Chat with a librarian changed how I handle backstory

I was at a writer's group last Tuesday and a retired librarian named Carol said something that stuck with me. She mentioned that in fiction, backstory should work like a library catalog system - you only give out the card when someone asks for the book. I had been dumping entire character histories into chapter one for years. It made me realize I was treating readers like they needed to know everything upfront instead of trusting them to discover information naturally. Has anyone else found a simple comparison like that that shifted how you write?

2 comments

2 Comments

ivan821mo ago

The library catalog comparison works because it forces you to think about relevance. If someone asks for a book on beekeeping you don't hand them a biography of Napoleon. Same with backstory. You only bring up a character's childhood trauma when it directly explains why they're currently afraid of dogs or whatever. I started applying this by asking myself one simple question before every exposition dump. Will the reader be lost in this scene without this specific piece of information? If the answer is no, cut it. You can always slip it in later when it actually matters to what's happening on the page.

the_nina1mo ago

That napkin rule is great and all but I once cut a scene and regretted it ten pages later.