Recollection
Recollection is the fiction-writing mode whereby a character calls something to mind, or remembers it. A character's memory plays a vital role for conveying backstory, as it allows a fiction-writer to bring forth information from earlier in the story or from before the beginning of the story. Although recollection is not widely recognized as a distinct fiction-writing mode, the use of recollection is commonly used by authors of fiction. Recollection could be considered a subset of introspection (as a fiction-writing mode), but its role in developing backstory separates it from the other thoughts of a character.
As with other fiction-writing modes, effective presentation of recollection has its own unique issues and challenges.
For example, Orson Scott Card observes that "If it's a memory the character could have called to mind at any point, having her think about it just in time to make a key decision may seem like an implausible coincidence . . . ." Furthermore, "If the memory is going to prompt a present decision, then the memory in turn must have been prompted by a recent event."
Read more about this topic: Backstory
Famous quotes containing the word recollection:
“I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies—every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The business eternally passing thro’ my mind and occupying it exclusively, wipes out at once the recollection of things which have been presented to it but once, and on which it has had no occasion to recur.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)