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Providing Background info

I need help with this. I'm having a hard time trying to tell the reader background information without dragging them out of the story. Here's the specific problem I'm facing: story opens up with main character going to her home which is nothing more than a muddy hole in the ground (this kind is filled with ends and worms *Hobbit reference) in her home there are other people that she isn't related to. When the character was younger she lived with her family but a raiding party of savages attacked her home. She fled into the woods and was eventually found by a man named Garek. He took care of her and that's how she came to live with these people now.


I can't seem to find a way to share this info without taking the reader out of the story. Any advice?
 

Addison

Auror
If you take your synopsis you just gave and turned that into a narrative then you're set. Seriously. We, readers, don't need all the details. We don't need to know what season the raid happened, how many savages there were, how long she wandered the forest until Garek found her. If it's background information, in the past with no relevance to the story plot (character arc is okay) then don't bother.

But don't come right out in one paragraph of exposition. Sprinkle it in through out the story. Maybe a loud clatter and a scream has her jump and flashes her back to the raid. Cut and done. Garek could comfort her and you could say how he's been at her side like a father ever since he found her in the forest.

By personal experience, not saying you're doing this, but I've found there's two things a writer must consider when thinking background info: what do you want the reader to know, and what does the reader really need to know?
 
This depends a lot on your style, but here's an example of how I might approach it.

-- -- -- --

"Hey, [name]," Garek said.

"Hi, Dad," she replied.

He wasn't her father by blood, of course--anyone could see they bore no family resemblance--but he had taken care of her for many years . . .

-- -- -- --

Something like that. Let the actions invite the questions, and answer them when they arrive, never going into more detail than is necessary to answer each question. (This is technically telling, but I've found that readers let me get away with it if they don't recognize it as such.)
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
I was just about to write what Addison said. The whole story doesn't have I come out at once. Start with that synopsis you just gave. That hooks the reader and sets them up for delivery of more background later if that's necessary.
 
I was thinking of using an approach like Feo suggested. Maybe Lira (MC) thanks Garek for something and says, you've always been like a father to me. then have a very short paragraph summarizing what I had said in my opening post. Do you think that might work? I don't think that would be a distraction from the plot.
 
The most interesting might be to see someone else in trouble, and remember how Garek helped her. It could be anything from a real Chapter One Mini-Battle to just picking up fallen packages, and it might be Garek showing he's still everyone's protector or might be Lira showing she's learned to be the same thing. And it might involve trauma a bit similar to what she went through (after all, Garek was only part of the end of her experience). But from one angle or another, it might be the most interesting way to show this.
 

JSDR

Scribe
By the fact that you're concerned giving me background info will "take me out of the story" implies that the background info has nothing to do with the story, or happened way before the events of the story, etc.

Personally, I like stories that get to the point. If I don't need to know their relationship to understand a scenes, I'd sooo appreciate not having to wade through something like "She loved Garek like a father though the only kinship between them was shared loss."

Well, actually, lol, that was ok but I'd appreciate no more than one sentence.

Also, to answer your question beyond the parameters of your specific question, how much pertinent background info and how to reveal it can depend on the POV of the narrator.

Frex - a 3rdPOV limited narrator could just ease into a tighter viewpoint and state things as in italicized thought.
Girl glanced at Garek. Man he looks old. How long's it been since he rescued me from those raiders? She said a quick prayer to her dead, mostly forgotten parents and continued with the story.

A 3rdPOV Omni would have an easier time of using a big infodump if there's an omniscient narrator with some personality.
Here's a hyperbolized example: "Now, guys, we get to the part of the story that'll be interesting much, much later. Let me fill you in on the deets, though, because what happens afterward will portray what happened years ago in a whole new murky light. So anyways, guys, twelve years ago, Girls town was attacked..."

Short answer: As a reader, I don't need to know everything. Just give me enough to connect the dots on my own, and that will keep me engaged with the story, not passively absorbing information.
 

Sinitar

Minstrel
From my experience, rushing the background information is always a bad idea, especially when it happens in the beginning of a story. First things first, establish your main character. The readers don't know it her, so why should they be interested in her family? Give her a little time to develop, advance the story forward, and then add tidbits of background info. One other thing you can do is focus on the influence the background information has on your characters. For instance, this girl may have been happy and talkative with her family, but now she's a shy introvert. The readers will want to discover the answer to her current state, and that's when background information kicks in.
 
I'd probably do it in dialogue. "You know, when we found you in the forest that day, we never realized you were going to be such a blessing to us/pain in the ass."
 

Addison

Auror
Ooh, nuh-uh Alex. If it's all given in dialogue it's still exposition. If a little bit is given and it's brought up in a way that's relevant to the scene, then yes it can work. But not as a whole page of dialogue that gives the characters back ground info.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
There aren't any absolutes, in my view. A writer with a strong narrative voice could make a page full of exposition of any kind work. If you can't pull it off, and it comes across clumsy or boring, then try another approach.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
My approach is to use situational exposition, which I think avoids info-dumps. What does the reader NEED to know right now to understand what's going on? While too little information can confuse the reader, too much can turn them off. Often I find that holding my cards close to my chest and letting the information trickle out as it is immediately needed not only keeps from loading the reader with details they don't need, but also can draw out tension by encouraging them to ask "Why?" and keep turning the page to find the answers. And what's our major job as writers? Keeping those pages turning.

You want to avoid the "As we all know, our world has been plunged into chaos by that demon invasion 20 years ago" sort of exposition, where you have people discussing in detail stuff they already know for the reader's benefit. Nobody realistically has conversations like that, and your characters shouldn't, either. I find that having an exposition character, someone not familiar with the world or the situation, can be very useful because they're watching and wondering what's going on - as long as asking nosy questions isn't the ONLY purpose they serve. My exposition characters tend to be the MC's children, students, and out-of-towners who stay to fight the good fight.
 
Ooh, nuh-uh Alex. If it's all given in dialogue it's still exposition. If a little bit is given and it's brought up in a way that's relevant to the scene, then yes it can work. But not as a whole page of dialogue that gives the characters back ground info.

I'm aware that exposition by means of dialogue is still exposition. The point of the question is how you introduce your exposition without it looking clunky. And yes, I'm not suggesting an entire "as you know, Bob," info dump through dialogue. I'm suggesting that people talk about their lives with each other, so you can easily smuggle background information (and foreground information) in that way.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
I'm aware that exposition by means of dialogue is still exposition. The point of the question is how you introduce your exposition without it looking clunky. And yes, I'm not suggesting an entire "as you know, Bob," info dump through dialogue. I'm suggesting that people talk about their lives with each other, so you can easily smuggle background information (and foreground information) in that way.

I think the thing with using dialogue, at least in these very early stages, as exposition is that you really need to ask yourself, "Who really talks like this?" Dialogue is real conversation, just with the boring bits removed. A writer has to ask themselves, "When was the last time I spent a considerable amount of time talking about my life with the people who are living it with me?" This is the sort of conversation we tend to have only at hospital bedsides and funeral homes and while deconstructing fights (or maybe only my partner and I do that) - those times when we are most in need of re-establishing connections. I would save it for those rare moments of touching intimacy between characters, and those are generally only effective after we've established an emotional connection between the characters and the reader (or so we hope).
 

Addison

Auror
Make it look like a conversation which came about and passes naturally. No one says hello to their neighbor and goes into their crappy childhood at the fence for no reason. Set things up so it fits with the rest of the story.
 
Ooh, nuh-uh Alex. If it's all given in dialogue it's still exposition. If a little bit is given and it's brought up in a way that's relevant to the scene, then yes it can work. But not as a whole page of dialogue that gives the characters back ground info.

That's one of the advantages to using dialog for exposition: it can be easier to make it quick. Thoughts or events can take time to move toward the facts and then work their way back out to normal again. But if something in how the two (or more) people on scene view things and view each other and so on makes one of them mention the fact, the whole thing might be covered in two lines and they move on-- maybe a little more detail added in the two seconds someone has to think between the last comment on that and "Hey, give me a hand with this!"

--Or the two lines might be all you need for a while. Sometimes the key to exposition is seeing what bare-bones facts are really needed now, letting the reader imagine the rest, and filling in more details later. After all, exposition's usually part of a two-stage process:
  • stating a fact so readers appreciate the context of things, but also because the fact needs to be planted to justify when you start
  • tapping into those facts as they become more important to the plot.

(Another advantage to dialog, especially for quick mentions: it's more conspicuous, so a fact is less likely to get lost than it would in paragraphs of thought or action.)

Of course that's only one way to do dialog exposition; there are umpteen ways to get creative with characters, situations, arguments or old resentments or jokes or other things that can sustain a longer passage, and make it more detailed and fun and clearly not generic exposition at all. But that takes work, and it just may be the wrong moment in the story to slow down for it anyway.
 
I think the thing with using dialogue, at least in these very early stages, as exposition is that you really need to ask yourself, "Who really talks like this?" Dialogue is real conversation, just with the boring bits removed. A writer has to ask themselves, "When was the last time I spent a considerable amount of time talking about my life with the people who are living it with me?" This is the sort of conversation we tend to have only at hospital bedsides and funeral homes and while deconstructing fights (or maybe only my partner and I do that) - those times when we are most in need of re-establishing connections. I would save it for those rare moments of touching intimacy between characters, and those are generally only effective after we've established an emotional connection between the characters and the reader (or so we hope).

Too true: it's much too easy to get into clunky dialog because we know we need some exposition. Since every writer needs to plant facts, and every reader has seen writers get clumsy in planting them, there's very little tolerance for taking that kind of Obvious Easy Way Out.

And I think I agree, an intense personal conversation might be just plain a bad idea early on. It can be easy to put someone in a deathbed or other circumstances that would justify it, but that kind of all-out talk still rings a bit incomplete if we haven't gotten to know and care about the characters first, through action or less soul-bearing means. We all have to get to know our real friends before they open up, so that might be one kind of scene that's hard to pull off early.
 
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