the gentle art of nuance & backstory
I like to think of this as a basic commandment: never underestimate your readers; treat them with respect, and they'll stick around.
That means, in part, that you don't shove things in their faces. Let them watch the characters act and interact, and if you've done your job right, they will figure the important stuff out for themselves.
Maria Capstone was 87 but she was still sharp as a tack.
Boring, and a cliche, too. Try this:In the ten seconds the Maguires spent wondering if they should offer to help the dignified old lady with her groceries, Mrs. Capstone had already hatched a plan to separate the newlyweds from their savings.
Maria liked to gamble.
Maria Capstone could get a craps game going in a nunnery. ***Joshua at Noematic gets the credit for this, he came up with it during a brain storming session in one of my creative writing classes.
As you may well have figured out by now, this is the same old "show don't tell" thing you'll hear every writing teacher spout. Because like most cliches, it's true.So then, how does this fit in with backstory? When do you provide information, and when do you let the reader extract information on their own?
I would love to say there is a magic formula to figure this out, but I fear this is one of those areas where the magical, mystical 'inner ear' does the work. That is, it's a matter of experience and practice and rhythm. I find that I often feel the need to set out a smorgasbord of information, some direct, some of it quite nuanced, right up front. These are the opening paragraphs of a novel that's been in progress for quite a long time:
There's a lot of very direct information here, but also (I like to think) a great deal just below the surface about Kate's personality, her ability to deal with conflict and her tendency toward ambivalence, her relationship with her husband, the way she sees the world. The choices people make are a prime source of information about them.For a few months now, Kate Buongiovanni has been wooing a car thief.
Nobody would think it of her. Kate strikes most people as a woman of more persistence than daring; subdued by good fortune, all her sharp edges worn away by contentment. Happily married, successful in a business she loves, money enough to buy what she likes: Mephisto walking shoes, Peruvian sweaters, Dakota pottery; her kitchen walls, hand stenciled, are hung with antique copper molds in the shape of roosters, half moons, leaping fish. She pays handsomely for housecleaning and ironing. A boy from down the street mows the lawn, stacks the firewood; they have an accountant, a broker, an attorney. She is on a first name basis with the fund raisers at Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, CASA.
And yet Kate contemplates the larcenous heart. She puts a great deal of thought into attracting a car thief: on a Friday afternoon she drives into downtown Trenton and leaves the car on a side street, gift-wrapped children's books (Where the Wild Things Are; Curious George; The Borrowers) piled on the driver's seat. Unlocked. The window rolled down a few inches.
The books disappear along with the tire gauge and a half pack of mints, but the car is waiting for her when she comes back. On her next solo trip (The Phantom Tollbooth; Half Magic; Harriet the Spy) Kate ties a hank of red yarn to the key in the ignition, but even such a bold invitation goes unanswered. It seems that nobody is desperate enough to take on this crate of a car, this thirty year old, mustard-colored Volvo with a temperamental clutch and thirty thousand miles.
Under other circumstances she would talk to Mike about this challenge, but the fact is this: her husband loves this monument to automotive engineering as another man might love a senile and smelly dog, and Kate loves her husband.
This is, of course, my approach. It's not the only one; it may not work for every reader, or even for most readers, and I can only describe the way this develops for me in a very rough way. This is why some people claim that writing can't be taught. I would ay that some things about writing can't be taught, and this balance between providing backstory directly and nuancing backstory is probably one of them.
Edited to add: part of this post is recycled from a much older post.