The Biggest Memoir Mistake: When Too Much Backstory Derails Your Narrative

Today’s post is by writer and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison.

My dislike of the game Red Light, Green Light is Di Di’s fault.

When we were both five, Di Di frequently gathered crowds in our apartment complex’s courtyard to play it. At the start of each game, she’d stand at one end of the field and yell, “Green light,” inviting us to step or leap forward as we all tried to be the first to reach her. A few paces in, she’d stop us with a gleeful, “Red light.” Early on, these pauses lasted a few seconds, but soon minutes passed before she’d let us progress toward the finish line.

One day, after saying “Red light,” Di Di ran inside for a drink and was gone so long that we wondered if the game had ended. A few kids quit; the rest of us vowed never to play with her again.

Flashbacks are a lot like this game. Every time you trek back in time, your story halts. If those stops are too frequent or too lengthy, readers lose sight of the story you’re trying to tell—or worse, they get bored and set your book down.

Extended backstory moments don’t just suspend your memoir’s forward motion. They can bloat your word count, and because this content often feels precious to you, it can be incredibly difficult to cut.

As a writing coach, I understand these pitfalls; yet, as a memoirist, I also feel the powerful urge to not just write about the past, but to find every possible reason to keep it in my manuscript.

What compels us to write about the story behind the story in our memoir

Writing about humorous past events is delightful. The tough stuff aids our understanding of what we’ve gone through. When our lives are complex, or our experiences have been dismissed, penning our personal histories helps us untangle the knotted experiences we’ve lived through and allows us to express the inexpressible.

Events from our past that are associated with powerful emotions feel significant to us. That intensity can act like a Batman-style beacon in the sky, signaling that these moments belong in our books. Some will, but most won’t.

How can we discern what’s meant for the reader and what’s just for us?

To answer this question, let’s explore how writing backstory scenes benefits us.

In early drafts, we bear witness to our experiences so we can answer the question: What happened to me? As we write, and make sense of the past, deeper, more complex questions emerge alongside unexpressed emotions that must be worked through. Writing and revising backstory content helps us understand our motivations, which can lead to insights that clarify our narrative arcs.

This process is why memoirs often take much longer to write than fiction. Committing to it often gives writers the distance required to see the story readers need rather than simply focusing on what they wish to tell.

Here’s how that content gets us in trouble.

At the outset, many of us begin with meandering drafts, outlines, or timelines that span decades. While we might intuitively know the story begins with a specific high-stakes moment, many writers quickly backtrack to catch the reader up on key events that impact the narrator’s behavior and psyche.

Some of this urge to delve into the past stems from the challenge many memoirists face: They are new to storytelling, and this is their first book. They don’t know what they don’t know.

Another factor may be trauma that makes it difficult to trust the reader or fears that the complexities of our world might lead to misunderstandings or unintended interpretations.

Then there’s the desire to tell “my truth,” which can initially feel like “my whole, unadulterated, no-holds-barred complete truth about everything.”

So, we write and write and write—sometimes hundreds of thousands of words. Occasionally, we write so much that we lose ourselves in the process and end up drowning in material because, while we’ve curated a clear record of everything that happened, how those events are connected—or what story they—tell eludes us.

This might sound like every draft with too much backstory is a hodgepodge of events or a chaotic mess of stories and themes that are difficult to follow. That’s far from true.

I’ve read manuscripts by hardworking, talented writers who’ve put immense effort into rendering their scenes well, artfully stringing them together, and pulling thematic threads through in a way that feels cohesive—except that what’s been pieced together is 30,000 words over the expected length for a book in this genre.

While every writer (raising my hand here) hopes their story is the exception that justifies those extra words, 99.999% won’t win that prize. Even when a publisher accepts a longer book or asks for more content, they’re rarely interested in more backstory. For example, when one of my clients was awarded an extra 10,000 words for her manuscript, the publisher wanted more at the end—not the middle. In fact, they trimmed the flashbacks we’d already pared down, making the book’s backstory even leaner.

So, how do you handle this?

Identify your forward-moving story, sometimes called your front story.

For example:

• In The Only Way Through Is Out, it’s the period in the middle of Suzette Mullen’s marriage when she questioned and then embraced her sexuality, making some painful yet necessary changes to live as her authentic self.
• In The Leaving Season, it’s Kelly McMasters’ young adult life just before meeting her husband through their divorce, and the ways they left places and eventually each other.
• In What My Bones Know, it’s Stephanie Foo’s journey from discovering she has CPTSD to finding viable treatments.

Everything outside your front story’s timeline is your memoir’s backstory. Write as much as you need to process unresolved feelings and truly understand the context of this story and your narrator’s motivations. But early on, refrain from adding backstory moments to your memoir. Instead, place these moments in a file labeled “backstory”—or use the term Sarah Chauncey shared during our recent interview: the “candy jar.”

Here’s why: Once you add these moments to your memoir, they will feel like part of THE STORY. That will intensify your attachment to them, making them extremely difficult to cut.

I’m pausing here because I can hear the grumbles through the ether. But what if I KNOW this moment belongs in my book, and I KNOW exactly where it should be placed?

It’s your story. If you believe something belongs, include it, especially if leaving it out stalls your progress. But even if you’re 1,050% certain it’s a keeper, hold that certainty lightly, especially if this is your first memoir. You will be surprised by how your story evolves as you revise it.

Now, back to your candy jar: As you write your moments, separate them into three groups:

1. Moments that explain your narrator’s behavior in the front story (context)
2. Pivotal moments that led to significant insights when you wrote about them
3. Highly traumatic memories

Context moments will likely work best early in your manuscript, while insights might appear later. A few highly traumatic experiences might belong in your memoir if they directly relate to your book’s journey, but as you revise, you may find that many were essential for you to write just for yourself. That healing work is just as valuable as what you share with your readers.

Once you’ve grouped your moments, revisit them often. Listen to what they’re trying to tell you so you can pinpoint their role in your story—or how you might repurpose them as essays or social media posts that support your author platform or book launch. Once you know what truly belongs, your final task is to identify where and how to strategically insert your backstory material so that instead of creating something that feels like a never-ending game of Red Light, Green Light, everything you include propels your story forward.

Lisa Cooper Ellison

Lisa Cooper Ellison is an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and host of the Writing Your Resilience podcast. She works and writes at the intersection of storytelling and healing, and uses both her personal experiences and clinical training to help writers turn tough experiences into art. Lisa’s essays and stories have appeared on Risk! and in The New York Times, HuffPost, Hippocampus Literary Magazine, and Kenyon Review Online, among others.