Back-story
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In narratology, a back-story (also back story or backstory) is the history behind the situation extant at the start of the main story. This literary device is often employed to lend the main story depth or verisimilitude. A back-story may include the history of characters, objects, countries, or other elements of the main story. Back-stories are usually revealed, sketchily or in full, chronologically or otherwise, as the main narrative unfolds. However, a story creator may also create portions of a back-story or even an entire back-story that is solely for his or her own use in writing the main story and is never revealed in the main story. In role-playing games, a character’s back-story is usually called his or her background.
The dramatic revelation of secrets from the backstory is a useful term for forming the story, recommended as far back as Aristotle's Poetics.
[edit] Examples of back-stories
- Arguably the most extensive back-story ever created is that for Vyasa's ancient epic Mahabharata, which was one of the longest epics ever written with a total of over 90,000 verses (over 2 million words). The core story of the Mahabharata was originally 24,000 verses, while the rest of the epic consists of additional back-story, as well as numerous side stories.
- J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings has a very extensive back-story; much of it was published posthumously in The Silmarillion and other books. (Actually, this back-story existed long before Tolkien ever decided to write the novel.) Other fantasy authors, notably Robert Jordan in his Wheel of Time series, have followed suit. J. K. Rowling's back-story for the Harry Potter books is quite elaborate.
- The Metal Gear series has an extensive back-story, with each game in the series expanding on the back-story of previous games, while the manuals contain further additional back-story.
- The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII expands on the elaborate back-story of Final Fantasy VII through plot details revealed in sequels, prequels and side stories.
- The back-story of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past focused on an ancient legend happening long ago in Hyrule. What really happened on that legend was revealed on the fifth Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
- In science fiction, Frank Herbert's Dune series has an extensive back-story, which has allowed other authors to write a series of prequels based on it.
- When George Lucas wrote the original Star Wars movies, he wrote a back-story to explain where the characters came from. That backstory became the source of a prequel trilogy of movies and the Expanded Universe.
- The third Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, begins with a scene set during protagonist Indiana's childhood, explaining where he acquired his hat, his whip, the scar on his chin and his fear of snakes; this in turn led to the television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which can be seen as a back-story to the movie trilogy. The opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is expanded upon in the video game Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb.
- The movies Memento and Irréversible feature the novel orientation of being told backwards in time, scene by scene, with the concluding scenes occurring first, and so in some sense they may be considered as entirely comprising back-story. An episode of Seinfeld had a similar sequence following the story of an Indian Wedding and Kramer's argument with Franklin Delano Romanowski.
[edit] Peculiar attributes of back-stories
In a shared universe more than one author may share the same back-story. The later creation of a back-story that conflicts in some way with a previously written main story may require the adjustment device known as retroactive continuity.
