on Live Write Thrive:

You’ve spent hours, maybe months, developing a rich background for each of your characters and the world they inhabit. As the creator of your story, you are omniscient. You know why your characters behave the way they do and how their past has fashioned them into who they are. And now your job is to somehow bring out those bits of history through your story.

The challenge is to learn ways to do this so the information comes out organically and doesn’t feel as if a dump truck has just unloaded six tons of rock on a reader’s head. Many writers give in to the temptation to tell readers everything they think they need to know up front. They figure the more readers know about a character, the more that character will resonate. But all that backstory just slows the action down. Tell the reader just enough for the scene to make sense. You can fill in the blanks later.

Sure, there may come moments in life when a friend sits you down and, in an hour-long monologue, tells you his life story. Or details how his planet was terraformed and attacked by an ancient race. Or explains his entire family tree back fourteen generations. But even in real life, chances are you will fall asleep mid-babble and wish you had stayed home under the covers.

Readers sometimes wish they could run on stage in a novel and tell the author to stop dumping information. “Just let me watch the story!” they scream. “Stop telling me all that boring stuff.”

Boring? We authors think all that backstory is not only riveting but essential. Surely readers want—no, need—to hear it all. And the sooner they do, the better they will understand and enjoy the novel.

But honestly, that’s far from the truth. Too much backstory is a fatal flaw in fiction, butjust the right amount will enhance the story, engaging and informing the reader while not interrupting the present action.

This is how seasoned fiction writers handle backstory masterfully, and you can too!