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 |   A month-long novel-planning challenge with prizes galore. |
We are still in protagonist backstory territory today (the 5th), including the contest, for those doing that. Now, this beggars the question: how much back story is too much? How long is a piece of string? The thing is, not all of the back story is going to make it into your final work. Now, a lot of writers feel that because they have done all the hard work of creating a world, a character, whatever, then, goshdarnit, they are going to let the reader know how much work they did and cram it all into their final novel. Not necessary! Chekhov's gun matters! A personal example: In my book Invasive Species, looking at my notes, the narrator (sidekick to the main character):  175 cm tall 90kg 33 yrs old* brown hair brown eyes grew up in rural SA* parents retired to the state capital* grew up with 1980s music and films care of his parents* first girlfriend was in yr 8 (age 13) and they stayed together for 3 years did standard maths , English, biology, Australian history and physical education-health for matriculation, gaining an ATAR of 74 started at uni doing a phys ed teaching degree; switched after 1st year to general JP/Prim teaching degree graduated uni with a GPA of 6.1 dated a fellow teaching student all through uni, but she didn't want to move to the country like him, so they split in his early 20s had a habit of speeding; came close to losing his licence twice worked through university at McDonalds; now cannot stand to even smell itAnd so on, and so on... for around a page of hand-written stuff. How much made it into the story? Everything marked with an asterisk * made it in. The rest is there, in my notes, and informed the character (especially his grades), but were not mentioned and, a lot of it, meant nothing. But it did mean he was filled out completely. To look at this sort of thing a little more in depth, here's something I prepared earlier: And for those interested, here is the book (published by AM Ink!)
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