Backstory

The term back-story (also background story, back story or backstory) has meaning in both fiction and nonfiction.

Back-story in fiction
In fiction or film, a back-story is the history behind the situation at the start of the main story. A back-story may include the history of characters, objects, countries, or other elements of the main story. As a literary device back-story is often employed to lend depth or verisimilitude to the main story. The dramatic revelation of secrets from the back-story, as a useful technique for developing a story, was recognized as far back as Aristotle, in Poetics.

Back-stories are usually revealed, partially 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 own use in writing the main story and is never revealed in the main story.

Back-story may be revealed by various means, including flashbacks, dialogue, direct narration, summary, recollection, and exposition.

Recollection
Recollection is the fiction-writing mode whereby a character calls something to mind, or remembers it. A character's memory plays a vital role for conveying back-story, as it allows a fiction-writer to bring forth information from earlier in the story or from before the beginning of the story. Although recollection is not widely recognized as a distinct fiction-writing mode, the use of recollection is commonly used by authors of fiction. Recollection could be considered a subset of introspection (as a fiction-writing mode), but its role in developing back-story separates it from the other thoughts of a character.

As with other fiction-writing modes, effective presentation of recollection has its own unique issues and challenges. For example, Orson Scott Card observes that "If it's a memory the character could have called to mind at any point, having her think about it just in time to make a key decision may seem like an implausible coincidence . . . ." Furthermore, "If the memory is going to prompt a present decision, then the memory in turn must have been prompted by a recent event." (Card 1988, p. 113).

Shared universe
In a shared universe more than one author may shape the same back-story. The later creation of a back-story that conflicts with a previously written main story may require the adjustment device known as retroactive continuity.

Back-story in games
In role-playing games, a character’s back-story is usually called his or her background. On the MUX, backstory can be researched for FCs or made up and included in the application for OCs.