Giving character background mid-story?

[scorpia95]

In my writing I'm trying to explain why my character is the way she is by giving away anecdotes from her previous encounters.

How do I effectively transition out of the real story into the anecdote without confusing the reader?

I've seen most people usually just italicize it when they do such things. I was wondering if there's a better way to do it?

 

[moncrief_the_advocate]

If you're writing this in the first person, you could do stream of consciousness. This is a fancy way of saying inner monologue.

Italics should be used sparingly and are not intended for entire sections.

Be careful with explanations/anecdotes. Make sure you are able to show and not tell a reader. I understand that you don't want to confuse the reader, but sometimes it worse to bore him/her.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Or write it in the third person and have the narrator give everyone her background.

 

[emap]

Make it part of a conversation. I mean unless the character you need the backstory to isn't fucking anyone there will be questions on everything he or she does and doesn't do.

Don't have to make it big involved passion speeches, usually the explanation is pretty simple. I mean, why don't you swallow? I was raised to believe that swallowing a man's seed is wrong because every male orgasm is a future child.

Simple direct, and explains so much in so little. You now know the woman is Catholic, so just about everyone that is Christian can think of thirty or forty other things she won't do, if she is a good Catholic.

 

[Bramblethorn]

In my writing I'm trying to explain why my character is the way she is by giving away anecdotes from her previous encounters.

How do I effectively transition out of the real story into the anecdote without confusing the reader?

I've seen most people usually just italicize it when they do such things. I was wondering if there's a better way to do it?

If you've got a lot of backstory, you can create a section break.

* * * * *

like that.

 

[scorpia95]

If you've got a lot of backstory, you can create a section break.

* * * * *

like that.

That's what I'm doing currently. But after the section break, the backstory is about 1k words. I feel like people will end up forgetting the main story and be more interested in the backstory.

For example, I have this part where a girl's dad doesn't question his daughter when he see's her doing something strange. To explain why he doesn't question her further I have to give his backstory. His backstory is actually way more interesting than the real story. I'm thinking that maybe I should just release them as standalone chapters..