Don’t Start with Back Story – How to Work out How much the Reader Should Know and When

Start the reader in “the room where it happens” advises Allison K Williams in a craft essay published in Brevity, the free online literary journal of concise non-fiction.

She has developed an interesting exercise to test if you are revealing too much too soon, or leaving essential information out.

It takes courage and a good friend, but if you have both, and written 100+ pages, you might want to try the following:

Ask a friend who hasn’t read the manuscript (and ideally, doesn’t know your story) to read pages 50-70, with no preliminaries. Have them list information they understand from those pages, like “they live in Chicago” or “her mother is an alcoholic.” Cut those things from the first 50 pages—if they’re clear now, they don’t need explaining earlier. Have the reader also list what they wish they knew or didn’t understand. Keep those elements from the first 50 pages, but consider whether they belong before, or should be woven in later.

I have sung the praises of Brevity before, and I am glad to have an opportunity to do it again. It is a journal for anyone who enjoys creative non-fiction and with a word limit of 750 words it means there is nearly always time to read a good story. And did I mention it’s free?

Often the advice given in the craft articles apply to fiction as well as non-fiction. I’ve been running Writing History courses throughout 2025 – another one starts in a few weeks – and I’ve found that exercises for memoirists also work for fledging historical novelists and local historians keen to turn their research into a readable narrative. Homework assignments do have to be individually tailored though, as each student will use the techniques and insights they have (hopefully) acquired in a way that will suit their writing ambitions.

It seems to me the advice in Allison’s essay is just as valuable for a novelist who needs to see that at the beginning a reader doesn’t require a full understanding of a character and the experiences that shaped her, as it is for a memoirist who feels obliged to give a whirlwind tour of their childhood before embarking on the solo travels at the heart of what they want to write.

Back story is important, there’s no denying that, but it is usually better drip-fed into the story rather than delivered in a lump. It’s really very like the real world. If I am introduced to someone new I am not going to feel comfortable if I’m told in the first five minutes that they are a survivor of a bitter divorce, are allergic to salmon, long to holiday in the Caribbean, ran away from boarding school at the age of 11 and are caring for an elderly father who only communicates by text even when they are in the same room. I’ll take a bit of that, but give me the whole lot before I even know if we could be friends, and my instinct is to back off. Ditto when I’m reading and it is even easier to put down a book.

Of course, there are always exceptions to any writing “rule”. Annie Proulx’s Shipping News springs to mind where the first 20 pages or so are devoted to the back story, but for most of us less is more, especially at the start. In the first page(s) you are fighting for the reader’s attention, while trying to ensure it doesn’t read as though you’ve thrown everything in out of desperation.

Can you think of an annoying novels where the back story intrudes?
And can you think of other novels where the back story is at the front, big and bold, and it doesn’t matter a bit.
It’s good to share.
Reading is the magic that helps us live in other worlds, reading like a writer helps us create our own other worlds.