Eiji Tunsinagi

My story has a lot of backstory-----but the events are spread across hundreds of years. I dont want to actually show these evens occur at all, but still explain them to the characters in a way that isnt long and cliche. Any advice?

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Sam

Well, you could try some of the following:

Have your characters endure the teachings of a historian at a school or some such. Or, if schooling does not really fit in with your story, you could include snippets from a half-watched TV program.

If your world allows it, you could have past fantastical events retold in the fashion of a campfire story. This would probably be more interesting to read than the first simply because such stories are designed to entertain.

You could also have characters stumble upon old manuscripts of carvings during their adventures. This would be especially apt if one of your characters is a scholar or the like.

As long as there's a sense of continuity, I don't really think it matters how you portray the past — just make sure it isn't boring.

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gabriella

I'm doing the same thing... my character lived for over a thousand years, before he was born again, which is when my current series takes place, but there's so much that happened to him in his previous life (and I just love him so much) that I'm making another series about it.

But for the current series, since I need to include alot of what happened in his past life, I have him telling what happened, I have tapestries/carvings that depict certain parts of history, rumors (since he's infamous), as well as vague references that allows me to do a few recaps before or while introducing them.

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Talia_Brie

In some cases you'll be able to get away with your central, current day characters knowing about the previous events and talking about them as if they are common knowledge - Tolkein did this a lot. Some will also have the feeling of legends, or campfire tales - Robert Jordan does this a lot.

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Emma LB

Talia Brie's idea is good. They don't have to talk about it even. Some situation might be enough to remind your main character of their history lessons with this terrible history teacher...
If this history is not common knowledge... You said you want to explain the events to your characters? Finding ancient scrolls is one option then, but that's pretty standard stuff. They could go and search for some mad historian who is rumoured to have read to many books and gone totally mad, or maybe some witch who doesn't look into the future but the past? That sort of thing might be more interesting.

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gabriella

Personally, I can't stand it when there's passages being recited from a book in a book - it's like watching tv of someone watching tv.

I also don't like it when people tell stories of something, unless it's a story of themselves.

But then, that's me.

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Emma LB

Yes, I totally agree, if you do use the option of them finding scrolls or history books, then just say that they read through it and then slowly reveal what (important) information they gathered from those scrolls in your next few chapters.

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