A 'soulsborne' approach to backstory

[Gryphos]

The 'soulsborne' games produced by Fromsoftware (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne) are known not only for having a deft and confident handling of difficulty, but also for utilising some incredibly interesting story-telling elements. The main point is that these games do not tell you a lot, rather tell you a little and let you figure out the backstory based on those, even theorise as to what could have happened.

I think this general concept could easily be applied to a novel. To use an example from my own work, there's a character called Sigfarne. When Sigfarne meets the MC under rather hostile conditions, he is still wishing to remain somewhat civil. However, when the MC makes an offhanded joke about how "this is why your parents didn't love you", he changes his tune, and immediately tells MC that he's going to kill him.

From this, the reader obviously gathers that Sigfarne has a troubled history with regards to his parents. Now move onto a scene much later in the novel.

Here the MC asks Sigfarne how many people he's killed, and he answers 3. Now, in the earlier scene Sigfarne killed 1 dude, so that leaves 2 mysterious people he's killed in the past. 'Hmmm,' the reader says as they stroke their chin, 'two people who Sigfarne has killed in the past. I wonder who they could be.'

Now what if there's a third scene in which Sigfarne states how he dislikes conjuring spectres because they're 'uncontrollable and dangerous' and how 'many lives have been lost because a summoner couldn't keep their spectre under control'.

Based on these three details, an observant reader can piece together a little story, that story being that Sigfarne when he was younger summoned a spectre, but couldn't keep it under control, and this led to it killing his parents. As the weak summoner, he blames himself and considers himself their murderer. I could have just had him tell this story, but this way I think it's a lot more interesting, and the reader might feel clever for working it out.

That's what I call the soulsborne approach to backstory, dropping separate details and letting the reader piece them together. There's probably some academic word for it, but I don't give a shit. It's soulsborne to me.

But anyways, do you guys find this approach interesting? Do you utilise it in your own writing?

 

[X Equestris]

I like the approach. It reminds me of an article I read about avoiding on-the-nose dialogue, in that both of those focus on setting things up without explicitly saying everything.

I'm not sure I've used it, but I intend to, at least for part of the book I'm working on.

 

[thedarknessrising]

I'm not really familiar with video games, so I hadn't known about this approach. This is really cool, and I might just have to utilize it in my writing.

 

[Mindfire]

Interesting idea. Games have an element of interactivity that written fiction lacks: the player can explore the environment, talk to NPCs, and read item descriptions and scattered bits of lore at their own pace. So the designer has to sort of trust the player to find the pieces as well as put them together, when there's the very real chance that they might focus solely on the gameplay and overlook the lore bits. In a written work the author has more control over what the reader sees and in what order, so you can practically guarantee that the reader finds your clues. But there's a tradeoff. In a game, you can plant a data entry or item description or signpost that just tells you a bit of knowledge about the world, almost encyclopedia-style. Even if it's only a small bit, it's straightforward. The player may or may not find it or pay attention to it, but if they do they're guaranteed to interpret it correctly, assuming basic reading comprehension. In a book, that kind of data-entry approach feels forced and infodumpy, even if it's small. So you have to weave it in a bit more organically, as in the OP's example. But that can be difficult to pull off: too overt and it's an infodump, too subtle and it flies under the radar. And you have to pay attention to placement as well so it feels as immediately relevant as possible. An excellent strategy if you can pull it off, but it takes careful handling I think.

 

[Mythopoet]

I think that approach is called "mystery".