Another lesson learned . . .

This one's about backstory.

Writing a choose your own adventure novel gives me the opportunity to give my heroine a different backstory in each thread. The basic backstory is that she was raised in Africa on a chimpanzee refuge, but fled at age 15; our story starts 15 years later. The reason she fled can totally change, though, which is fun. So far I've had her flee a homicidal insane father, and flee to establish her independence from her radical chimp activist parents, and there will be several other reasons, too.

So it's fun to consider radically different backstory possibilities, and see the impact of motivations (she fled b/c of fear) vs the primary facts (she started a new life as a private investigator).

But the main thing about backstory? Most of the threads don't need it at all, beyond brief references to the basic facts. I've been avoiding backstory in a lot of threads because it just adds to the complexity (is it this thread where she killed her mother? or was she kidnapped by the religious cult in this one?) - so I've only gone into the deep backstory when it's absolutely necessary. And 90% of the time, it is not necessary. People want to read story, not backstory.

Just two things to keep in mind when you're launching into a 5,000 word flashback about your heroine's childhood - consider a bunch of backstories before settling on the best one; and whenever possible, just skip the backstory altogether.

About 3k words to go on the nano novel, and then I'll be an official winner.