A backstory shows what happened before the story began. Revealing the secrets of the story throughout the story helps enhance the drama in action, even if the story belongs to genres such as mystery, horror, and action-adventure. A backstory can be the story of a city, objects or other elements or what happened to the characters before that can influence their behavior and mode of action in the plot.

In our time, most stories, especially short stories, begin closer to the end. Until about fifty years ago, authors wrote several pages explaining a character’s backstory. Today, we call it information dump and we try to avoid it no matter what. The backstory works best if it is given in small doses and only when needed. On the other hand, it is very important that the writer is aware of the backstory, even if he never tells it to the readers.

In real life, each person has a backstory or past that influences their present and future. Knowing the past of his characters will allow the writer to introduce real people to his readers. In other words, the writer needs to know where his characters come from so that he can use the right words to express why the characters act the way they do. Then, to create depth and ignite the reader’s imagination, the writer can choose to only hint at a backstory and leave shadow areas. This goal can best be achieved if the writer himself is familiar with the entire backstory. To do this, you need to make character sheets for the primary characters with an emphasis on internal traits and story sheets for the objects and the setting, especially if the objects or the setting play an important role throughout the plot.

All short stories, plays, and novels need backstories, but the writer need not force a backstory on the reader as a whole. However, there are cases where the backstory must be told in a single fragment, such as in a long work as a prologue where an imaginary world is important to the plot.

Other methods of inserting the backstory are through flashbacks, discussions between the characters, and a very brief summary of past action somewhere within the story. The general rule of thumb is that stories work best if the backstory is inserted in the first half closer to the middle than at the beginning or end. Also, it’s important to remember to make the story more exciting than the back story, so that the back story doesn’t dominate the plot.

Here’s an exercise for writers to test the importance of a backstory:

If you are unsure of the importance of the backstory to a writer, try this exercise to convince yourself. Write a story just to write the plot (what happened) or write a plot of three sentences, the first sentence for the beginning, the second for the middle and the third for the end. Then take the setting and characters and tell them backstories. Now write the story, giving it everything you have. You don’t have to include the backstories, but you should know them as you write. I bet you will find that your story has a depth that wouldn’t be there if it didn’t have a backstory.