After reading several novels promoted on Reedsy Discovery, I thought I’d treat myself to a well written book. I chose The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave. It was an Amazon Editor’s choice and it was on sale at just three bucks.

Mistake. It was better written than most self published efforts on Reedsy Discovery, just not by much. In fact, it shared a lot with A Reluctant Spy by Roselyn Teukolsky. Both novels feature a heroine who solves a murder. They are also written in the first person present tense even though they spend a tonne of their present tense narration revealing past events. In both of these works, I kept flipping back pages to see what tense the chapter started in.

I am currently reading The Next Big Thing by Andrew McLinden, a third book in a row written in first person, present tense. In this book, however, the use of first person reveals the workings of Danny’s, the main character, mind. When past events are introduced, they are in direct support of Danny’s current fixation. I’m only a few chapters in, but so far Danny’s first person narration is a great way to show what a complete ass Danny is.

As stated, The Night We Lost Him is better written than many self published works. The chapters featuring Liam and Cory are written in the third person past tense and the way the novel plays out, it would have been better if the whole thing were written in the same manner. Writing in the present tense to describe, explain or reveal past events seems like a poor use of present tense narration.

The present tense is great for pulling readers through fast paced current events. In The Night We Lost Him, neither the pace nor the current events benefit from the immediacy present tense narration provides. To be fair, somewhere around sixty percent through, Nora, the heroine, actually makes some progress. Then she goes to a music recital and dwells on a past relationship which has little to do with the solving a murder. A murder which seems disconnected to the stories focus, but

The past, in storytelling, is important. A friend of mine tries to distinguish her writing by keeping backstory off the page, but even she relinquishes. I used to say that backstory provides needed traction to stories. This was a response to the dreaded chapter two backstory dump which authors tend to fall into.

I’ve read a lot since then and developed a new theory: Backstory enhances character motivation. Imagine a character stalks redhead, loud-mouthed waitresses. Why? Perhaps his mother was a waitress, perhaps his father had obsession with Flo from the seventies sitcom Alice, and passed that obsession to the protagonist. In fiction, there needs to be a reason for characters’ actions, otherwise readers will believe the novel’s plot is based on random events. It’s characters engage in unusual behaviors for no good reason.

In typical novels, authors try to hook readers by putting their characters in high stress, and often action packed, situations and reveal their character’s main trait in the way manner in which they handle that situation. Thrilling, but meaningless. If the action or situation is interesting enough, it grabs readers attention. Then what.

Authors want to build on their character’s traits, but they can’t simply replicate the first chapters action or stress. Readers need to gain a deeper understanding of the character. Too often, authors indulge in a backstory dump in the second chapter. This technique gives readers needed character information allowing authors to further entangle their characters in plot events, but a simple backstory dump can lose readers. Let’s face it, backstory can be, often is, boring.

In both A Reluctant Spy and The Night We Lost Him, attention to past events through long narrative passages dulls the story and turns off readers. In both cases, the first person protagonist seems isolated in the world. They both have work and families, but they don’t have friends. Reading their long narratives seemed odd. Why wouldn’t their authors give them friends?

One reason is that friends have lives too. This means widening the story to incorporate more characters who must deal with their own problems needing more backstory which, in first person narration, means more long, boring passages about topics the first person is unlikely to know about.

I reject that logic. The great thing about friends is that you know them and they know you. You can talk through, and often do, issues both present and past. Had these protagonists had good friends, they could have gotten together over lunches, drinks, movie nights, or whatever and discussed what’s happening in their lives. In these discussions past events can be related to current problems and long narrative backstory passages could have been avoided.

I write this knowing that in my last novel, Bote Manchas Metro, my main character (actually in this novel, it is hard to identify a main character), Ralph Botogne, is a misanthrope who does not have any friends. In his chapter, I resorted to long narrative passages to give his backstory.

None of my beta readers complained. Their usual complaint centers on my overuse of dialog. Yep. I try to get backstory in by putting characters together, often in groups of four or more, and getting them to talk, a lot.

Although I may rely on dialog to reveal past events too much, I think doing something like that would have made both of their novels a better read. The technique fits in better with first person present tense than long narrative passages which invariably slip into the past tense or feel like that present tense is overly focused on the past.