of a novel than a short story because it is a fully developed scene that shifts away from the immediate action to dramatize a past event. If the Harvey-Ophelia story had, instead of revealing the Vicki incident through exposition or dialogue, stopped the action to include all the details of that previous event, it would have been a story in a story and, therefore, a flashback. For a short story such full elaboration is usually excessive.