by Christine Greifzu from the March 22, 2021 issue
Observations: For those of you who don't know, backstory is the stuff that happened to your characters before the story starts. It's like their personal history. Obviously, if they're an adult, a lot has happened to them, and just as obviously, you don't need to mention it all, especially considering how short these stories need to be.
In this particular story, the author dropped one bit of backstory at the beginning--
Since this was her first year renting a booth...
--and then waited until the hero showed up to tell us one pertinent fact about Kelly's romantic history--
After a broken engagement last year, she was overdue for some [luck], and a good man in her life, come to that.
And that's it! That is all the backstory we get. It's also all the backstory we need. Don't overload your story with unnecessary information. You don't have that luxury with an 800 word word count.
Photo by GoToVan via Flickr Creative Commons license
2 comments:
Cute story.
Loved the story. Great comments on backstory, Kate.
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