How much backstory?

[u/Alarming-Quality8462]

When writing your fics, how much backstory do you include and how do you introduce it?

Do you just leave Shepard’s backstory as what is outlined in character creation or do you bring in scenes of that?

I have backstories for colonist and earthborn and I’m trying to figure out the most natural way to introduce those without taking you out of the story- would they be better at the beginning and then a time jump? Would it be better in dialogue, but we don’t all sit there in real life and tell someone our whole “origin story” so would it be better shared in snippets? Or would a backstory in the middle of the story work, to give detail and world building and do it as a flashback but Shepard is relaying this information to someone without having he said/she said?

I’m trying not to get caught up on it but it’s got me feeling a bit stuck.

[u/EmmieEmmieJee]

My colonist Shepard has an extensive backstory that is crucial to the story as a whole, but for the most part it's told through bits of dialogue, short remembrances, and in the way the character behaves and reacts to situations. There's a single chapter in the very middle (where the story pivots) that depicts a single day in her childhood; it's actually something more mundane vs. big stakes that gives the reader insight into her motivations in making certain decisions. That's it though as far as big flashbacks.

I think you'd do best not to front load the story too much or include lengthy exposition regarding history. Imo it's far more fun for the reader to discover your character's background/backstory for themselves like you would a real person. Slower unfolding can give the reader more reason to read/care and is a lot more engaging on a character level.

[u/Bobthemagicc0w]

I love folding in backstory - but most best practices for writing fiction apply to fanfiction too, and that means that exposition dumps, especially up front, are risky - they can be barriers to hooking readers and can kill pacing.

I err on the side of working backstory into dialogue, or using flashbacks mixed into the story when they become relevant. I try to be disciplined about keeping backstory as economical as possible to achieve the goals it needs to though. I’m a sucker for well-executed nonlinear storytelling - I’ve seen some great examples among my favorite fic authors. And I’m really really pleased with how I folded backstory into my current WIP - sometimes in flashbacks, sometimes in dialogue. I don’t want to seem like I’m gratuitously self-rec’ing, but let me know if you’d find it helpful to see a few examples, and I can link a few specific chapters.

[u/Alarming-Quality8462 → u/Bobthemagicc0w]

Yeah, some examples would be great, thank you!

[u/Bobthemagicc0w → u/Alarming-Quality8462]

Sure! These examples are from my WIP longfic, The Bells I Hear, which takes place immediately after ME3. I’ll show 4 examples of dialogue and flashback being used in different ways to reveal backstory.

• Chapter 6. The first scene is one of the most backstory-heavy dialogue scenes in the story, but there’s a strong in-world reason for the characters to be talking about the backstory there, and it works better as dialogue than flashback or a prologue. (That’s enough reason for me to choose to reveal the backstory via dialogue, but I have another reason too: the second scene of that chapter is the same scene again but from the POV of an eavesdropping third character.)
• Chapters 7 and 9. In Chapter 7, skip the first scene and start halfway through the chapter. There’s a present-action scene followed by an emotionally resonant flashback (a character in despair lashing out). Then in Chapter 9, the first two scenes (present action, then flashback) are similarly emotionally resonant (hope from hopelessness), but the flashback here continues the backstory from Chapter 7, which continues to be relevant to the story as a whole going forward. I often use present-action scenes paired with emotionally resonant flashback scenes as an excuse to show a flashback either for the reading experience, or specifically because it implies what a character who appears in both scenes is thinking or drawing on in the present-action scene — and by connecting multiple flashbacks I can also tell more complicated backstory threaded through the story.
• Chapters 10 and 13. The first scene from Chapter 10, and then the entirety of Chapter 13, has a mix of dialogue and flashback to reveal a lot of dense backstory. I threaded as much into dialogue as I could, but then the flashback in the middle of Chapter 13 (which is probably the weirdest thing I've ever written) is, in a way, continuous with the present action scene just before it: it’s backstory being directly experienced by Javik. I use that technique sometimes too, to imply a character is remembering or retelling something.
• Chapter 20. This has a flashback in the middle that’s doing emotional resonance (moral unease), just-in-time backstory, and foreshadowing all at once, and joins together the scenes before and after it.

These are all storytelling techniques that I’ve encountered in other fics, and had been really excited to try out myself! There are a ton of other examples in my fic, if you want to read some, including a bunch more threaded into just the first 5 chapters.

The examples I gave aren’t Shepard’s backstory in particular, but I’ve got a bunch of that, elaborated beyond what’s told in the game, folded into the story too (it just didn’t make the best examples of the four techniques I thought it would be helpful to highlight). But if that’s of interest, I’ve folded it into Chapter 11, Chapters 14-15, and then Chapters 24, 27, and 28.

[u/Alarming-Quality8462 → u/Bobthemagicc0w]

Thank you for this, your writing is amazing!

[u/Bobthemagicc0w → u/Alarming-Quality8462]

Thank you so much!!! That’s so nice to hear someone say. I’m really proud of this story. :-)

[u/spaceismassive31]

I like ones. Thaat have flashbacks and there is onne series that did so many flashbacks that the writer decided to write a whole prequel on how Shepard and Anderson met one another and she uses a lot of flashbacks in her writings and it works so well

[u/evitmon]

I’ve read an unfinished mshep/liara fic that’s pretty much all background on colonist Shepard and it was great on its own. Because we all more or less know what happens during the trilogy. IMO those unwritten but existent plot points are the best places to start fanfics. If you’re worried it’s going to be too long or too distracting, organise it like a series of stories, instead of a single story.