h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the problems about handling time transitions is the treatment of backstory.

It's easy to say to prospective writers 'jump straight into the action and fill in the backstory later.' But how do you fill in the backstory without it being a huge chunk of unreconstituted narrative? Or, on the other hand, confusing everyone as to what's happening when?

The answer to the first question might be - don't include huge chunks of unreconstituted narrative. Break your backstory up and dramatise it if it's interesting enough.

The second question is more difficult. It might mean a careful use of tenses, stating dates where necessary etc. In my writing course, we were recommended Graham Greene's 'The End of the Affair' as an example of a novel that moves backwards and forwards in time. (I must admit, I found it a bit dull, but perhaps that's just me. Yearning after an old fashioned story where things actually happen!)

Hey, great point, MVP. (And I share your feeling about the dullness of that Greene novel.)

Endless exposition is the bane of science fiction. When the character starts saying, 'As everybody knows, the Galactic Council decided in 4755 that...' it's time to run.

My suggestion is that backstory should only turn up when the audience is begging for it. Make a mystery out of it, and only let the cat out of the bag when it's important. But there are lots of sneaky ways to do it.

I just thought of one. There was a US TV series called 'Life'. It ran for two seasons. Recently, I've watched the whole thing. The filmmakers used a clever trick to fill in the backstory.

The main character is a police detective who spent 12 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. During this time, he became very knowledgeable about prison life, of course, and developed a devotion to Zen. The series is about what happens when he is reinstated to the police force, and solves the crime of which he was accused.

That means a LOT of backstory. The conceit they use is that they run very short clips of an 'independent documentary' on the case. That way, we get tiny glimpses of backstory as we go. It's remarkably effective. (The fact that the policeman is played by your very own Damian Lewis doesn't hurt, either.)

It's probably easier to do this with film.

If the camera suddenly shows us the farm where our hero grew up, we know immediately that we're going to see scenes from his childhood. If you wrote that scene, you'd spend several paragraphs describing the place.

Given my total inability to do anything much with a camera, perhaps I'd better stick with words!

Ah, but your words are the camera. We can learn from watching, I think.

I know what you mean, though. Every time I get really interested in a story, and the writer jerks me to a different time and place, or changes points of view, I feel irritated until I get reoriented. I can think of a lot of times when that's happened. I suspect that's a good technique to address.

Hey, I just had a flashback......

If you want to see a perfect film use of flashback, watch 'Daniel', the film version of 'The Book of Daniel', by EL Doctorow. Now, since Doctorow is one of the great writers of the 20th Century, read his novel to see how he did it.

Here's a scene from 'Daniel':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77vQCSJVtm8&feature=relmfu

Go to about 4:00, watch Daniel with his adopted father, then move on to the flashback. (You get to listen to Paul Robeson. That's a re-enactment of the Peekskill Riots.)

You can watch the whole film on Youtube, if you decide to. I recommend it, but then, I agree with Mr Doctorow's politics.

Here's a 1-minute review of 'The Book of Daniel':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTlw4LUu6rs

Sounds like a good film, and another book to put on my reading list.


Maybe flashbacks need to arise naturally from the situation, or the character's thoughts, rather than just being put in because the writer thinks it's time for some.

Hey, that's a thought. I suspect the way to look at it when re-reading before re-writing is to ask, 'Is this annoying? Does it feel like I'm getting an information dump here?'

I'm working on a story, A87752082 (my first), and I find myself with the same problem. As for the novel format, there's always the solution of a prologue to set the stage. Of course, I think you run the risk of boring the reader before they get to the actual story. Something I'm toying with is the narrative structure of the story. It's third person but from the limited view of the protaganist. So the reader only ever knows what the protaganist knows. The reader discovers the backstory of the protaganist through his interactions with other characters, just as the protaganist (and thereby the reader) learns the backstory of the rest of the world from other characters.

I don't know if this works in a general sense but I'm hoping it works in my story. The goal is to minimize full-on narrative flashbacks. The reader stays in the protaganist's present. The biggest problem, as I see it, is keeping the reader convinced that the entire world/story does not require a full explanation. Though I think this is especially hard in Sci-fi (though much easier in a visual medium).

The protaganist is unaware of how the world came to be as it is. A more enlightened character explains it to them - but only to the extent that they understand it themselves. As individuals, we have a vague concept of the past outside our own personal experience or knowledge. Everything else is accepted as being true or irrelavent. If the reader can believe the same in relation to the characters, then the entire backstory isn't necessary to understand the present action. I think a good example of this is Cormac McCarthy's The Road (the book, haven't seen the movie). He recalls his wife's tragedy but there's no need to go further back than that. And the reader never loses track of the present.

Did any of this make sense or am I just babbling?

Makes sense to me.

I tend to stop reading with a lot of science fiction that insists that you internalise an entire new universe before you get to the story. It seems like an unfair demand on my imagination.

Another great example of this is Hoban's 'Riddley Walker'. He's got an amazing world there. He's even got a new language. But you figure it out as you go, which is the appeal.