'The North', or my thoughts on back story

There’s something mysterious about the signs on the motorway that say, simply ‘The North.’ They hint at a vague arctic otherworld, a magical tundra, icicles, snow sculpture. I’m driving to Scotland for Christmas, the car full to the gills with presents, children, hampers of food, boxes of wine. The signs fill us all with trepidation, excitement. The reality may be the drab A1 stretching interminably wet and grey, up to Leeds, Doncaster, Newcastle. But ‘The North’ whispers ‘possibility’ to us,‘the unknown’. And these signs seem to echo down the years. I’ve made this journey more times than I can count. As a five year old, in the back of our parents’ Morris traveller,when the M1 was a new motorway, proclaiming ‘the North’ proudly, the first road ever to stretch all the way from the South. As a teenager, in stuffy coaches with boyfriends. In cranky old cars, friends piled into the back. Then when my own children were babies, toddlers, teenagers, and now almost adults themselves. I've made it to celebrate, or to unwind, or to visit ill relatives, to funerals, at times of euphoria and times of great sadness. We plough through the rain, past the cooling towers at Doncaster, the massive chimneys belching steam into the damp air. Past service stations and Costa signs, almost blinded by the spray from juggernauts and tankers. Tension drops off me beyond Scotch Corner. Across the A66, the Pennines roll into the distance, layers of steep purple hill and dale, snow in the shadows, layers of cloud slipping away from one another to reveal a spectacular sunset, golden light fading to pink and amber. Bare trees silhouetted against the sky, some frail, lace-like, others dense like fur. It’s midwinter, just four o’clock. Night chases us as we go, dark behind, pale in front. And, as we drive, I think about the past, how as one gets older, it layers itself like the hills, rolling into the distance. And I think about back story and how one has to make decisions about how much and how little back story to reveal about a character, at the point you have chosen to focus on in their life. The back story has to have relevance to your character’s development. But the older a character is, the more potential back story they have - is it their childhood that matters in this story? Or later relationships ? Their first failed attempts at sex, perhaps, or their experience of depression. Is it a sense of not matching up to parental expectations, or a disastrous love affair, or is it something more recent? Responsibilities that gather as children grow up, other people die, leave, move on. Characters all have back stories, but only some is of interest, and it’s picking those bits, teasing them out that’s a challenge in a novel. In Tideline Sonia’s back story is integral to the way she behaves now, we visit it often, through her memories, her yearning and regret over her intense relationship with Seb. The two central characters in my new novel have a lot of past between them to be trawled through. I need to know all of it, of course, but only elements of this past are of interest to the reader, it’s spotting those elements, knowing which part of their own particular journeys need lighting up,which layers most impact on their actions now. That’s the challenge. Then it’s knowing how to weave them in so there’s just enough, but not too much, so the reader can glimpse what they need to, without being blinded, so interest is evoked, questions raised, and revelations can be made. The blue signs indicating the North have dropped off. This one proclaims ‘Welcome to Scotland,’ we’re crossing the border at last. The kids do their traditional wave goodbye to England, and we set off along the Solway Coast Road, into the dark, the clear sky studded with stars. And it feels as if my own back story, my own family’s back story rolls away like the hills into the dark behind us and I wonder which parts of it will be lit up, impact on us this time, as we move towards a new chapter about to unfold up here in The North