How much backstory is too much? Today we will discuss how to avoid too much backstory in your memoir. My goal is to help you write better the first time around. The earlier you write better the less you will have to edit and rewrite.
I hope this is not you…
You are writing a scene about a time when you—alas—got fired from your job. As you write about this vignette, you throw in a back story about your college studies, about how much you loved your major and how eager you were for the workplace. Then you go on to throw in the catty politics of the office from which you got fired. (Perhaps you lead into this backstory with “I couldn’t help but remember…”) You even throw in a vignette about your boss’s spouse who came onto you and another snippet about the wasteful (and tasteless) redecorating your boss commissioned. For good measure, you describe the company’s history and…
STOP!!!
All this backstory is not necessary—here, at this time. What you are doing is writing a magazine article not a memoir vignette. Spend your energy writing what your memoir needs to be written.
As you write about being fired, jot (or type) a note of the backstory details you will want the reader to know at some point—but not now. Later when you are finished with the firing story, you can take the time to write the backstory—or move on to another episode and save writing the backstory for later. Once a particular backstory is written, you can insert it into the manuscript where it belongs. Your love of your major will fit into your college chapters and the catty office politics will fit into another chapter—a chapter before the firing. The boss’s spouse coming onto you will also fit into another earlier chapter.
When you overwrite a story by stuffing it with too much backstory—and many writers seem to want to tell their entire story in what ought to be a focused vignette—you disrespect chronology and drama and the reader’s patience. Furthermore…
When you go easy on backstory, you will find editing a much easier task. No more extensive cuts that leave you wondering if you have a logical sequencing with what is left. No more decision about where to paste the material you cut from a vignette. You will no longer have to ask: “Is this really the right sequence, the right place in the story? Do I have the transitions in place to make this vignette understandable here?”)
What ought the vignette about “being fired” contain?
The firing story ought to have the scene of you being fired. Your boss’s diction, attire, comportment are all appropriate here. Specific dialog and setting also fit in. Your internal chatter is good to include. Your emotional reaction—the anger, the embarrassment, the uncertainty—can be incorporated.
The firing vignette needs to be a story of something that happened at one time, in one place, to one person. Not a story about everything, a story that is full of backstory.
When you go easy on backstory, you will find editing a much easier task. Avoiding too much backstory is a writerly way to write. No more extensive cuts that leave you wondering if you have a logical sequencing with what is left. No more decision about where to paste the material you cut from a vignette. You will no longer have to ask: “Is this really the right sequence, the right place in the story? Do I have the transitions in place to make this vignette understandable here?”
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Whatever you do today, be sure to write a few pages of your memoir.
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