I am reading through my own manuscript and making a list of research and writing I need to do. I am also getting a stronger sense of the structure, and will probably deposit the draft, piece by piece, into Scrivener. In particular, I am looking at how I will interweave the back story. The question of how to do this well has come up a lot in the Book Writing World and I am finding that intuition and the emotional shape of the book are my guides.

Here are five tips to consider when interweaving back story into the central narrative (or front story) of your book:

1) Sometimes the back story counterbalances the front story, one up and one down in emotional tone.

2) Sometimes the back story interrupts the front story to create suspense and to layer in more of the story. In turn, picking up the front story again may interrupt the back story and create suspense about what happens in the back story.

3)The front story should, in small and sometimes large ways, anticipate the back story, so it does not come as a surprise but rather as a longed for set of answers (in vivid scene) to questions we’ve been nursing for a while.

4) Imagery and theme as well as story may carry across the front and back stories, so that they build closely on one another and are part of a whole.

5) Voice is important to consider when introducing back story. If you have a more immediate first person or close third person narrator in your front story, is this person reflecting with more distance on the events of the past, or are you shifting close to the past narrator as well?