Delivering World Backstory
I have a bit of a dilemma. Ok, it’s not really a dilemma, but rather, I’m seeking a better way to do something. In the sci-fi future of my story, the world has changed due to some… dramatic events. These events took place some 25 years before the story. They changed the world, shaped it into what the world is for the characters.
My dilemma, of course, is in how I present the explanation of this world, and these past events. I had cleverly thought up a scene where the hero is talking to his niece while watching a documentary on these events. This allows me to write the narrative of documentary as sound bites into the scene, interspersed with the niece asking our hero questions. You know, the naive young child as a method towards asking naive questions that full grown characters would never ask, having grown up in such a milieu, never speaking such obvious things that an explanation requires.
This documentary + Q&A scene is something that I feel will be good enough. But I thought I’d all you smart readers what you think. Is there a better way?
I’ve been having a few doubts, mainly when I think of movies like The Road Warrior, and even Star Wars. No convoluted presentation within a scene is necessary. They simply tack a universe intro onto the beginning of the story, almost a prologue. Think of the rolling text at the beginning of Star Wars, the setup. Likewise the Mad Max movies just deliver an intro to explain why the world has gone to pot. It’s simple, and it worked for them. So am I overthinking it?
Or is weaving it into a scene involving characters a better idea? I may just keep things as they are, because I still like my original impetus to weave the explanation into the story itself. I thought it was something worth asking you all, though.
What do you prefer in delivering world backstory? A quick intro to get it out of the way, or would you prefer it to be weaved into the story, in a scene somewhere?
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September 12th, 2006 at 2:55 am
September 12th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
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September 1st, 2006 at 4:53 pm
I tend to enjoy the subtle approach. Depending on just what the dramatic event was in the past, this approach may or may not work; but the example that comes to mind is from the film Jin-Roh, the Wolf Brigade.
The film is set in a modern day Japan that followed an alternative history scenario, one where the Axis powers won WWII. But nobody ever comes out and says that, there are no overt indicators in the film (no introductory text etc.) other than the tumultuous state of society, the fascist overtones of some of its governing bodies, and the choice of certain weapons and technologies (soldiers use Mausers and other well-known German designs).
The explanation for it all is fairly straight forward and could so easily have been inserted in a clumsy but brief line of dialogue or other expository device, like a book or newspaper, but director Mamoru Oshii chooses not to. So when you first start watching the film, you assume that it is a modern setting, but something seems off, and it creates a very enjoyable reveal for the audience when they finally piece together what has happened in the past.
That was just the first example to come to mind, there are obviously loads of this kind of slow, subtle reveal present in film and literature. Or even gaming: witness HL2’s “explanation” of the Combine invasion. What is a fairly rote plot turns into something of a mystery for players–they want to know what happened, but they have to work for it a little.
So to answer your question, I prefer the bread crumb trail as a reader. Unless you’ve got a convenient and believable sequence for revealing the historical dramatic event, most attempts to just “get it out of the way” are likely going to stink up the narrative with bald exposition, and nobody likes that! :)
Besides, it’s more sporting to do the slow, mysterious reveal. Like they always say: show, rather than tell. If this historical event has changed the world, then get to showing how that world has changed, not explaining what it is that did it.
September 1st, 2006 at 6:15 pm
That might work if the central mystery of the story is “What was the big event that happened!?” - But it’s not. The past events are entirely circumstantial in explaining the current state of the world. They are not the central point of the story, merely an explanation for why the world is the way it is.
I too like the subtle approach, but in this case it’s less about being artsy and more about information. Readers will want to know why the world is like this, and explaining it is not really a part of the story.
I rather like that as most people would choose to write a doomsday story, or write about the events themselves. I’m fast-forwarding to a multi-generation aftermath.
To me that’s a lot more interesting. But there will obviously be a lot of questions that need to be answered, just to give people an understanding of the worldspace.
So yeah, the tough part is that’s not really supposed to be a mystery. I could make it a mystery, but that’s a pretty large red herring leading away from the main story.
I’ve planned to put cues & clues, evidence all throughout. I’m just not sure it’s enough. Part of the problem with the subtle approach is that it leaves room for interpretation.
There is no room for interpretation about what happened.
It was something very specific, that affected the entire world–being TOO subtle would be ridiculously coy. Trying to make a mystery out of something that is not a mystery to anyone in my fictional world would only work if that mystery was the center of my story–it’s not.
So at some point, I just have to say what happened, or reference it matter-of-fact throughout.
September 1st, 2006 at 6:19 pm
A good real world analogy would be Sept. 11th. There is no ‘mystery’ about what happened (conspiracy theories aside). The impact of it, its effects & aftermath, are all too apparent. You almost can’t go a day without someone mentioning it, somewhere in news, print, etc.
So there’s not a lot of mystery to be crafted there…
I do find it amusing that almost every documentary or piece of news summarizes exactly what happened as if none of us had a clue. Makes me a little cynical/snarky because you couldn’t get away with that in fiction. People would complain you were being ham-fisted on the delivery… and yet, the news/documentarians can perfectly get away with, “On Sept. 11th, 2 planes crashed into the WTC, blah blah” as if nobody has heard the story!
September 4th, 2006 at 11:29 am
I haven’t read the other response yet, but I will once I’ve answered the question at hand.
I think you’ve got a couple of options, and of course they depend a lot on what’s already happening in the story, but I don’t see anything wrong with ‘educating the young’ but it would have to be done so as not to come across as ‘educating the reader’ too, you could always have a presentation/documentry running in the background while another scene is going on. Perhaps your hero is distracted by the presentation while he is supposed to be concentrating on something else.
Alternatively, and I like this option much better, you could write the ‘event’ itself as a prologue, assuming you don’t already have one, and to thinken the mix you could have your hero be comnnected to the event somehow, a parent or sibling or relative could be involved somehow, of course without know more it’s hard to say.
And having just read the previous comments I think the idea of having the hero distracted by a presentation would work well, particularly if you worked your feelings of ‘well of course we know what happened’ into it. Perhaps that’s why it’s distracting him, because he just can’t believe there would be a single person on the planet who doesn’t know what happened. Of course there’s always the danger you might be accused of being ham-fisted… :)
September 5th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
I think it would be hard to write a documentary q&a scene without it seeming artifical, like you placed it there just to inform the reader. It could too easily be a case of “Of course the average person in our story already knows about the World Changing Big-Event, but we’re going to bring in this child and educate her just for you, dear reader.”
While what happened in the past may not be a central mystery of the book, it doesn’t mean it can’t be something you slowly reveal over time and used to extend the themes of the story or enrich characterization. If it changed the world, it changed them too.
I’d suggest you impart only the info the reader needs to know to make sense of the next few chapters in your story. Rinse and repeat. Give the very basics and then slowly fill in the detail over the course of the entire book, choosing the places where the information would be the most dramatically effective.
September 5th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Paul McAuley has an blog post on the subject…what you call backstory he calls an infodump.
http://unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-infodumping.html
September 6th, 2006 at 1:38 am
Dave,
The child is not brought in just for the infodump. She is a character in the story, athough a minor one.
Josh,
Yeah, it’s an info dump.
There is no easy way out in situations like these. Layering it through the story can be just as awkward if the sentences or paragraphs are out of place. The problem is that any excuse to infodump is just that–an excuse.
I suspect that since the past historical events are not central to the story if need be they can just fall by the wayside, or be left up to the reader’s imagination. I don’t prefer to leave it that way, but I may not have any other choice. Hmm…
September 6th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Tough question for me. I wrote a fantasy novel/sci-fi (I swear it was more a mix than just one or the other) that had the new modern world and the old world. I however was able to present contrast between the two worlds because they both existed in the same time…one of the worlds/planets (actually) was in exile and they hadn’t grown with the rest of the galaxy…they were ages behind…so when the more technical and advance person came to this world he was able to remark on it in a variety of different ways.
Then of course I had a person from the exile world experience the new/advanced world/galaxy so between the two of them I was able to have my characters experience the differences/changes. (Though I admit in that draft I have a ton of info dump scenes…which can easily be fixed up, but this was the second novel I wrote…and I hadn’t really had any writing training at that point…so I didn’t even know what the concept of info dump was)
They didn’t have to remember, they were able to experience it.
The documentary idea…could work well though…if you have the neice (a young girl?) who is fascinated/interested in what she does know… As long as it feels like a part of the story and not an ‘info dump’ as mentioned above I think it could work well.
September 6th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Dribble it in. It’s harder, but even a dialogue info dump is still an info dump. That’s why I like to write in first person. The narrator can get the info across and I can still build the character. Also, I’ve learned only to give the most crucial info in the beginning, just enough to keep the reader grounded. The rest can wait until you’re done setting up the stakes and giving the reader a handle on the main protagonist.
Aren’t you glad you asked? :-)
September 7th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
I understand this struggle a lot. I think SF/F and historicals have a lot in common because of this. I usually read stories set somewhere between 1700 and now, and when I pick up something that’s pre-French Revolution (the exception being Colonial American) I feel entirely out of my element. The world has to be built, and I have to be educated, or else I’m just sifting through, looking for character and plot.
Although my WIP is historical, it has a lot of background–so much that the background will probably be another book entirely. Still, this background is central to the plot of the story. I’ve chosen to weave.
Yeah, I’m no help here–I’m afraid it’s just trial and error. Here’s hoping we write good enough stories and an agent’ll be happy, even if he wants that changes. ;-)
September 8th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Some interesting comments here. Thanks!
I think one aspect that’s made this difficult for me is I’m still very much working in story/plot refinement mode, and this ’subtle blending’ of micro infodumps throughout the story occurs more at the language level… or where the writing actually takes place.
I’m getting very close to that point, but not quite there yet. Glad I asked this before I had already rewritten the thing.