I’m a picky reader. I’m not shy about it. If I start a book and it doesn’t grab me quickly, I’ll put it down. I don’t know where I get it from ; my dad feels duty bound to finish any book he picks up. Not me. Books need to prove they deserve my time.

So I was on a train between Rome and Salerno last week (yeah, that’s bragging), and I started Ready Player One, a science fiction novel by Ernest Cline that’s apparently all the rage. And, if I hadn’t already promised someone that I would read it, I would probably have put it down.

It’s a short book, fewer than 350 little paperback pages. So it says a lot that the vast majority of the first 70 pages is backstory, with a couple of dialogues thrown in. Once I got past page 70, the action picked up and I actually started enjoying it. Before that? Drudgery.

Much of the problem is that it’s such a very simple plot for such a very complex milieu. Not much has to happen to carry the story forward, but if you’re going to understand any of the plot devices or riddles, you have to know all about the intricate culture and history of the world. This means that the author has to spoonfeed you every little piece of information for the action to make any sense.

To the author’s credit, very little of the information in those first 70 pages is Priority 3 information. You really do need to know most of it for what follows to make sense. But the end result is that the majority of  the beginning of Ready Player One is spent explaining the past, with very little time spent in the present. I wanted to put it down because I just didn’t care.

Which is disappointing, because the second half of the book is actually pretty good. If he’d hooked me from the beginning, I would have had no problem getting there.

I finished Ready Player One. I lay back on the hard, little hotel bed trying to figure out what the author could have done better. I couldn’t cut any of the backstory without weakening the book. I couldn’t add any action just for action’s sake. We just needed more–more character, more drama, more story.

Then, on the plane from Rome to DC, I started 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Oh, man, what a difference.

Ready Player One is Ernest Cline’s first novel. 11/22/63 is Stephen King’s umpteen millionth. It shows. I read the first five pages, leaned back my head, and sighed. This is what I was missing.

11/22/63‘s plot is every bit as complex as Ready Player One‘s in all the same ways, because the milieu of each book is inundated by the cultures of previous decades. And yes, the first 70 pages of 11/22/63 is largely backstory. But King does two things differently. First, most of that backstory takes place through dialogue, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is much more engaging than narrative. If Cline had found a way to deliver his backstory through dialogue instead of narrative, it would have kept my interest.

But what really got me was those first five pages. Before the backstory, he had a prologue with a scene from the protagonist’s life. It was simply a beautiful scene. It showed us the main character’s personality and exactly why we should love him. It led directly into the main plot. It even introduced a refrain that appears periodically throughout the rest of the book (“I’m not what you would call a crying man.”). It was essentially the perfect prologue.

Cline’s prologue was just more backstory, a scene that showed the personality of a character who was already dead when Cline started talking about him, and that character was just awkward. Then we started Chapter 1 with a main character who was basically flat throughout the first half. After all, it’s hard to develop a character when you’re spending most of your time describing things that happened before he was born.

That prologue symbolizes the difference between an okay book and a really good one. Character first, idea second.

I don’t know your book, but based on my work as an editor, there’s a pretty good chance there are ways you could be handling your backstory better. I provide you this tale of two novels as a demonstration of what to do and what not to do.

What should you not do? Inundate your reader with thick backstory without first giving us a reason to care about your real story.

What should you do? First let your readers really fall in love with your characters in the present, then worry about explaining the past. And when you do give us that backstory, don’t give it all as narrative. Use dialogue. Use internal monologue. Fill that backstory with character, so that we see it through the eyes of the people we’re getting to know.

Because your book is about them. Everything else is just a tool.

This article took two readthroughs.

Last week I introduced the Biographical Priority Index. It’s the handy-dandy system we can use to rate elements of a character’s backstory based on whether and when to introduce them. Priority 1 information is stuff we need to introduce as soon as practical (note that says practical, not possible; it’s awkward if you force information into scenes where it doesn’t belong). Priority 2 information is stuff we need to know, but not right away. That includes plot twists and the release of suspended information, as well as less important info – more on that in a moment. Priority 3 stuff gets included, but it’s only for flavor. Priority 4 stuff is left out.

When I think of a book that handles backstory well, I’m a little surprised to find that a minor novel by Dean Koontz is the first one that comes to mind. Koontz is a typewriting machine. He hammers away at 5,000 words a day and publishes at a prodigious rate. That means many of his stories tend to get formulaic, though he produces some gems every now and again (I’ve mentioned the Odd Thomas series before as an example). His book The Good Guy has stuck with me. It’s an enjoyable read, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean by the different priorities of information.

Avast, there be spoilers ahead! I’m just dealing with the protagonist here; there isn’t near enough time to deal with the anima’s (love interest’s) backstory, or with the antagonist’s (that guy’s a real piece of work, too).

Koontz does some really great things with metaphors. He opens up The Good Guy with a real doozie:

Sometimes a mayfly skates across a pond, leaving a brief wake as thin as spider silk, and by staying low avoids those birds and bats that feed in flight.

At six feet three, weighing two hundred ten pounds, with big hands and bigger feet, Timothy Carrier could not maintain a profile as low as that of a skating mayfly, but he tried.

Am I right? We see that Timothy is a big guy in good shape. In character terms, we know instinctively that that probably means he’ll be called upon to accomplish physical feats of daring-do, so this is Priority 1 information to let us know what to expect from him. And notice that it’s not delivered like an ESPN stat. Koontz conveyed that info with class. It’s okay to spice up your descriptions every once in a while. We also see that he tries to maintain a low profile, which says a lot about his personality. Indeed, throughout most of the book, it’s obvious he’s done something or been somewhere, but he’s reluctant to say.

You may not know it yet, but that opening line also conveys a really great image of the theme of the book. Koontz paints us a picture of a tiny creature trying to hide from predators, then tells us that this is what Timothy wants but what he’s ultimately unable to have.

In fact, Timothy soon gets mistaken for a professional hitman and given a target to kill. He decides to try to help the target instead. He tells his friend Liam he’ll be gone without telling him why; then, in a great scene, he tells Liam’s wife, Michelle. Throughout the scene, we see that there’s definitely history here. Michelle has a glass eye and a prosthetic arm. What happened to her?

And then, toward the end of the scene, we get this exchange.

She seemed to hold tight to him, as if with ghost fingers, and she kissed the back of his hand.

“Thank you for Liam,” she said softly.

“God gave you Liam, not me.”

“Thank you for Liam,” she insisted.

There is Priority 1 information here. It’s that Tim at some level is responsible for Liam and Michelle being together. But that’s all the Priority 1 Koontz wants to give. It’s obvious that the rest is Priority 2. That’s what I meant earlier when I mentioned the release of suspended information. This scene suspends a big piece of backstory just out of sight. All that we’re given now is the present effect of that past event. That’s the best way to build up suspense regarding backstory. Show how that backstory affects your characters, but don’t show why until it’s necessary.

We really start to wonder about Tim’s past after he’s found the target (a pretty, available girl, of course) and is fleeing with her while the real hitman pursues them. After a brief car chase in which shots are exchanged, Tim gets out of the car and makes his stand in the middle of the street.

The glow of headlights bloomed, and a moment later the Chevy cut the corner.

Point-blank, at the risk of being run down, Tim squeezed off three shots, aiming not at the windshield, not at the driver’s-side window, but at the front tire as the car swept past him, fired two more rounds at the rear tire. He saw the front rubber deflate and peel, and maybe he got the back tire, too.

…

The pistol had a slick double-action trigger pull that felt like it broke at just about seven pounds.

The recoil-spring weight seemed to be about sixteen pounds, good enough for standard-pressure ammo.

The piece had felt remarkably comfortable in his grip.

He didn’t know what to think about that.

He told himself that not just any gun would have served him so agreeably, that the credit belonged entirely to this fine compact weapon, but he knew that he was lying to himself.

Okay, seriously, who is this guy? We know he has some kind of history he doesn’t like to talk about, and now all of a sudden he’s pretty darn handy with a handgun and he’s a total hoss in the face of an oncoming car. Again, Koontz leaves the backstory suspended. All we see is what effect the backstory has on the present, and that makes us wonder more and more about what it could be.

It’s the same effect as when you hold a dog biscuit just to the side of a dog’s head but tell him to wait. The dog continues to look at you, but you can see the muscles in his neck and jaw tense as he somehow manages to keep himself from snapping at your hand. That’s what you want to do to your readers.

Here’s the intriguing thing about The Good Guy. Normally the Great Reveal takes place right before the climax, so that the reader goes into the final moments of the story knowing who the character really is and what he’s taking into battle with him. It’s a solid enough plot device that it’s earned its place as a trope. But Koontz withholds the Priority 2 information until after the climax, after Tim takes out the real hitman. The thing is, in this case that’s okay. We know so much about Tim’s character (and the antagonist’s) that we have plenty of emotional need for the story to wrap up. Then it’s fine later, when the action has wound down, that we discover that Tim won the Medal of Honor in Iraq, that he saved dozens of fellow soldiers and civilians by demonstrating the ultimate courage under fire. Liam and Michelle were both soldiers under his command, explaining both her injuries and their romance. The effect is that we end the story nodding to ourselves, saying, “Yes, this makes sense.” It jives with what we already know.

I value The Good Guy because Koontz knows that he doesn’t have to throw the character’s history at you at the beginning. He waits to include it at the end. Tim’s Medal of Honor isn’t necessary for us to know who he is and what he’s about and to care about him. We care about him because we see him showing that same bravery in the present. Koontz is never shy about how Tim’s past affects him–we see it throughout the book–but that information absolutely takes priority over the backstory itself.

This article required three readthroughs.

One of my favorite things about being a writing coach is that I get to come up with my own terminology, and I can make it as serious or as frivolous as I like.

My unofficial list of rules of writing, which I’ll have to make official one of these days, is called “Thomas’s Rules of Writing.” I could just as easily call it “The Chicken List.” And, if it’s a quality list, generations from now someone could quote Chicken #5 in an English class and get extra credit for it.

All that is to say that, as we discuss character backstory today, I’ve come up with a handy guide for classifying various bits of character information. As much as I want to call it “The Deathray Plan,” or maybe something subtle like “Policy 13,” I’m going with “The Biological Priority Index.”

Simple. Straightforward. Effective.

Having constructed our characters through our prewriting packets and our improv exercises, we are left with a ton of information about our characters. How do we sort through it? More importantly, how do we decide what information is vital enough to include and what’s banal enough to excise?

If only there were some index by which we could measure the priority of biographical information.

Because, believe me, not all backstory is created equal. If I’m reading a book about a terrorist, I don’t want to know about his childhood bedwetting problem unless those wet sheets really mean something to the story. If not, leave it out. Fiction should be lean. Bloating is never pretty.

And even if information is important, there’s still the question of when to reveal it. In The Sixth Sense, we need to know right away that Bruce Willis is a child psychologist. But if we know from the beginning that he’s dead, the movie’s ruined. (That’s all a plot twist is, after all. It’s just appropriately timed backstory.)

So once you have your character’s backstory, you need to prioritize it. The BPI is a handy rubric for doing just that.

Priority 1 information is crucial to the story and should be revealed as soon as is practical.

Priority 2 information is crucial but should be withheld for dramatic effect.

Priority 3 information is nonessential but may provide color and insight into a character, milieu, or situation.

Priority 4 information is nonessential and should not be included.

How your backstory details are classified depends on the themes of your story. If you have two possible plotlines for the same character, one might emphasize his bedwetting history while the other emphasizes his relationship with the deceased. It all depends on where you want to go with your characters.

In our story about our terrorist – call him Carl – let’s say our theme is the moral consistency of people from different cultures. Carl therefore functions as an antihero who does some bad things for some good reasons. By the end of the story, we want him to do some good things for some good reasons.

Let’s build a rudimentary plot arc. The story begins when Carl assassinates a member of parliament. His immediate goal is to escape to safety. He accomplishes this but, at Plot Point 1, discovers that his brother has been arrested for the crime.

Carl’s new goal is to free his brother while remaining free himself. His efforts take us to Plot Point 2, where he sees how his actions have hurt the victim’s brother. Now racked with remorse, Carl struggles with himself until the climax, where he turns himself in and makes restitution for his crimes. Justice, and the plot, are satisfied.

This arc and our theme determine what backstory we will provide for Carl. The fact that he has a brother is definitely Priority 1, since it’s a major plot point later on. His reasons for the assassination are also Priority 1 because of the theme; if this were just a simple action story with no moral quandary, his motives would be Priority 3 or even 4.

What about Priority 2? That the victim has a brother is a good example of something that should take the reader by surprise. After all, this is from Carl’s point of view, and Carl may not know or care until he connects that fact with his own situation. Likewise for any information clarifying Carl’s moral development, since that’s the theme. The existence of Carl’s brother may be Priority 1, but the fact that Carl is the real father of his brother’s children and still feels guilt for that betrayal is information that can be held until later. The delayed revelation gives the reader new insight into why Carl tries so hard to redeem his brother.

Is there room for the bedwetting? Maybe. If it’s associated with, oh, his memories of his abusive father, it could be Priority 3 info and find a place in the plot; it will never be Priority 2 or 1.

Carl’s high school girlfriends are Priority 4. Whether he has a Traditional or Roth IRA is Priority 4. His favorite movie, what he dreamed last week, even the color of his eyes: all are Priority 4. Sure, you can make a case for them to be Priority 3 and include them, but at some point it’s just too much. You have to draw the line somewhere. You have to cut backstory in service to the plot, even if those individual elements are interesting in themselves.

What I want you to avoid is information overload. I’ve edited books where there was so much backstory, especially in the first chapter, that it stalled the plot. What happened before is incidental ; it’s what’s happening now that matters. If you find that your backstory is more interesting than your plot, consider setting your story in the past. There’s no shame in that. I’ve done it.

I’ll finish by being frank. As a reader, I don’t want to know your protagonist’s whole backstory. You may be proud of it. I’m happy for you. But if Jeannie is a jogging instructor, she needs to jog at some point in your story. If she never wears deodorant, make her pay for it. If she loves meatloaf, poison it or lose it.

Story over all.

This article took five readthroughs.