Die, Back Story! Die die die!

I'm about a third of the way through the edits and rewrites of Draft 2. Up to chapter 10, it was pretty smooth sailing. I rewrote three chapters completely and excised a lot of useless crap from the others. The story isn't appreciably shorter, but it's much much better.

Now I am editing a chapter that had a gigantic indigestible bolus of exposition in it. Back story, not to put too fine a point on it, inelegantly wedged into a scene where two of my main characters are walking to a breakfast rendezvous with a third.

Back story should stay in the back.

I've been procrastinating and goofing around for the last couple of days, working myself up into a frenzy trying to figure out a way to keep this exposition in. But it just won't fly. Maybe if I were writing another Tolkienesque ring/sword quest story, I could do it. The oral tradition of the storyteller fits into the medieval mindset more easily.

But I've already established that my characters have a more modern sensibility. Their technology is about equivalent to ours circa 1800. They have books. When they want to learn about their history, they read. There aren't any bards standing around declaiming the great tales of ancient lore in stentorian voices while strumming a mandolin. A military man in his mid-thirties wouldn't explain the history of an ancient artifact to a boy in his teens while they're walking to breakfast!

I guess it finally dawned on me that I can just let the story speak for itself. There's a gigantic artifact called the Riverwall that plays a major role in the story. It influences every aspect of the relations between two of the most important countries. I have a detailed and LONG back story that describes every important event that led up to the creation of the Riverwall.

For some reason I keep thinking I have to shovel that into the book itself. After all, I spent three months on that back story! I want someone to read it! It's good! It's interesting!

And as it turns out, it's doesn't belong in my book. Oh, I can hint. I can allude. I can dangle enticing mysteries in front of my readers with the promise, sure to be fulfilled, that their curiosity will be satisfied.

What I can't do—and what I'm gradually coming to accept—is that I can't just stop the action while I come out and describe to the audience just what the hell is going on.

That might've worked for the Chorus in Henry V but it doesn't work for modern readers. So I'll eliminate those ugly blocks of exposition. I'll hint and I'll allude. Keeping it mysterious is part of the fun. I've been watching "Lost" for five seasons now and there are still questions posed in season one that haven't been answered.

Besides, that back story would make a hell of a prequel.