Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A How do you tell a character's backstory without explicitly telling it?

You do it in chunks. Let the character explain that he is the right one for the job because he has done this thing in the past. Let another character a chapter later point out that they knew this c...

posted 6y ago by Secespitus‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-12T23:01:22Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34310
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:18:49Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34310
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T08:18:49Z (almost 5 years ago)
You do it in chunks. Let the character explain that he is the right one for the job because he has done this thing in the past. Let another character a chapter later point out that they knew this character for years and can always trust that this character will get it done. Let him share something at the fireplace from his past in exchange for information about the other character. Another chapter later you see this character do something incredibly good - another character murmurs that it must have taken him years of hard training to achieve this mastery.

You don't want to simply tell the reader in a long monologue, but you need to show it somehow. As long as you don't dump the information on the reader and instead introduce it whenever it's relevant this is fine - it doesn't matter whether the character explains it themselves or another character or someone just thinks they know something. And you should only ever show your reader the important parts of the backstory. It doesn't matter how many sisters the character had - except for when finding one of them is his motivation, or they collectively taught him something, or they are individually important to him or the story.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-03-15T15:36:23Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 20