Character Background Info (Dump)

[Coragem]

Hi there:

Looking back over some of my earlier work, I find a few examples of my characters recalling their pasts or family backgrounds. Sort of mini info dumps enabling them to introduce themselves, their motivations, the reasons why they have their present objectives.

I haven't written like this in months and I haven't liked seeing it in my earlier work – just as recently (generally speaking) I've begun not liking to see it when I'm reading other people's stuff.

I was wondering what you all thought about it? Do you insert background info about your characters (their past, family background, etc.) or avoid it at all costs?

Part of it, for me, may come back to the way I use POV. My 3rd person limited is very close to the character, so they don't say or think anything they wouldn't really say or think (if you get me). (One of my real hates in literature is when authors makes characters say things, or explain things, obviously for the reader's benefit!)

Not that I'm saying inserting character background is always bad. Guy Gavriel Kay does it a lot (e.g., in Sailing to Sarantium) and, well, he's Guy Gavriel Kay!!! Although read something like Joe Abercrombie and it's obvious that characters can be vivid and hugely compelling with little or no background filled out.

Coragem.

[Mouse]

Hmm... I'd say leave it out, unless it comes up! I'm halfway through my WiP and it's only just been revealed that one of the characters has a sister (she goes to visit him in hospital). There was no point in me dumping it in anywhere else and if you think about your own background you tend not to think 'I'm 25, I have a brother, I had a traumatic childhood' etc. etc. just as you say.

[SJAB]

For me, I give what information I feel is needed to allow the reader to create the character in their mind's eye. I don't feel I have to do one ( no info) or the other (tonnes of info). As long at the information fits the scene and moves the plot on in some way I use it.

The best way to explain how I do it is a couple of examples.;

First;

“Mother doesn’t like a knot behind, Aunt Agnes,” Victoriasaid, as she peered at the needle full of coloured thread, which Agnes had just handed her. “She says it makes the fabric lumpy.”

Agnes looked at the crumbled,stained scrap of fabric in the girl’s hand and wondered how Victoria’s mother, Elizabeth, would notice a knot among all the misplaced and caught stitches. “I know, but it is a smallone and easily hidden.” The girl smiled at Agnes’ remark, and set about drawing the sun yellow silk through the fabric, her small tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated.

Sunday afternoons and the ritual of doing nothing after lunch still lingered in this house. Agnes’ cousin,Elizabeth, had been brought up a Methodist and as such the cannon of not doing any work that was not absolutely necessary on the Lord’s day had ruled her childhood. By nothing meant no housework or pottering in the garden. Even sewing was limited to embroidery. No mending of clothes or sheets on a Sunday.Though books other than the bible were now read and pictures such as the flower, well, it was supposed to be a rose that Victoria was working on, were sewn rather than bible quotations. Elizabeth still insisted it was a time of rest for all under her roof. Cook, housemaid and the children’s nurse had the afternoon and evening off. One, was, permitted to walk in the garden or even, if a male member of the family would oblige and keep you company, go to the town park. Mainly Sundays comprised of reading,sewing, talking and be bored out of your mind. Well, that was how it felt to Agnes. She had not even been able to wangle a duty day at the hospital. Matron had noticed that Agnes of all the trainee midwives worked more Sundays than the others. It was not fair Matron had declared. Quite right Agnes agreed. She had gotten out of the habit of doing nothing in September 1914 and did not intend going back to it willingly. For all the horror and turmoil she had witnessed in France during those years it had opened her eyes to many things. She had come to realise what was actually possible for a woman to do if the woman in question had the courage to do it.

Second


The Officer un-laced his fingers and took hold of the form,turning it round again to face Richard. “What of your family, your girlfriend,or wife? Wouldn’t you want to tell her you are safe and well?”

Richard tired not to smile. Did the Sturmbannfuhrer think he’d the look of a married man? Perhaps it was his age. Richard was twenty-seven. A good six years older than the rest of his crew and among his fellow pilots oneof the eldest. He’d had a life and a career as a teacher before the RAF. A working class lad made good, which to his father had been both a source of pride and an irritation. Richard knew his father worried that Richard first winning a Grammar school scholarship then training and working as a teacher before the war, had sold out to middle-class values and abandoned his roots.Richard’s volunteering for the RAF had done nothing to belay his father’s feeling. Richard had tried to explain that most of the lads he served with were working class. The image of upper-middle class daring-do pilots owed more to the films that had flickered across hundreds of picture house screens than fact. His last leave home had been a disjointed series of silences. Richard’s world revolved around B for Bertie and its crew. Civilian life with all its tangled relationships was no longer important to him. He’d forgotten how to function in it. He couldn’t grasp his parent’s obsession with the day to day struggle of rationing, bombing and the fact their only son had put himself in harm’s way, just as they could not comprehend his with a long black tube of metal and the men that flew in it.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Coragem

Looking back over some of my earlier work, I find a few examples of my characters recalling their pasts or family backgrounds. Sort of mini info dumps enabling them to introduce themselves, their motivations, the reasons why they have their present objectives.

There's nothing wrong with doing so - the main problem, so far as I understand it, is when an info dump stops the story.

If the act of recollection is pertinent to the scene, and helps carry the character's emotional arc, then there's nothing wrong with doing so at all.

In Game of Thrones, GRRM frequently refers to back story and characters, especially lineage, previous tournaments, and battles - not least because much of the current political tension originates from these, or relates to them directly.

And in Abercrombie's books, people always seem to remember something about the Dog Man or the Bloody Nine.

[Coragem]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

And in Abercrombie's books, people always seem to remember something about the Dog Man or the Bloody Nine.

Thanks all. Very good points.

I guess it's how it's done … and writer preference. Personally, I like the way Abercrombie does it; the way info about characters just comes through naturally in dialogue or brief thoughts. I mean, if someone mentioned the Blood Nine and you happen to have once seen him tear someone apart in single combat you would think of it or mention it, wouldn't you?

These days my writing has a harder edge than in the past – more grey areas, if you like. I think withholding info about characters' pasts (certainly stuff about their childhood, etc.) can make them seem harder, more grown up.

Taken to extreme, I've always sensed that a way to make characters really hard, tough, clever, or unyielding, is to not make them POVs at all – as soon as you're in a character's head you tend to see human weakness.

Coragem.

[Fairytale Jane]

I let my characters speak for themselves, so to speak. Their actions as well as behavior accounts for their past experiences and rearing. Think about the people one encounters on a daily basis. You don't know anything about them, but if you observe them you can draw inferences as to why they do certain things.