…And some ways to tell them

… I bog down in considerations of what the readers need to know, and if don’t put it right at the beginning then when, and how many flashbacks can one novel support?

Part two of the now-three-part answer to this, i.e. “There are a lot of ways to fill in background besides flashbacks.”

Series writers are routinely faced with the problem of having a lot of Really Important Background from earlier books in the series, and needing to include enough of it in later books to prevent confusion in new readers without annoying long-time fans. By Book 10 of a long series there are nine books of detailed background information already out there…and no matter what we’d all like to think happens, the reality is that not all new readers will start at Book 1 in order to catch up.

Series authors are well aware of this problem. Most of them don’t use flashbacks for this, because they already wrote all that stuff once.  The later books of any long-running series are therefore a good place to look for other techniques for incorporating important background details about setting, culture, previous social/political/personal relationships, etc. As an example, pick up any of Lois Bujold’s Vorkosigan books except Shards of Honor or The Warrior’s Apprentice. (Actually, pick up all of them.) You will note that even quite late in the series timeline, there are no flashbacks to events that happened in earlier books, yet new readers do not get lost due to a lack of background. You will also notice, if you are paying attention, that a lot of “what happened” is not mentioned in whatever volume you’re reading…and that what is mentioned varies from book to book, depending on what is most relevant to the current story.

On to specific techniques, beginning with dialog.

When people talk about current events/problems, they also sometimes bring up other relevant information. This can range from characteristics like “I thought you didn’t like lemon bars” to past events that are connected (“The information we need is in the book Professor Drake gave me, but I don’t know where I left it.” “You had that book on our trip to Alpha Centauri, and I don’t think you grabbed it when we ran for the escape pods.” “Bummer. We’ll have to dig up another copy.”) to speculation about connections among significant background events (“This looks a lot like that blue gunk we found in Istran City two years ago. Or that red gunk in Petral four years ago. Has someone hexed us to keep running into gunk?”) to complaints (“Oh, gods, not another demon possession. This is, what, the fifth one in six months?”)

Conversations include people telling others information that they didn’t know, whether it’s current gossip or a detailed mission briefing. How you cover the new information tells the reader different things. If the author says “He told her the latest gossip about the general’s sister,” the reader will conclude that the specific gossip isn’t important. If the author spends a couple of pages summarizing the briefing (see James White’s “Sector General” books for examples), the reader will probably decide that the information is important, but the actual briefing would have taken ten or fifteen pages to cover on-screen. If the author shows the actual conversation (“You didn’t hear? The general’s sister was killed during the sack of Khartan last week.”), the reader will probably conclude that the details are important plot points.

People also argue about past events, what they meant, how they happened, who was there/not there, who was responsible, and whether they were important. They react to conversations about events they feel strongly about; reactions can include everything from arguing to breaking into tears to storming out of the room or challenging someone to a duel. In most cases, it isn’t necessary to explain every detail of the past event in order for the reader to understand that it was really important to this character. “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” is sufficient. Having one character explain a key event to another only works if a) the explainer is an annoying know-it-all who is the only one who does this (and who does it a lot less than they probably would in real life, because it will get just as old for the readers as it does for the other characters), or b) the person who is receiving the explanation does not already know this stuff (see comments about mission briefing, above).

Internal monolog can operate as a sort of cross between one-sided dialog and narrative summary. Since it’s inside the POV character’s head, the writer can provide personal/emotional reactions along with memories. Readers can “watch” the POV mull over history or memories and make connections without plowing through two or three flashbacks.

Related to both flashbacks and internal monolog, but distinct from them, are nightmares about traumatic events which the character has to sort out on waking. It can be flashback-like if it’s the POV character having the nightmare (so the reader gets to watch), but it can also work if it is some other character reluctantly explaining to the POV what they just dreamed. Dreams/nightmares can also be non-specific, thus serving as a clue that there is some important/traumatic backstory that the reader doesn’t know yet without giving away a future plot twist.

Which brings me to one of the most useful ways of including important background:  having a central character who does not know the background and therefore needs to have other characters constantly explain it to them. This character can be a child; someone from another country, class, culture, or world; someone who has been isolated, imprisoned, or stranded on a desert island long enough not to know key background events; or even just someone who’s been away for ten or more years.

When paired with a know-it-all character who really does know a lot more than everyone else about important background stuff, a naïve/fish-out-of-water character can cover a lot of background in a natural and timely manner. The fish-out-of-water character is often, though not always, a viewpoint character; if not, they’re usually someone the viewpoint character wants to get up to speed in a hurry. Either way, they aren’t supposed to know the background at the start of the story, so they can reasonably ask appropriate questions whenever something comes up that they (and the reader) won’t understand. They can also make mistakes that provide background information about culture or setting (“Don’t pet that! It’s not a dog, it’s a stinging…sorry, too late.”)

Since I’m already at over 1100 words for this post, I am going to stop here and leave narrative summary and careful word choice for next week. This week’s post can be summarized as “Pretty much everything in the story can and should provide the reader with information about background/setting/culture, because background/setting/culture affects pretty much everything in the story in some way.”