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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Welcome everyone. If you can see and hear me drop your location in the chat so we can see where in the world you are joining us from welcome to session. 2 of Science Fiction writers, week 2024. We're so glad that you're here.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: If you can see and hear me drop your location in the chat so we can see where you are joining us from.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I see North Wales, London. Welcome back

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Calgary, Uk, Texas, Texas, lots of Texas, St. Louis, Houston. It sounds like, or it looks like everyone can see and hear me. Fine. That is great. We want to jump right in so we can get into all of the good information. So I'm going to hop into the housekeeping notes.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: but feel free to keep chatting, and I'm going to drop

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: links in the chat for you here.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: So your replays these will be posted to the hub. Our 1st session replay is already on the hub. It really just depends on how long it takes processing between Zoom and Youtube. But we aim to have everything up there as quickly as possible. We will also be moving the replays to our community page starting by next week. So by next Friday, the 20, th you'll be able to watch the replays as much as you'd like in our community. And our community is free for anyone to join.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Premium day is this Friday. So Monday, through Thursday, sessions are free for everyone to attend. Friday is for premium and premium pro users of pro rating aid. You can upgrade your account by Friday morning in order to gain access. If you are a free user and you're interested in upgrading. And everybody who is

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: registered with an email address associated with a premium or premium pro account will receive email instructions Friday morning for so that you can access these.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: If you would like to upgrade, we do have a special offer for you 15% off your 1st year of pro writing aid premium or premium pro. There's a special code for Science fiction writers week participants to use. But on the hub. We do have a link with the code already embedded. So you just click on that, and you're good to go. This offer ends on September 27.th So you can find out more information about that on the Hub.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: If you would like to keep talking sci-fi writing, we'd love to have you over in our free, online, private community, you can join with a free prowriting aid account and you just log in with your prowriting aid information. It'll let you right in. You can join us in the live event, chat for some special polls and discussions about our topics this week, and then, in the event recording space. You will see all of our past recordings from

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: previous writers events, too. So if you want to see Science Fiction writers, week recordings from the last 2 years. You can see them there. There's a lot of information there for you, and we'd love to have you there

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: reminders for our session today, and for all of our sessions. If you have a question for our speakers, please use the QA. Box, as you can see, the chat moves quickly, and we don't want to miss anyone's questions. If you would like to use the chat to talk to fellow attendees, feel free whenever you're typing. Just make sure that in the dropdown menu beside 2, you select everyone. Otherwise by default your messages will just come to the host and panelists. So

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: with that being said.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: we are ready to introduce our speaker. Heather Davis Heather is an author, author, accelerator, certified book, coach, developmental, editor, and host of the popular podcast speculative fiction writing made simple in these roles. She helps writers connect with their characters, deepen their world building and find the emotional center of their stories, so they can create novels that resonate with authenticity, promote diversity, and explore big ideas.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: She has studied with renowned story experts, Lisa Cron, Jenny Nash, and Ben fromm and contributes regularly to Jane Friedman's popular writing blog. She has been featured on numerous podcasts, and frequently leads workshops for writers. Additionally, she is a contributing author to the best selling book launch pad the countdown to writing your book.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Heather supports writers through private coaching and an interactive group mentorship program called Powerful writers, magical novels.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: All right. We're so happy to have you heather. Welcome.

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Heather Davis: Thank you so much. It's so nice to be here. I am super excited to talk to everybody today, so let me go ahead and share my screen.

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Heather Davis: Figure out how to do that again.

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Heather Davis: Do do.

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Heather Davis: Okay.

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Heather Davis: Okay. Give me one second here to find it. It all went away. Of course.

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Heather Davis: of course, technology is not being my friend at the moment.

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Heather Davis: Okay.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Okay.

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Heather Davis: Should be here. Where is the little

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Heather Davis: you do? Do.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: If you're looking for the zoom option.

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Heather Davis: I'm looking for the zoom option, and I can't find it now.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: More, and then share, screen.

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Heather Davis: Thank you. You sorted me out. That's wonderful. Thank you.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Welcome!

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Heather Davis: Okay, can everybody see my screen.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Looks, good.

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Heather Davis: Okay, great.

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Heather Davis: So I'm so excited to be talking to everybody today about the 5, the 5 easy steps that you can take to master Backstory, and it's my hope that this is your essential guide to really confidently weaving in backstory into your narrative.

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Heather Davis: So 1st I would like to say, Hello and welcome. I'm so happy to have you here. I just love helping writers write novels that they're proud of.

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Heather Davis: As Michelle said. My name is Heather Davis and I have been helping writers write their stories for over 10 years.

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Heather Davis: I am an award, winning author, accelerator, certified book, coach and developmental editor. So you probably know what a developmental editor is. That's someone who reads your manuscript at the end and tells you all the things that need fixing, and hopefully all the things that you did. Well, you might not be as familiar with what a book coach is. A book coach is just someone who actually helps you from the very 1st inkling of an idea and helps you sort of build your novel from the ground up.

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Heather Davis: So it's kind of different. It's we. We're like partners to writers, and we're we're cheerleaders, and we're writing coaches, and we get to have all the fun as the story develops.

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Heather Davis: So what I do is I teach passionate speculative fiction writers how to craft their stories from the ground up so they can get unstuck, and they can get down to the business of writing a powerful novel.

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Heather Davis: and to me, writing a powerful novel means one that promotes diversity, one that explores really big ideas and hopefully turns casual readers into loyal fans.

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Heather Davis: As Michelle said, I am the host of the speculative fiction. Writing made simple. Podcast so I think that's something. Most people here would probably enjoy.

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Heather Davis: It's a podcast that's about speculative fiction, but also just about the basics of writing great fiction in any genre. So I definitely invite you to come, check that out. If you are so inclined, this QR code would lead you to the apple podcast web page. But you could find it anywhere. You listen to podcasts.

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Heather Davis: I also have a group mentorship program called powerful writers, magical novels. And again, I help

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Heather Davis: writers in a small group

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Heather Davis: write their novel from the ground. Up we go all the way from inkling of idea to what the point of your novel is. The character arc of the protagonist. All the way up to full novel. And it's super fun. It's definitely a powerful and creative group of people.

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Heather Davis: So before we actually dive into backstory, I want to tell you a little bit about what I believe about writers and about writing, because I think it's super important for you to know my writing and coaching philosophy before we actually get into craft.

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Heather Davis: So 1st of all, I believe that stories are powerful. They are powerful enough to change the world because they help us think about big ideas in a safe and non-confrontational way.

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Heather Davis: When I think about the most powerful novels I've ever read, they are definitely speculative fiction novels. So things like Fahrenheit, 451, and The Giver and the handmaid's Tale and Ender's game.

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Heather Davis: These are all novels that I think, have something profound to say about the world, but they package it in this little magic trick of a book. So many readers don't even realize that they are coming up against really big topics that they have to sort out and figure out how they feel about.

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Heather Davis: And that's why I think that fiction is so powerful and speculative fiction most of all.

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Heather Davis: I also believe that writing should be joyful, and it should be the deepest expression of our beliefs, our desires, our hopes, our fears.

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Heather Davis: What I mean by that is, you are not really separate from your novel. You are a part of your novel, and all the things that you believe are things that come out in your novel and help inform the message that you're sending out to the world.

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Heather Davis: I also believe that writing is a skill you acquire, and it's not just a talent that you are born with

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Heather Davis: meaning. Right now, if you feel a little stuck around, for instance, backstory. Don't worry about it. It's a skill that you can learn. That's why you're here. It's not magic. It's something that is definitely something that you can learn how to use and learn how to use. Well.

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Heather Davis: I also believe that backstory is vital. It's absolutely vital.

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Heather Davis: In fact, when I think about backstory, I often think about this quote from William Faulkner, he wrote in requiem for none. The past is never dead. It's not even the past.

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Heather Davis: and I believe that when we, as writers, sit down to craft really great scenes, we need to keep this quote in mind. We sort of need to like print it out, put it on our wall and glance at it every time we go to write a scene

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Heather Davis: meaning that the back story of our protagonist is something that is going to inform everything that happens in a scene.

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Heather Davis: Okay. But before we dive completely into backstory, I want to tell you a little bit about exactly what you'll learn today.

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Heather Davis: so you will learn what backstory is and why it's essential.

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Heather Davis: You'll learn the 4 common backstory traps and how to avoid them.

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Heather Davis: You'll learn the 6 golden rules of excellent backstory.

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Heather Davis: the 3 types of backstory that you'll find in novels, and that you yourself will have to put into scenes.

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Heather Davis: and finally, you'll learn the 8 questions that will help you confidently weave backstory into your narrative.

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Heather Davis: If you haven't done so already, please go grab the workbook.

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Heather Davis: You. This QR code will lead you to a sign up page. And if you put in your name and email address, you will get an email that will have an attachment. That is this workbook.

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Heather Davis: And this workbook is an excellent resource for this workshop. If you don't want to stay on my email list you don't have to. You can just unsubscribe. But I would suggest that you stay on the email list for a little while, because all this month I will be doing an email Mini course, all about backstory. So everything that I can't possibly get to today because it's only an hour. I will be sending

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Heather Davis: via email as sort of the rest of the course. So you definitely don't want to miss that. There will be so many great examples

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Heather Davis: and so many great times that I'll show you how to work through and weave in really great backstory.

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Heather Davis: Okay.

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Heather Davis: alright. So now let's go ahead and dive in. So let's dive into the 1st step of mastering backstory, which I think is understanding the importance of backstory.

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Heather Davis: So what is backstory?

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Heather Davis: Well, backstory is everything. You think that it is? It's everything that happened in your protagonist's life and in the story world before page one. So it's all of that stuff that came before you actually started the story.

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Heather Davis: Why is backstory important? Well, backstory is so important because it actually informs the story present and gives it meaning.

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Heather Davis: Backstory is what I think of as the explanation for why the current story situation matters to the protagonist.

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Heather Davis: It's the explanation for why your protagonist is who they are, why they think what they think and why they behave the way they behave.

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Heather Davis: It's also the explanation for why the story world functions, the way it functions. So in speculative fiction, backstory is hugely important, because we're not only introducing characters that no one

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Heather Davis: knows, of course, because they can't know until they read our story, but we're also introducing a world that no one knows, and they need backstory in order to understand.

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Heather Davis: So without backstory, the problem is that readers get locked out of what I think of as the real story, which is the internal story of the protagonist

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Heather Davis: books are so different than TV and movies. When people come to TV and movies, they only get what's on the screen. So it's a purely visual medium. And viewers are okay with that, they know it's how it fun. They know it's how those mediums function.

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Heather Davis: But with novels you get a whole different type of person meaning the people who come to novels want to finally be able to see inside someone's head. They want to be able to know what's going on. They want to be able to answer that elusive question that we all think sometimes, which is, why did she do that? Or what was he thinking? Right? We finally get those

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Heather Davis: questions answered. So it's really important to make sure that it's there in the backstory that readers will get those things and will get those things answered that they are not locked out of the story.

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Heather Davis: So without backstory. Unfortunately, nothing seems to go beneath the surface layer.

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Heather Davis: Sorry I've been doing a lot of presentations lately, and my throat is so dry. Okay, so nothing without backstory.

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Heather Davis: nothing seems to go beneath the surface layer.

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Heather Davis: The characters end up feeling like cardboard cutouts, which is something we definitely don't want.

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Heather Davis: And unfortunately, we don't end up really caring about their problems. So we need the backstory in order to care about the problems.

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Heather Davis: And if you don't have the back story in there, readers just don't buy into the whole situation. They don't invest, and if they don't invest, what that really means is they aren't finishing your novel. They aren't going on social media and talking about it. They aren't telling their friends about it. They aren't there trying to buy your next novel. So it's really important that you want readers to care about what's happening about your protagonist and about the world.

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Heather Davis: And the only way to do that is through backstory.

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Heather Davis: Okay? So the second step that you need in order to master backstory is, you need to avoid the common backstory traps.

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Heather Davis: There are 4 of them, and we're going to quickly go through them.

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Heather Davis: So the 1st backstory trap is what I think of as front loading.

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Heather Davis: So front loading is when the author opens the novel with long paragraphs of exposition, where they tell us all about the character's backstory and all about how the world works, and

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Heather Davis: they do it in sort of one big chunk.

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Heather Davis: and they do it instead of starting in a scene.

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Heather Davis: Hopefully, we know that novels should start in scenes we shouldn't be starting with lots of exposition.

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Heather Davis: and there are reasons we shouldn't be starting with lots of expositions in novels, and the 1st reason is that it actually bores readers. No reader wants to sit through long exposition when they don't. Really, they haven't

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Heather Davis: really invested in the story yet. They don't know if they're going to like it. They don't know if they like the character, so they're not willing to put up with that exposition right up front.

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Heather Davis: Second, it actually pulls readers out of the story, or in this case it fails to put them in the story.

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Heather Davis: and, 3, rd it just overwhelms them with far too much information that they can't keep track of.

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Heather Davis: So instead of doing front loading, what you really need to do, and I'll show you examples of this later is, trust the reader, and you need to bring in backstory a little bit at a time.

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Heather Davis: for readers whenever we front load. I like to think of it like this. When we're front loading. We've probably all met that person who comes up to us and shakes our hand, and then proceeds to tell us everything about their past, like from the day they were born up until that moment, and it just feels like a lot, and and

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Heather Davis: we don't like to get to know people that quickly. We want. We want to get to know people a little bit more slowly. We want to know snippets of their life at a time, not the whole thing at one time. So remember that that's what front loading actually feels like

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Heather Davis: to the reader on the other end of it.

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Heather Davis: Okay, info. Dumping info dumping is a lot like front loading. Only it happens throughout the entire novel meaning.

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Heather Davis: Whenever we have something that we think the reader needs to know. We just dump in the whole thing, like everything about it in one place, or at least a lot about it in one place

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Heather Davis: and

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Heather Davis: what we need to do is we need to give this information just like with front loading. We need to give this information to the reader in little bite sized pieces instead of big chunks, because if we don't, it really overwhelms them. It pulls them out of the story, and it bores them all the same things that were happening with front loading.

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Heather Davis: I kind of think of it like these peppercorns right over here. So I really love peppercorn, or I really love pepper in general. I even add it to things like spaghetti, so when I add my pepper to spaghetti, I do not add the peppercorns right that would overwhelm the spaghetti. And suddenly I would just be crunching on these

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Heather Davis: peppercorns, and it it would lose it would lose the flavor of what I wanted there. So you have to think of info dumping like that. You don't want to throw in the peppercorns. You want to grind up the pepper and throw that in. And again, we'll talk about that a little bit more later on.

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Heather Davis: Okay, the 3rd thing you want to avoid with backstory is what we know as the. As you know, Bob Syndrome.

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Heather Davis: So the, as you know, Bob Syndrome refers to a writing problem where characters tell each other things that both characters already know.

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Heather Davis: And the writer has them doing this in order to get the information to the reader. So it's basically exposition within dialogue.

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Heather Davis: and there's nothing wrong with having exposition in dialogue. Sometimes we can do it quite naturally.

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Heather Davis: but the, as you know, Bob Syndrome happens when characters are kind of stating the obvious. They're explaining things they both already know in too much detail.

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Heather Davis: And what'll happen is that the communication will become very clunky, and it won't sound like the way people actually talk.

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Heather Davis: So it comes off as awkward and unnatural and unrealistic because nobody recounts details like that. They have a shorthand for talking to each other in situations where they both understand what's going on in the situation.

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Heather Davis: So what I would say to make sure that you don't end up

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Heather Davis: having the. As you know, Bob Syndrome

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Heather Davis: wheedle its way into your work is just reread your dialogue, and even read it out loud, and see if you hear

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Heather Davis: places where the characters are just saying too much about something they both already know.

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Heather Davis: Okay, the final thing that you need to avoid

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Heather Davis: in order to master backstory is withholding information.

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Heather Davis: So sometimes writers withhold information in an attempt to build mystery and suspense and tension, and it actually comes from a really great instinct. What writers are trying to do is they're trying to make readers get really curious about something and keep going.

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Heather Davis: The problem is that unless your reader is firmly grounded in the story present, unless you've given them enough context and backstory about what the situation is and who the people are and why the situation matters. Then, when you withhold information, readers just feel lost, they can't invest because they don't really know what's going on.

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Heather Davis: So it's really important when you're writing a scene, to really think about all of the information that a reader really needs to know in order to understand the current

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Heather Davis: scene, and we will go through an example of this later. But the idea is with withholding information. You you just don't want to withhold too much if you're in a scene, and you want to build mystery and suspense. One of the ways you can do it is just withhold, maybe one piece of information, not multiple pieces of information right? So you give the reader everything they need to know, except for one small thing, and then that will lead them on into the next thing.

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Heather Davis: Okay?

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Heather Davis: The problem is like, I said, if you withhold too much, it feels vague. And one thing that I have found to be true. Sometimes writers try to withhold information that ends up being the very information that would actually make readers want to keep reading and want to invest in the story.

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Heather Davis: So I would say, just be very careful about what information, if you want to withhold something. What you're withholding, make sure that it's not the thing that would make them want to read.

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Heather Davis: Okay, we went over that. Okay, so let's go on to step 3.

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Heather Davis: So step 3. The 3rd thing that you really the 3rd step in mastering backstory is what I think of as the golden rules of backstory. So there are some rules that we just need to adhere to when we are working with backstory.

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Heather Davis: The 1st Golden rule is this, never let backstory stall out the present story.

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Heather Davis: The idea is that we want to keep the forward, the forward momentum of the story going. You do not want to get lost in the past, so that the reader doesn't really know what story they should be paying attention to is the past story is the present story. They don't really know where the focus is, and that can lead to frustration and then putting down the novel.

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Heather Davis: So

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Heather Davis: yeah, as we are weaving in backstory, keep the current story moving forward.

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Heather Davis: I really like this picture to represent that. So here we have a gentleman who's walking down a road, and he's got a backpack on. So he's taking a trip right? This is just like your character in your story. They're taking a trip. But what's happening here is he's kind of glancing over his shoulder, and he's looking back a little bit, but he's still moving forward. So this is the analogy I like to make for what we're trying to do in a scene. We're keeping the character moving forward. But we're glancing backward.

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Heather Davis: Another way that I like to use this picture with that analogy is this, let's imagine this guy is taking a cross country trip. Maybe he is the protagonist in your story, and he's taking. He's walking across the country.

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Heather Davis: and let's imagine he's very much like Forrest Gump, if you ever watch that movie and you probably have, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So what that means is that the reason why he's taking this trip across country might have a deep personal significance that lies in backstory. So maybe he lost someone dear to him, and he's travelling across country to try and come to terms with it.

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Heather Davis: So as he's moving forward, he's glancing backwards metaphorically, and we're starting to weave in details about why he's taking this trip.

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Heather Davis: So always remember that we always keep the forward. The scene moving forward, as the character is bringing in backstory

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Heather Davis: golden Rule number 2. Backstory must be concrete. It must be specific, and it must be absolutely clear. And I love this quote around backstory. It was.

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Heather Davis: It's a really great quote. It was actually said about, I think, art. But anyway, it's the same. It you know. It can be said about writing. Generality is the death of art, and generality is the death of backstory as well.

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Heather Davis: So what I mean by this is, for instance, let's imagine you're trying to weave in some back story about how your character was raised, and what their socioeconomic level was. So instead, it's it's not enough to say she grew up poor and often went hungry.

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Heather Davis: because when I say a phrase, it's too general, it's not specific, it's not concrete. It's not clear what does growing up poor and often going hungry. Mean, if I'm a reader. I cannot picture it

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Heather Davis: if and I think of readers almost like little directors in their own minds. If I were a director, I couldn't film that, what does that look like? I don't know.

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Heather Davis: So instead, what I need to do is I need to give the reader something concrete, something they could film.

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Heather Davis: Okay? So, for example, I might describe, if I'm trying to get across to a reader that she was poor and often went hungry, I might describe a memory of a time that the electric had been turned off 3 times in the past 6 months, and she and her mom were sitting in the dark, and she was really hungry, and her mom decided to cook the last egg in the house over a candle and give that to her before bed so she wouldn't be so hungry. And

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Heather Davis: then I could describe how, even though

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Heather Davis: she ate that egg, her stomach was still burning and still rumbling all night long because it wasn't enough.

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Heather Davis: So I'm giving concrete details. Now. I'm giving specific things that the reader can picture in their mind

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Heather Davis: as they are reading the back story. So now I know what poor and hungry looked like for this particular protagonist, and it might have looked different for another. One might be an entirely different situation that I'm describing. But for this protagonist, that's how it looked.

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Heather Davis: Okay. Golden Rule number 3.

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Heather Davis: Backstory must be triggered by something that's happening in the story present.

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Heather Davis: So in order for the character to bring backstory onto the stage of your novel, seamlessly and naturally, it should be triggered by something that's happening now.

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Heather Davis: So, for example, if I'm looking at this picture of this woman she's a detective, let's imagine she's my protagonist. She's a detective and looks like she's looking at a piece of evidence. My eyes are kind of terrible. So to me, this looks like bullet holes in a windshield. Let's pretend that's what this piece of evidence is picturing

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Heather Davis: bullet holes in a windshield.

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Heather Davis: Now let's imagine I'm trying to tell the reader a little bit about her past, so that the reader knows why

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Heather Davis: she is in this line of business and what it means to her. Well, now that she's seen this piece of evidence with bullet holes that can trigger a memory of her father and some context around him. So maybe her dad was a police officer, and I want to tell readers that, and I want to get a I want to show them a memory where she's thinking. Back about the day that she found out her father had been killed in the

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Heather Davis: line of duty, and he had been shot. And this this picture here reminds her of that. So now that memory, that context is being triggered by something that's happening in her story present. So it fits there very naturally and very seamlessly.

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Heather Davis: All right, golden Rule number 4. Backstory must be connected to the protagonist's character, arc and or the plot.

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Heather Davis: And the probability here is that it's connected to both, because character, arc, and plot are actually intricately connected. You can't in a well crafted story. You cannot pull the 2 apart. So it's really

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Heather Davis: it's reflecting on both of those things. So it has to be connected. So if I'm looking at this picture, let's imagine that the woman holding this picture

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Heather Davis: I'm guessing it's a woman because of her fingernails. Who knows but I'm let's imagine she's a pilot, and she has just received her pilot license, and this will be her inaugural flight as the pilot of a 747.

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Heather Davis: Now, if the

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Heather Davis: if her character arc and her story are that she's going to crash on an island, think if you are old enough to remember the old TV show lost, think, lost! They crash on an island, and strange things start to happen. And let's imagine her character. Arc is something to do with coming to terms with the fact that you can't control when bad things happen right? She has to let go of feeling personally responsible for things outside of her control.

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Heather Davis: Well, then, if this picture was simply her remembering about a time she and her friend went to the movies and had a good time and took this picture

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Heather Davis: that doesn't actually connect to the plot or the character arc. So that is a memory that doesn't need to be here, because memory can, over and and backstory in general backstory can overwhelm a scene. So we want to only use backstory when it's actually going to be important for connecting somehow to what's happening

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Heather Davis: in character, arc or plot. So we don't want to just throw it in for no reason we want to leave room for the good stuff, so we don't want to insert random backstory.

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Heather Davis: So now, if this happened to be a memory that needed, or a backstory that needed to be here. Then maybe this picture isn't of a random time that she and her friend went to the movies instead. This picture was taken just before

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Heather Davis: she and her friend were in a terrible car accident, and her friend was killed. So a random act that she couldn't control, and her friend was killed, and her friend had wanted to be a pilot, and now she had.

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Heather Davis: After that moment she had dedicated her life to becoming a pilot because her friend couldn't. Well, now that backstory actually connects to both character arc and plot so hopefully, you see the difference there. We don't ever want to insert backstory. That is meaningless. It will distract readers, and it will bloat the story, and it will actually sometimes make readers think something is important that isn't important at all.

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Heather Davis: Okay.

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Heather Davis: golden Rule number 5. Backstory must illuminate something important about the scene to which it is attached.

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Heather Davis: So backstory should never be introduced just to catch the reader up.

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Heather Davis: It's used to help the reader understand what's happening in the story present.

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Heather Davis: For example, if you're writing about a woman, so this woman right here who refuses to get on the Ferris wheel with her young son.

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Heather Davis: and the picture here is to symbolize that maybe she's thinking back about a time when this happened before.

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Heather Davis: So if she's refusing to get on the Ferris wheel, then, if we've decided as a writer to show this Ferris wheel scene and show that she doesn't want to get on the Ferris wheel. That must mean it's really important to the story for some reason, so

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Heather Davis: as important as showing her not getting on the Ferris wheel, even though her child really wants her to, is, we need to let the reader know why that's happening. We need to illuminate something by using backstory.

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Heather Davis: So maybe

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Heather Davis: seeing the Ferris wheel makes her think of a time when she was really young, and she got on the Ferris wheel with her brother, and he rocked it so hard that she cried, and she threw up, and she was petrified of feeling helpless.

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Heather Davis: Well, that backstory is so important to understand, like why she is behaving the way she's behaving, why, she's making the decision not to get on the Ferris wheel. So if you've chosen to include the Ferris wheel scene, it must have importance, and therefore we need some backstory to tell us why it matters, and what this Ferris wheel means to her.

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Heather Davis: Okay, golden Rule number 6.

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Heather Davis: Backstory should be sprinkled in a little bit at a time like seasoning. So this is something that I hinted at before it is seasoning. You don't dump it in all at once, instead of taking all of the backstory that you know about a particular scene. Instead, you say, what is the minimum amount of backstory that will tell my reader what they need to know in this moment to understand what the story, what the scene means.

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Heather Davis: and that is the amount that you need to put in

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Heather Davis: the idea here is you need to trust the reader, not only is backstory like seasoning, it's also like puzzle pieces, so you're handing them one puzzle piece at a time and trusting them to follow you

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Heather Davis: into the next puzzle piece so they can finally, at the end assemble the entire puzzle and understand the story.

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Heather Davis: Golden Rule number 7

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Heather Davis: Backstory should not be announced to the reader. So this is more like some housekeeping stuff with backstory. So whenever you decide to add backstory, you do not need to announce it to the reader, because that actually draws a natural attention to it. For instance, you don't have to say things like he remembered it like it was only yesterday, or it played behind her eyes like a movie.

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Heather Davis: You want to get those out, and there are other

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Heather Davis: little tells like that that you'll see creeping into your work. And as you reread areas where you're using backstory just to make sure that if you see an announcement like that you can pull it out. You don't need it. Trust me, the reader will understand that it is backstory.

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Heather Davis: Okay, so let's go ahead. I have so much for you today. I am so sorry I'm talking fast. But I have so much great information for you today. Don't want to miss any, so

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Heather Davis: alright. Let's dive into the the 4th step that you need in order to master backstory. And that is understanding what the 3 types of backstory actually are, so that you can identify them in novels that you're reading, and by doing that it will help. You see, when you're using them in your novel, and when you should be using them in your novel.

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Heather Davis: Okay? The 3 types of backstory are context.

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Heather Davis: memory and flashback.

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Heather Davis: I'm going to be going over context and memory. But Flashback is a huge gargantuan, and unfortunately, there's just not enough time for it in this presentation. But if you get on my email list by going to that QR code that I gave you in the beginning. You for the workbook.

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Heather Davis: I will be doing a mini course through email that describes flashback and goes into great details. So don't worry. You will get it. You just won't get it right now.

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Heather Davis: Okay, let's dive into context. So context is the general information about your character and their world.

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Heather Davis: It's the circumstances, the situation, the setting, and the backdrop against which your characters exist in the present moment.

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Heather Davis: It includes the distant past, and it includes the immediate situation. So it's sort of everything that your character knows to be true.

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Heather Davis: It answers the questions, what's going on here? And why does what's happening matter to this character? And those are 2 incredibly important questions that we have to answer with backstory.

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Heather Davis: So context is the most frequently used type of backstory there is. And for most readers it is absolute. And writers, it is absolutely invisible until we are shown how to look for it.

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Heather Davis: Okay.

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Heather Davis: so we can actually add context. And I'll show you context in a minute in a real scene. But we can deliver it a lot of different ways, we can deliver it through telling which is exposition. We can deliver it through showing in a scene. We can deliver it through non verbal communication, like body language and actions and reactions and interactions and subtext.

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Heather Davis: We can deliver in dialogue very nicely by the words the characters choose to say to each other.

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Heather Davis: and we can hint at it just through random word choice of how we choose to describe something. The tone of the passage that we're writing.

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Heather Davis: Okay, an example, let's go into an example here. That's by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games. I'm sure everyone in here is super familiar with this book. So I chose a scene. It's actually

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Heather Davis: It's on the opening page of the Hunger games that will give you a really good example of context.

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Heather Davis: So everywhere you see, black is just normal is not context. And where you see blue is context. Okay?

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Heather Davis: I swing my legs off the bed and slide into my hunting boots, supple leather that is molded to my feet. I pull on trousers a shirt, tuck my long dark braid up into a cap, and grab my forage bag

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Heather Davis: on the table under a wooden bowl to protect it from hungry rats and cats alike. So we're given a little context here, hungry rats and cats. So this tells us something hungry. Cats. I'm not too worried about hungry rats. That tells us something about her living situation. They must be poor, they must, you know, this must be telling us that they're poor, and they have rats in their house. So that's important.

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Heather Davis: Okay, sits a perfect little goat cheese wrapped in Basil leaves

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Heather Davis: Prim's gift to me on reaping day.

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Heather Davis: So now we're told that Prim, whoever Prim is we don't know yet in the story gives the eye character, Katniss. A gift on reaping day at this moment. We don't know if reaping day is a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe they're giving gifts, because it's a good thing, and we don't know but we do know she's getting a gift, and we do know it's reaping day.

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Heather Davis: I carefully put the cheese.

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Heather Davis: I'm sorry I put the cheese carefully in my pocket and slip outside

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Heather Davis: our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour. So now we know she lives in a coal mining village, and we know that she lives in District 12. Whatever that is, we know it's probably not earth, or at least not Earth, as we know it right now.

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Heather Davis: Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails, the lines of their sunken faces. Oh, wow! Look at the words she's using here for context, broken nails, sunken faces, black cinder streets, hunched shoulders these are all things. These are word choices that allow us to understand that District 12, and their current living situation as coal miners is terrible.

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Heather Davis: Right? They are defeated. They're giving up

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Heather Davis: shutters on a squat shutters on the squat grey houses are closed. So now we're getting this feeling of like morning like they're closing the shutters. The reaping isn't until 2

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Heather Davis: as many

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Heather Davis: may as I'm sorry the reaping isn't until 2 may as well sleep in if you can.

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Heather Davis: So now we get more about the reaping. We know it isn't till 2 o'clock. That doesn't really matter, but it is context. But now we know you sleep in, if you can.

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Heather Davis: which means there's something that these people are dreading. There is a reason why they want to sleep in. They they don't want to face whatever the reaping is. Now, you might ask yourself, well, is this info dumping? I said. Not to info Dump. Well, this isn't info dumping, because it is.

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Heather Davis: It is seamlessly introduced. She goes outside, and she's in District 12, and that's triggering this context that the reader must know at this point like this is the minimum amount that the reader needs to know, to understand what's going on with Katniss.

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Heather Davis: Okay, let's see another example really quickly. This is from a book called Ember in the Ashes, by Saba Tahir.

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Heather Davis: And this is actually the opening scene. So you literally, this is the context. The writer is opening in scene and then bringing in context, and which is backstory right, a type of backstory as we need it.

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Heather Davis: My big brother reaches home in the dark hours before dawn, when even ghosts take their rest. He smells of steel and coal and forge, he smells of the enemy.

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Heather Davis: So now we know that there's an enemy, and now we know that this smell of steel, and Colon Forge is that smell? Whoever these enemy people are.

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Heather Davis: he folds his scarecrow body through the window, bare feet silent on the rushes.

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Heather Davis: A hot desert wind blows in after him. Now we know they live in the desert.

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Heather Davis: rustling the limp curtains, his sketchbook falls to the floor, and he nudges it under his bunk with a quick foot, as if it's a snake.

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Heather Davis: Now we know that there's something there's a dangerous sheet, compares it to a snake. That means it's dangerous. There's something dangerous in the sketchbook. We don't know what yet.

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Heather Davis: Where have you been, Darren? In my head? I have the courage to ask the question, and Darren trusts me enough to answer, why do you keep disappearing? Why, when Pop and Nan need you when I need you?

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Heather Davis: So now we know that he is disappearing. He's been doing it for a long time. We know that Pop and Nan sounds almost like grandparents, not parents. So now it makes us wonder, well, where are their parents, and why does she need them? Why, why do Pop and Nan need him so much?

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Heather Davis: We get a few more answers, more context. Every night for almost 2 years I've wanted to ask. Every night I've lacked the courage. I have one sibling left. I don't want him to shut me out like he has everyone else.

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Heather Davis: Okay, so much contextual backstory here. We know he's been sneaking out for a long time. We know she wants a close relationship for him, and she doesn't want him to shut her out. But clearly by her not being able to ask these questions, they really don't have as close of a relationship as she thinks or as she would like.

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Heather Davis: We also know that they have a sibling who is

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Heather Davis: died, and it gives us the feeling that maybe it has something to do with this world. Who knows? We don't know yet, but we know that they've lost a sibling.

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Heather Davis: but tonight's different.

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Heather Davis: I know what's in his sketchbook. I know what it means. So now we have context around. Why, she's thinking it was a snake at some point. She has looked inside that sketchbook, and she knows that it means trouble.

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Heather Davis: And then you shouldn't be awake, darn whispers, as he jolts me from my thoughts. Okay? Then it goes back into more moving the story forward. So we're not lost in the back story. Here. Notice, we keep moving where you, the author, is just bringing it in to explain what's going on and then moving the story forward.

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Heather Davis: Okay, and then we get a little bit more context, and this time we get it in the we get it in dialogue. So it's past curfew. 3 patrols have gone by. I was worried. This is why she was awake.

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Heather Davis: I can avoid the soldiers, Lyra, or sorry Laya.

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Heather Davis: I think it's laya. Yeah, I can avoid the soldiers layout lots of practice. So now we know there are soldiers, and we now we know that he has had lots of practice which is reiterating what we knew before.

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Heather Davis: and he rests his chin on my bunk and smiles mother's sweet, crooked smile. So we know he looks like Mom, a familiar look that when he gives me when I wake up from a nightmare, or when we run out of grain, everything will be fine. The look says, okay. So now we know that she has nightmares right? She has nightmares about running out of grain.

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Heather Davis: And it's quite a scary thing to her.

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Heather Davis: Okay, so that is context, let's go through memory very quickly. Memory is when a character is recalling events. In the past that happened in the past. But they're staying grounded. And it's 1 particular scene. It's 1 particular memory, but they're staying grounded in the story present. So they're not getting lost in the past. They're staying grounded. If they get lost in the past. That is flashback. But here we're staying grounded. In the present moment

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Heather Davis: it is a little snippet of a scene. It can be as short as a line, or as long as several paragraphs or pages.

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Heather Davis: Memories stay, as I said, stay grounded in the present moment, instead of going fully into the past, think about it as the character being stuck in the now thinking about what happened then.

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Heather Davis: and it means that this the story has to continue to move forward. We don't want to stall it out so it's like that guy. With his backpack going down the road, and he's he's glancing backwards, but he's not stalling it out.

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Heather Davis: and it's often denoted by the past. Perfect verb tense, such as he had known or she had lived.

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Heather Davis: It doesn't. Memory doesn't happen. Chronologically, it happens as little flashes. So we start in the middle of things. And that's how our memory really works. For instance, if I asked you what? What was your 1st day of kindergarten like, or what was kindergarten like?

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Heather Davis: You wouldn't start by saying, Well, I, my mother, woke me up at 7 am that morning, and I ate toast for breakfast, and then when I arrived at school, you wouldn't do that. You probably get a flash of something for me my 1st day of kindergarten. I remember spreading glue on my hands and peeling it off with

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Heather Davis: my new, best friend, who I'd met that day. So when you say kindergarten, that's what my memory is, and that's exactly how it works for characters in your story. So it happens in a flash. It's not chronological. It's a little snippet, a little flash of something.

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Heather Davis: So again, in order to be effective, it needs to be prompted by something that's happening in the current scene.

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Heather Davis: It should illuminate something that's happening in the current scene.

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Heather Davis: and it should give us important clues to character and situation.

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Heather Davis: Let's have a quick look. I'm back to the hunger games here, so she's in the woods. She goes to the woods to meet her friend Gail, so in the wood, in the woods waits the one person with whom I can be myself. Gail. This is context.

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Heather Davis: I feel the muscles in my face, relaxing, my pace, quickening as I climb the hills to our place, a rocky ledge overlooking a valley context.

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Heather Davis: a thicket of berry bushes protects it from unwanted eyes. The sight of him waiting there brings on a smile. Gail says, I never smile except in the woods context.

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Heather Davis: Hey, catnip! Gail says so, Gail, saying that catnip launches her into a memory which is a snippet, a flash of the past. One particular event.

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Heather Davis: my name, my real name is Katniss, that's technically context. But

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Heather Davis: but when I 1st told him I barely whispered it, so he thought. I said catnip.

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Heather Davis: Then when this crazy lynx started following me around the woods looking for handouts, it became his official nickname for me. I finally had to kill the lynx because it scared off the game. I almost regretted it because he wasn't bad company, but I got a decent price for his pelt, so it ends in context. But right there in the middle was a flash of the day they 1st met, and why he calls her catnip.

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Heather Davis: and then, of course, just like all memory, should we come right back out of it, so that we stay grounded in the forward momentum of the scene, which is, look what I shot. Gail holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it, and I laugh. So that's in the scene present.

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Heather Davis: We get another little example of memory. Here we have a scene from I must betray you by Ruta Ceppettis.

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Heather Davis: A shadowy figure lingered nearby, a girl carrying a large stick tucked underneath her arm, and then her quiet voice emerged, saying, Hi, buna buna! I nod.

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Heather Davis: She stepped closer, and suddenly we fell into step. My pulse tapped

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Heather Davis: Liliana Pavel, the girl with the hair hiding her eyes. The girl I wanted to coincidentally catch up with after school.

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Heather Davis: So now, seeing Liliana

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Heather Davis: that triggers this memory.

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Heather Davis: unlike some chattering girls, Liliana doesn't speak to just any one and everyone when we were younger. She once paid attention to me here, where in memory.

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Heather Davis: I was standing amidst a group on the street and out of the blue, she walked up to me and gave me a piece of gamella. It's for you, she said. My buddies snickered. I secretly I was secretly elated, but I didn't want my friends to know.

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Heather Davis: It's just grey gum. It turns to sawdust in your mouth, I said with a shrug.

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Heather Davis: And now we're coming out of memory. I was an idiot back then, too, this is context. I still remember the sad look on her face it had taken until now, 2 years later, for her to approach me again. Context.

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Heather Davis: should I apologize for being a jerk back then? She probably she probably didn't remember.

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Heather Davis: We walk in silence, the darkness punctuated by the occasional tap of the stick Liliana carried. Okay, now we're back in story present. So notice how there was something in the present scene that triggered the memory of the day they 1st met, and or the day she once paid attention to him.

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Heather Davis: gave him the gum, and then he we come right back out into the scene, and they're walking in silence. And this memory, it tells us things, doesn't it? It shines light on what's going on in this story. And it's super important that we do that.

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Heather Davis: So we come now we know more about his relationship with Liliana and how important

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Heather Davis: she is to him. And why?

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Heather Davis: Okay?

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Heather Davis: Step number 5. This is a bonus step. Because this presentation had originally been titled The 4 Steps. And this is the 5th step. It is a bonus, and this is the really important one. So how to add meaningful backstory, we go with a guiding philosophy. So when you're adding backstory, go with this guiding philosophy. What backstory does the reader need to know right now, in order to understand both the external events and the internal emotional responses of the character in this scene.

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Heather Davis: external events, internal emotions we need. You know what backstory is pivotal for that.

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Heather Davis: So let's look. Let's look at an example scene that's seriously in need of backstory. So this scene is sort of a little bit purple, and it's because I asked Chat Gpt to write it for me. So we're going to be adding some stuff to chat. Gtp, so if it seems a little.

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Heather Davis: it's because Chat Gtp is not a terribly great writer. Okay, so here we are, Captain Caden Sorrell stood on the ope, stood by the open airlock, arms crossed over his chest as his gaze traveled over her attire, a mean smirk curled his lips. Did you miss the memo about dress code on a starship?

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Heather Davis: Dalia ignored the crackling tension in the air, focused on each calculated step, despite the clanking of her heels against the ship's metal floor. The gown she wore deep purple and delicately embroidered with silver thread, shimmered under the harsh, sterile lights. Too fine for a place like this, she thought, feeling the weight of her situation press against the grime around her.

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Heather Davis: she flicked her gaze towards Kayden, noting his Grease Street jumpsuit. He looked filthier than usual, but whether it was carelessness or some kind of statement she couldn't tell either way. It felt like an insult.

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Heather Davis: I didn't realize that this is what you called a starship, she said.

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Heather Davis: Kaden let out a low grunt, and I didn't realize you had such high expectations. He pushed off the wall. Boots clanged on the metal floor as he approached. She resisted the urge to step back.

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Heather Davis: You're late, he said finally, his voice rough, almost accusatory. Again

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Heather Davis: she adjusted the lace at her wrist, refusing to meet his gaze. I had a complication, but I'm here now. Let's not waste time.

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Heather Davis: Okay, so right now, this scene is entirely thin, and it's living entirely on the surface meaning, even though the writer let's imagine it was a real writer and not chat gpt, even though even though the writer probably knew exactly all of the backstory and context we would need, and what was going on with the characters, and why they were here.

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Heather Davis: Notice how none of that is on the page yet.

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Heather Davis: So we need as readers, we need a few questions to be answered

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Heather Davis: in order for us to at all engage in the story, and want to know what's going to happen next.

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Heather Davis: So here's what the reader needs, answered, who is Dalia? Who is Kaden?

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Heather Davis: What's the general situation?

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Heather Davis: Why is Dalia even on board this ship?

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Heather Davis: How do these 2 know each other, because it's pretty obvious that they do, just on word choice like you're late again.

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Heather Davis: And he was filthier than usual. Right? These are word choices that. Let us know that these 2 did know each other, but we don't know how. And lastly, we want to know why the heck is there so much tension between them.

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Heather Davis: Okay, so I'm going to very heavy. I went through and very heavy handedly added in context, in memory. So if you were writing this you might not want to add in all this context in memory, but I just wanted to show you in each place that I could add it in. I probably wouldn't want to add quite this much and maybe not every piece that I add here. But it's really to show you how to do it.

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Heather Davis: Okay, here's the new version where we get our questions, answered

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Heather Davis: Captain Cadence. Worrell stood by the open airlock, arms crossed over his chest as his gaze traveled over her attire. A mean smirk curled his lips. Did you miss the memo about the dress code on a cargo hauler? So now we've used. We've moved into specific word choice cargo. Hauler gives us so much more than starship. Now I know what kind of a starship it is. It hauls cargo. Okay.

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Heather Davis: Dalia ignored the crackling tension in the air, focusing on each calculated step, despite the clanging of her heels against the ship's metal floor. Ridiculous! She chided herself, glancing down at the delicate gown. Her mother had gifted her only 3 months ago for her 20th birthday. Now we know how old she is, so this gives us a general idea of the age range of the protagonist.

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Heather Davis: Why hadn't she opted for something less conspicuous? The deep purple fabric, ornate with delicate silver embroidery felt like a costume from another life, one where she still played the obedient daughter of the Emperor. Now we have more context. We know that she's the daughter of the Emperor, and and it was still played the obedient daughter, which means she's not playing the obedient daughter. Now she's doing something else

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Heather Davis: here amidst the grease and patchwork repairs of the smuggling ship smuggling ship. Now we know that even though it's a cargo hauler, a cargo hauler, it's really a smuggling ship, and she knows this, and we also know it's in disrepair. So it's not like a really new fancy one, either. It's pretty old.

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Heather Davis: The gown seemed laughably out of place. After all she was in. No, she, after all, she was no longer truly the daughter of the Emperor. She was a fugitive now, now I could end right there. I don't really need to give the next bit of information that might be the dangling thing I'm withholding like. Why is she a fugitive? I went ahead and Heavy handedly put it in here, but you wouldn't have to.

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Heather Davis: By giving the Freedom alliance. The encrypted access codes to her father's war plans, she had made sure of that. So let's imagine this isn't the thing I'm trying to withhold. I just want the reader to know that that's what she did.

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Heather Davis: Okay. She flicked her gaze towards Kayden, noting his grease streaks, his grease streaked suit. He looked filthier than usual, but whether it was carelessness or some kind of a statement she couldn't tell. Either way. It felt like an insult. That was no surprise, she guessed, considering the way they left things 4 years ago.

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Heather Davis: Okay, we're getting more context. They left off poorly 4 years ago.

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Heather Davis: I didn't realize this is what you called a cargo hauler, she said.

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Heather Davis: Kaden let out a low grunt, and I didn't realize you had such high expectations from a grimer like me.

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Heather Davis: Okay, a grimer like me that tells us something. He's a grimer, whatever that means. And now we get a little more context.

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Heather Davis: She tightened her jaw, rolled her eyes as if I care about caste

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Heather Davis: now in dialogue, we are getting more context. Grimer is a different cast than her royal cast. So now we know they're on 2 different castes, 2 different castes, and we also know that she is not a person who cares about that, and that she knows he knows that.

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Heather Davis: Okay. He ignored her words and pushed off the wall, his boots clanging on the metal floor. As he approached. She resisted the urge to step back, not wanting to breathe his familiar bergamot and mint cologne. The 1st time she'd inhaled that intoxicating scent they were sprawled across the rough blanket atop his tiny tiny ship's hall that night he'd held her close, his voice low. This is memory. We're going into a very specific memory here

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Heather Davis: his voice low as he recounted tales of his family's daring missions, smuggling medicine and grain to forgotten border planets where even basic aid was a luxury.

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Heather Davis: father had said, had always painted people like Caden as thieves and lawless rogues. But in one evening she learned about the risks they took to help those the Empire had abandoned. Okay, we're getting so much here now we know so much.

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Heather Davis: All right, I'm going to leave that part there. But, as you can see, we go into a little bit more context later on. And as you can see, what's happening is as we're moving the story forward, we are inserting context and memory to answer all those questions. Who is she? Who is he? What does any of this matter? What does it mean to her? Why is she here? Right? We're answering the story important questions as they come up in scene.

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Heather Davis: Okay, so the trick to backstory this is this is the end. I'm giving you the 8 questions that you need to ask yourself when you are trying to include backstory in a scene. So 1st ask yourself, what do readers need to know? To fully understand the scene that you're writing. And because of that scene, the larger story, what do they need to know right now? You only want to give them that information? Some of that information might be with questions like, Who are the characters?

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Heather Davis: What's the general situation?

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Heather Davis: What does each character want in the scene?

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Heather Davis: How is the past affecting the scene.

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Heather Davis: What's going on with your characters emotionally?

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Heather Davis: What memories are sparked by the scene that might help shed light on the current situation?

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Heather Davis: And finally, how can I, the writer specifically, concretely, show all the answers to all that?

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Heather Davis: All those questions on the page, while not interrupting the forward flow and the forward momentum of the story.

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Heather Davis: Okay? So wow. I know that was a lot. But

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Heather Davis: if you want the.

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Heather Davis: if you want the workbook for this, you will find it right here.

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Heather Davis: And with this QR. Code you'll get the workbook that'll go over everything I talked about today. It'll it'll give you all everything I talked about. I'll also be sending the Powerpoint. And if you get on this email list like I said everything. I didn't have time for all the examples and flashbacks and all of that will be included in the email course that you'll be receiving. So stay tuned for that.

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Heather Davis: all right. And

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Heather Davis: I, if we are going to be. I think Michelle is keeping track of questions. And she's going to email them to me. And so if you have questions, you can just

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Heather Davis: put them in the Q&A, and I will answer them and email you back.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Yes, we are going to anybody that submitted a. QA. Question. We will be downloading that report, sending it to heather from Zoom, and then we can post the her answers on the hub page with the recording and everything. So just check back at the Hub for the listing for this session, and we will have the answers posted there. And her link is also on the hub.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and the replay will be up within a couple of hours. As as soon as Zoom and Youtube process everything, we'll have it up there. But thank you so much. Heather. This was a great info packed presentation. I'm sure that it was immensely helpful for our attendees, and we're so grateful that you could share this hour with us.

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Heather Davis: Thank you guys so much for having me here. It was a lot of fun. I look forward to answering all your questions, so send me some good ones, make me work.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Alright, everyone! We have another session coming up in just under an hour, so we will see you there

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: bye, all bye.