Crafting Backstory Without Slowing Your Story
Introducing character backgrounds is key to understanding their motivations and mindset. However, it's crucial to weave these elements seamlessly into your narrative, avoiding lengthy flashbacks that disrupt the present action. Here are some strategies to help you.
The 5 w’s of story – where, what, why, who and when – can all change to create variety and interest. None of these elements must change. The characters in your novel or your setting could remain fairly constant. Yet change opens up possibilities for new developments and intriguing new scenarios. These keep your novel exciting and interesting. To avoid your story stagnating in a single location, shift somewhere new – another town or country, from the city to the countryside or vice versa. Make sure any change of setting makes sense in relation to the story.
“Don't be afraid to cut sections that feel slow; a tighter narrative keeps players hooked.”
This is the first in a series of articles diving deep into game design and narrative. We'll be sharing more insights in upcoming posts. Let us know in the comments what topics you'd love to see covered next!
Game Dev Insights
It’s great that you share these tips with young and aspiring writers. Even though they may not be writing novels, I believe it will be very useful for them to learn something new from a really skilled writer like you. I’d be glad to hear some recommendations on how a writer can develop the plot without cutting down chapters (I often see it in the books of young writers). Anyway, thank you for this post, it is very informative!
Player Spotlight
I totally agree on your last point! It would be awesome to explore how to build authentic relationships between main characters. That's always a fascinating aspect.