The Importance of Backstory Pt. 3 - Research
Before you can know, you have to learn. World don’t just emerge from creative scratch, unfortunately. To have a world with no gravity or more or less gravity than earth, you must understand gravity itself. Not in depth physics, but just in a general way.
As I stated in a previous post, there is a combination in fiction writing of writing what you know and what you don’t know. However, there is this thing about knowing what you don’t know…
Okay, before I get too confusing, I’ll explain. If, let’s say, the power to control the weather exists, then you don’t technically know how it works unless you actually have that power and maybe not even then. However, you do know how that power works on your world.
Where basic research for backstory comes in is that you should know that by shifting a wind here or there, it creates a butterfly effect for weather systems around the world. Perhaps your story is not so grand a scale so as that would come into play or it simply doesn’t come into play anyway. The key is that you know it so you can write about it with that much more confidence in your tone, whether or not you decide to employ the knowledge or tell your reader the information.
Summing up on backstory: yes, you do need it. No matter how much or little you have, it still lends a key part to having an original and confident voice on the page as well as for being a storyteller in any medium.
November 10th, 2006 at 11:12 am
I like how you are taking time to try and educate unpublished writers. It’s great that you are reaching out in that way.
Sara
November 10th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
I just do what makes me happy. If it happens to help other people, all for the better.