Center of Gravity

A common issue I see in indie fiction especially is the back story. Back stories are fine, even downright essential at times. But some authors let them bog down the story.

It doesn't matter how critical this character will be, later on. If we are spending an inordinate amount of time checking in on some character that's almost entirely unconnected from the existing plot and other characters, hearing about them is exhausting. Yeah, I'm not an idiot, I know they are going to come into play later. But every chapter where that doesn't happen tries my patience.

There are tools for this. Referencing them in passing while leaving their full back story for a flashback is good, but not always an option. Sometimes you can just let them show up, unannounced, later. But that's also not always acceptable, either.

What I like to do is simply maintain what I call a center of gravity character. This character, or small group of characters, operates as a metaphorical introduction for other characters, having some connection to them. They are often important, but not the main character - like C3P0 and R2D2 in the original Star Wars.

Most importantly, these characters don't need to actually introduce anyone, through dialogue or otherwise - they merely exist as a connection that anchors any new characters to the running storyline. So instead of a free floating entity we are forced to hear about, we have at least some idea how they will relate to the actual plot. And even better, these expectations don't even need to pan out. They can be subverted. All that matters is they better frame them so it doesn't feel like such wasted time.

(As an aside, though, this doesn't excuse excess description and back story instead of plot. It just makes necessary exposition not feel quite so burdensome.)