If you hang out on Psychology podcasts or read psychology, you may have heard of a term called sludge. It is related to the concept of “nudging,” which is the idea that entities (governments, businesses, schools…) can help people make better choices by making choosing the better option easier. Or, just make choices easier by removing friction.
Sludge is the opposite of nudges. It slows down choosing by increasing friction. Like nudging, sludge is neutral, it can be used for good or ill. There is good sludge, such as when a department needs to slow down requests for service by adding a little friction to the process—think of the technology department at a school making teachers fill out an online request for tech help. It isn’t that they mind providing service, but it needs to be worth completing. By making teachers request help through a form, the tech department cuts down the number of frivolous requests. If you really need help, you’ll fill out the form. If you just want to grab a techie in the hall and slow down their day by making them figure out that you forgot to plug something in correctly, then you’ll have to wait. Maybe long enough to figure it out yourself.
Bad sludge is like government bureaucracy—it slows people down for no good reason and may in fact lead to them not getting services that they need. Think filing your taxes in the US—unnecessarily complex compared with most other Western countries. Or the recent FAFSA debacle. Sludge in action.
Now, think about backstory. Backstory is like sludge in your novel. It is friction that slows the pace of the story. Sometimes backstory is necessary for context, but like bad sludge it can really slow readers down. Make sure that when you use backstory, it is necessary, like good sludge. It is serving a purpose in the scene rather than just slowing the reader down for no good reason.
So, are you using sludge/backstory effectively in your novel?
NOTE: The inspiration for this post came from listening to the Brainy Business podcast, episode 384, available here.