On Background: How Fiction Writers Can Follow the Trail to their Next Story
- Jun 1
- 5 min read
Introduction
"When I talk with someone on background...I am not asking for the source to provide me with statements that I can quote in my story. I am just talking with someone who knows more about a topic than I do and is willing to tell me what some of the big issues are."
—Dean Nelson in Talk to Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like a Pro
"On background" is a journalism term meaning the information provided by a source can be published, but not attributed to them by name.
“On background, a senior official said the policy is under review.”
“On background, a senior epidemiologist described challenges in collecting accurate infection data.”
“On background, several government officials said the negotiations are at a standstill.”
Journalists use “on background” conversations to understand the world before they publicly explain it. Fiction writers can use the same approach to understand a world before inventing what's inside it.
Table of the Contents
What "On Background" Means for Fiction Writers
The idea of background for journalists is usually in preparation for a bigger interview for a big story. Journalists use background conversations to understand:
systems
cultures
tensions
vocabulary
emotional stakes
contradictions
No matter the genre, a percentage of all six of the above have a place in fiction stories. A fiction writer researching firefighters, divorce attorneys, ER nurses, casino workers, indie wrestlers, or city council politics don't only need accurate (Googleable) details. Beyond accuracy, writers need:
what insiders joke about
what they never publicly say
what annoys them
what they fear
what everyone pretends is normal
On background interviews reveal to the writer what angle the story wants to take. Talking to people about your research topic helps shape the story little by little and gives ideas you couldn't have conceived without them.
Why Fiction Writers Need "Background Thinking"
Can you google a nurse's daily tasks? Sure. But when you talk to a nurse, they can describe sneakers squeaking at 3am, charting while crying, and eating peanut butter crackers over a trash can.
Can you ChatGPT what a detective does? Sure. But when you talk to a detective, they can describe the smell of wet drywall in abandoned houses, the silence after a raid, or how nobody finishes coffee during a homicide week.
Fiction writers should research like literary journalists and write like emotional historians. Google gives data. Conversations give texture.
What you tend to miss with surface-level research isn’t the data/information. Google can't tell you how people talk when they’re tired. Or what gets joked about instead of explained. Or the way institutions sound when they’re stretched too thin. The little tells that nobody writes down anywhere, but everybody inside the world immediately recognizes.
What Background Reveals That Surface Research Cannot
Most weak research focuses on correctness. Things like what tools there are, the terminology, chronology of the practice, certain uniforms, and applicable geography.
Which...yeah you ought to be accurate but your readers aren't picking up your book because they love reading dictionaries.
Fiction writers can learn from journalists in how they acquire their information. They learn to listen for friction:
what frustrates insiders
where systems fail
what people resent
what people normalize
what they refuse to plainly say
The above points will give your story immersive, emotional, context. Here's an example:
A hospital procedural superficially researched gives writers:
medical jargon
triage systems
realistic equipment
Background-style research gives writers:
nurses hiding in supply closets to cry
residents forgetting what month it is
cafeteria politics
the soundscape of overnight shifts
dark humor as emotional survival
Without this kind of background thinking, fiction can end up technically correct but emotionally thin. Everything is in the right place, but nothing feels like it’s been lived in. The dialogue works, the details check out—but the world doesn’t breathe the way real ones do.
Fiction Writers and Journalists Want Different Things
Journalists must go through a more rigorous phase of fact-checking and verifying. And for good reason. They report facts with feelings. They owe their readers factual fidelity.
Fiction writers? They get feelings from facts. They owe their readers a transformation. 80,000–120,000 words of facts alone doesn’t create a novel. 80,000–120,000 words of emotion, character drive, and human truth does.
Journalists must correctly quote and organize five people into separate entities. Fiction writers can combine five real people into one character. Journalists must chronologically and accurately represent timelines. Fiction writers can compress and expand as needed for their characters.
At a certain point, background research stops feeling like research. It becomes "noticing" and "observing." You begin paying more attention to what people don’t say than what they do. Once that switch flips, it changes how you listen to everything.
Books and Writers Worth Further Reading Into
Journalism / Interviewing Craft
Talk to Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like a Pro by Dean Nelson
My core inspiration. Strong on preparation, listening, and interview psychology.
The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe
Essential for understanding how reporting techniques influenced literary storytelling. The movement emphasized scenes, dialogue, and immersive observation.
The Art of the Interview by Lawrence Grobel
Frequently recommended among longform interviewers. Good on conversational rhythm and trust-building.
Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (Edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call) is a 2007 anthology edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call. The book compiles insights from distinguished journalists and nonfiction writers on the craft and ethics of narrative journalism.
Fiction Writers with Journalism/Reporting Influence
Joan Didion: Observation, implication, silence, cultural reading.
Gay Talese: Famous for immersive reporting and status-detail observation.
Ted Conover: Participatory immersion reporting. Excellent model for fiction-world research.
Jess Walter: Former journalist whose fiction retains strong observational realism.
Katherine Boo: Shows how deep reporting uncovers narrative structure naturally.
Conclusion
Dean later says
"This may sound complicated, but we let background information inform our questions even when we aren't working on a story. If you know that a friend of yours is dating someone, but the person who told you made you swear you wouldn't tell, you will probably say to your friend something like, "So are you seeing anyone?" You already know the answer because you got it on background, but now you can ask follow-up questions."
Most writers already know how to gather information. We Google. We bookmark. We rabbit-hole ourselves into tabs about police procedure, horse anatomy, court systems, regional slang, train schedules, and whatever else our stories suddenly demand at 1:14 in the morning.
But “on background” thinking is less about collecting facts and more about collecting human residue. (lol)
The things people say without realizing they said them. The pauses. The workarounds. The exhaustion. The rituals. The strange little details nobody thinks are important because they’ve lived beside them for too long.
The above is the immersive material that readers remember.
Texture. Pressure. Atmosphere. Contradiction. The feeling that a world existed before the reader arrived and will keep existing after they leave.
The deeper you go into conversations, the more you realize most stories are not hiding in dramatic revelations. Where are they? Hiding in side comments, evasions, workplace jokes, awkward silences, and things people assume are too ordinary to mention.
Nothing is too ordinary for a fiction writer. Find the stuff that feels lived in.
In Part Two of this On Background Series, I want to get practical with this approach: how to follow tangents, what to listen for, how to notice friction inside conversations, and how to build a fiction researcher’s notebook that actually helps you find stories instead of just facts.
Bringing my stories to the foreground with some background,
Katherine Arkady
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