Balancing the backstory

 This week I’ve been doing two writing tasks.  First, I’ve re-edited an old novella, and second, I’ve continued on with the re-write of my novel. In both cases I’ve found myself dealing with backstory.  Which has led me to deciding how much of it should go in a story.

In the case of the novella, all three of the main characters have backstories which they want to hide from each other.  My civilian human heads up a project looking for marine creatures which are a good source of protein. Her backstory centres on a project where creatures escaped and decimated a native population.

My other human character is military, and he’s been sent there to watch the alien Dela.  His backstory revolves around the Navy destroying a Delan religious site by mistake, and triggering a brief war with the aliens.  That makes him very keen not to do anything on this world to upset the Dela.

My Delan main character is having a secret kept from him.  His backstory revolves around the conflicts which the Dela have regularly had with another alien species. So they’ve decided to secretly bioengineer a shark superweapon.  The story brings all these characters and their backstories together.  Each one has to tell the reader about their secret past.  It affects what they do now, when the Dela are in serious trouble.

In my novel, the issue I’ve had is deciding how much backstory to include.  I discovered that my new character, Cloud, was involved in conservation work as a teenager.  This now links with a rock superstar she’s a fan of, who uses his money for conservation.

I’ve had to made several decisions about how much backstory to show for my other character, Brett.  It’s partly because I only want relevant detail, but it’s also because I want to deliberately withhold some details.  Brett has a military past, but was discharged as unfit for duty after an experimental project he was involved in failed.  I wanted to bring this in, but only the barest outline.

That incident isn’t relevant to the present action,  but the withholding is for another reason too.  If I sell this first book, one of the books I plan for the series is centred on Brett’s story.  So it’s there where I want to reveal the full details of the project which nearly got him killed.

I’ve balanced the backstory I have included with action, by splitting it up into short chunks in between the action.  I’ve also had to make some major decisions on how much to reveal.  But when you’re planning a series, that’s one benefit of having more than one book mapped out at the start.