Background and Flashbacks

Background information should be dispensed in small quantities, and only those points which are absolutely necessary in order for readers to understand what is going on in the story at that point. Would it seem like one or more of the characters were behaving irrationally simply because the readers don't know some vital part of their history? If so, drop in a line of two of memory.

Try to convey background through conversation, or by using what is going on around the POV to trigger memories. Don't overuse either of these devices. Remember, vital information only.

Don't let your characters' actions be driven by your need to tell readers about background material. Ask yourself: is this really what the POV would be thinking about now? If your POV is sitting in a trench in the middle of the night, listening for the sound of an expected enemy charge would he really be thinking about the history of the war? It seems more likely to me that he would be wondering what will happen to him if he is captured, or how much ammunition he has left or whether the reinforcements would arrive in time.

If your POV walks past a tree in his backyard, would he really be thinking about how he and his father built the treehouse? Does he think these thoughts every time he's in the back yard? Is he obsessed with his father?

A certain amount of this is necessary, but try to come up with a more believable reason for the memories. Maybe he notices that a piece of wood has fallen from the treehouse, the one with the bent nail that his father let him hammer himself. Maybe he has just received word that his father is dying. Maybe his own son has just tearfully accused him of never having time for him. The memory needs to be triggered by a specific event.

Train yourself to tell the difference between what is interesting to you about the character and what would be interesting to readers. It may be that you spent many hours coming up with a detailed physiology for your alien races and you think it's really cool. Resist the urge to dump it on your readers. They won't find it as interesting to read about as you found it to create. Drop only those details which are necessary.

For instance, if your hero is being chased by aliens and he sees a lake and makes a beeline for it, we need to see in his thoughts the knowledge that the aliens fear water, because it shorts out their life support equipment. You *don't* need to tell us all about how their technology works and how they can't breath our atmosphere because they come from a class V gaseous planet, etc, etc. None of that is necessary.

If you are writing a novel, a lot more background dump is expected, especially if the novel is 'hard' SF. Leave it out of character driven stories, though, unless your character is a scientist who spends a lot of time thinking about his work, or if the conflict and resolution are based on some kind of scientific principles which must be understood for the resolution to make sense.

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