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Q&A Seeking advice on establishing the emotional impact of backstory

I am drafting a novel outline. The interesting part (and thus the part I should be writing) would come with several characters with preexisting romantic relationships. The choices they make will ha...

1 answer  ·  posted 7y ago by Matthew Brown aka Lord Matt‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:21:13Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/27612
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Matthew Brown aka Lord Matt‭ · 2019-12-08T06:21:13Z (about 5 years ago)
I am drafting a novel outline. The interesting part (and thus the part I should be writing) would come with several characters with preexisting romantic relationships. The choices they make will have a massive impact on those relationships, especially after the final reveal.

The emotional tone of the entire story rests on the strength of these pre-existing connections which I want the reader to become invested in too.

How can I make those existing relationships matter to the reader so that they feel the punch of the ending but without writing a whole bunch of prologue chapters?

I've toyed with using flashbacks (a lot of flashbacks) but this too just feels like an emotional "info dump" and could spoil the pace of the main conflict.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-04-19T16:00:37Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 4