Backstory

A backstory (or background information) is "a set of events that establishes a character's past or that precedes and leads up to the main plot." The article lists the delivery modes: "flashbacks, dialogue, direct narration, summary, recollection, and exposition." In acting, backstory also names the fictional history an actor builds to prepare for a role; for writers it is the mass of facts that exists before page one, whether or not the reader ever sees them.

Backstory is a continuity surface, not just a technique: every established past fact becomes canon that later chapters are read against, and a contradiction reads as a plot hole. Web serials are exposed twice, since publish order is fixed: what a character knew in chapter ten cannot be quietly changed in chapter two hundred. Keeping backstory in the story bible is the standard defense, alongside timeline tracking for flashbacks.