Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (29 page)

Thus, this backstory passage deepens Sean's inner conflict not just by revealing its source, but by showing us how inevitable, unavoidable, and, finally,

unsolvable his marriage problems are. With his wife gone, his daughter taken away from him forever, how can Sean possibly regain his thirst for his work? Read it again: Lehane's backstory is not lifeless information; it serves to enhance Sean's inner conflict. But that is only because it comes later in the story.

As I discussed in earlier chapters, the hero of Jodi Picoult's contemporary retelling of
The Crucible, Salem Falls,
is a man with a highly tragic backstory. A hint of it arrives on the novel's first page. Jack St. Bride is walking by himself along Route 10 in New Hampshire in the dead of winter, wearing only khaki pants, a white shirt, dress shoes, and a belt:

He wished he had a winter coat, but you wore out of jail the same outfit you'd worn in. What he did have was forty-three dollars that had been in his wallet on the hot afternoon he was incarcerated, a ring of keys that opened doors to places where Jack no longer was welcome, and a piece of gum.

Jail? For what crime was Jack incarcerated? Why has no one come to meet him upon his release? Questions leap unconsciously into our minds. Ninety-nine out of one hundred novelists would rush to answer those questions. Not Picoult. She lets them linger for many pages, adding an underlying tension to Jack's new life in the small town of Salem Falls.

It is only after eighty-nine pages that Jack's employer and lover, Addie Peabody, learns that Jack was an all-girls prep school teacher and soccer coach who plead guilty to the rape of a student. Jack did not rape the girl, but the explanation of how he came to plead guilty is further withheld. Finally, a chapter of backstory halfway through the novel shows Jack in his previous job and his special relationship with a fragile and unstable minister's daughter, teenage Catherine Marsh, who has a dangerous crush on him.

A couple of key incidents set Jack up for a fall: a toga-clad re-creation of the Peloponnesian War places Catherine's bra in his possession. Later, she pleads with him for help: Her boyfriend wants to have sex and she's not prepared. Jack agrees to drive her to a Planned Parenthood clinic in secret. Their close coach-player rapport works against him even further when Catherine turns her inner pain outward and reveals to her father her "affair" with Jack. Unfortunately, Jack now has her bra in his briefcase and undeniably took her to get birth control pills. His goose is cooked.

Picoult easily could have left it at that. However, she understands the magnification effect of backstory. Later in the novel, as support for Jack dwindles, she reinforces the goodness of his character for the reader with several more backstory passages. The birth control pill incident is shown in depth, revealing how deeply Jack cares for his students. His sensitivity is shown again in a trip back to Jack's own high school soccer days and his realization that his jock teammates' way of "seducing" girls (getting them drunk and then passing them around) is hurtful and wrong.

There are even more backstory passages, including a prison sequence that shows Jack's strength, fortitude, and refusal to break. Each passage is strategi-

cally placed at low moments to bolster sympathy for Jack, or to contrast his good qualities with the small-minded actions of others. If a piece of Jack's life has no conflict-enhancing value, Picoult leaves it out. For instance, we never find out anything about Jack's father, or why he became a teacher, or how he got hooked on the television game show
Jeopardy.
Why should we? That info contributes nothing to conflict.

In earlier chapters, I discussed
Carolina Moon,
Nora Roberts's novel about the return of a wounded young woman, Tory Bodeen, to her hometown of Progress, South Carolina. At age eighteen Tory fled a physically abusive father and went to New York, where she began working in retail stores and gained the experience that will allow her to open an upscale gift boutique in Progress. Early in the novel, however, Roberts makes us aware that something awful happened to Tory in New York.

A hint of this tragedy arrives unexpectedly when Tory sells the Charleston home in which she is living to raise funds for her fresh start. After the closing her real estate lawyer, Abigail Lawrence, wishes Tory well in her new life, but cannot resist satisfying her curiosity about something:

"I hope you're happy, Tory."

"I'll be fine."

"Fine's one thing." To Tory's surprise, Abigail took her hand, then leaned over and brushed her cheek in a light kiss. "Happy's another. Be happy."

"I intend to." Tory drew back. There was something in the hand-to-hand connection, something in the concern in Abigail's eyes. "You knew," Tory murmured.

"Of course I did." Abigail gave Tory's fingers a light squeeze before releasing them. "News from New York winds it way down here, and some of us even pay attention to it now and again. You changed your hair, your name, but I recognized you. I'm good with faces."

"Why didn't you say anything? Ask me?"

"You hired me to see to your business, not pry into it."

What is the terrible thing that happened to Tory in New York, so terrible that it caused her to change her name and appearance? Roberts reveals nothing further for almost two hundred pages, letting the unanswered question lend the story underlying tension. Finally, in a confrontation with Margaret La-velle, mother of Tory's new lover, Cade, we get another hint. Margaret blames Tory for the murder of her daughter and Tory's childhood friend, Hope, and now warns Tory to stay away from Cade:

"If you go against my wishes in this, I'll ruin you. You'll lose everything, as you did before. When you killed that child in New York."

Tory killed a child? Naturally, we want to find out the details, but Roberts makes us wait until the final quarter of the novel. At last we learn that Tory had put her gift of second sight to work for the New York City Police Department and, along the way, had fallen in love with a police detective. Her life was almost normal until one day she provided information about a child kidnapper, a fired housekeeper with a grudge. The kidnapper wanted only money, she reported, indicating that paying the ransom was the safest course.

Unfortunately, her second sight did not extend to the ex-housekeeper's cohorts who, once they had the money in hand, killed not only the child, but the housekeeper and two pursuing policemen. Tory wound up taking the blame, some of it dished out by the detective who she had thought loved her. The guilt has followed her, never entirely being relieved despite years of therapy and, now, Cade's sympathy.

As guilty secrets go, this is pretty tame compared to
Sophie's Choice,
but that is not the point. The point is that Nora Roberts places this backstory late in the novel and thereby gets from it a double punch: It not only fills in Tory's character history, but deepens the pain she is feeling late in the story over the visions she again has begun to have of the victims of the serial killer who haunts her past and present.

As you can see, it can be quite effective to withhold backstory. Think about doing so in your current novel. You will not want to. That backstory stuff in the first few chapters feels awfully necessary. But it is not. It may be more useful later in the story. If when you get there you find you don't need it after all, then maybe you didn't need it in the first place.

_EXERCISE

Delaying Backstory

Step 1: In the first fifty pages of your novel, find any scene that establishes the setting, brings the players to the stage, sets up the situation, or that is otherwise backstory.

Step 2: Put brackets around this material, or highlight it in your electronic file.

Step 3: Cut and paste this material into chapter fifteen. Yes, chapter fifteen.

Follow-up work:
Now, look at chapter fifteen. Does the backstory belong here? If not, can it be cut outright? If that is not possible, where is the best place for it to reside
after the midpoint of your novel?

Conclusion:
Backstory is less important than most novelists think. If you must include it at all, place it so that it answers a long-standing question, illuminating some side of a character rather than just setting it up.

Low Tension Part III: Tension on Every Page

O
kay, I warned you in my introduction, and here it is: the exercise and follow-up work that everyone knows is necessary, but that no one wants to do. It is a heck of a lot of work. Tension on every page is the secret of great storytelling. Everyone knows that. Practically no one does it.