How to Avoid Too Much Back Story in Your Fiction

Vintage typewriter in the library
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Do your short stories tend to get bogged down in back story? Do certain scenes seem to drag, even to you? This writing exercise will help you take advantage of these lessons to create forward-moving fiction, thinking of a scene visually, strictly adhering to the present moment, to eliminate unnecessary back story.


  1. Choose a scene from one of your short stories or novels that seems to drag. Scenes designed to be more action-oriented are particularly well-suited to this exercise.
  2. Rewrite the scene as a play or screenplay. In other words, tell the story using only dialogue and brief descriptions of action and characters. (If you aren't familiar with screenwriting or playwrighting formats, don't worry. It isn't an exercise in formatting, but in thinking visually.)
  3. Practice economy. Think strategically about how a character can be revealed through action and dialogue. (Syd Field has excellent examples of how this can be done in his classic book, "Screenplay.") Instead of telling the reader what a character is like, find a way to illustrate character as the plot unfolds.
  4. Rewrite the scene in prose, abstaining from backstory and long descriptions, and incorporating some of the details you have added in writing it as a screenplay.
  5. Take a few days off from the work and return to it later, noting how the pace of the work has changed.


  1. In some instances, backstory will be necessary to the plot of a story. Determine what's necessary and what the reader can surmise from the dialogue and the action. Readers generally pick up on and remember more details than you might expect. Remember: if something is important, then you want to play it out "in-scene"; if it is less important, sum it up in exposition.
  2. Don't confuse forward-moving fiction with fiction written for the screen. It's possible to write rich, literary work that also has movement.
  3. It's easy enough to reinsert any necessary information later. When you start to get feedback on the work, people will let you know if anything is confusing. Be sure to take note and be receptive to feedback (as opposed to defensive). Sometimes it doesn't matter if you mentioned something in the prose, but how you mentioned it, and how it is being read. Sometimes you will have to give more "time" to a certain fact in order for your readers to grasp it.

What You Need

  • A story or novel that was written within the past few years
  • A pen and paper or a computer