User:Rasarr/Length Test
Sketchpad.
(current: History sections guidelines?)
History section of articles can be tricky, especially for characters. This page contains some tips and guidelines on how to make it work.
Don't go into too much detail
When writing a character history, it can be easy to go into excessive detail about what's happening; sometimes, there's an urge to type out a play-by-play of the entire scene, fight or conversation. However, this way lies madness. You do not have to summarize every sentence said, or report on every blow of the battle. Most of the time, "they fight for a while" or "after a short conversation" will suffice.
So, when should you include the detail? Mostly, in scenes that could be considered crucial to the plot. Marsh tearing an earring out of Vin's ear? Crucial. A Stormlight Archive character swearing the Immortal Words? Extremely important. Characters arguing about how wise their plan is? You could summarize that. Mentioning every gesture the character makes in a conversation? Definitely avoid it.
How to avoid too much detail, then? After writing the whole history, re-read it; see what you can aggregate, what can be summarized further, what detail you've added has proven unnecessary to the overall narrative. Cut those bits out, then rinse and repeat, until you feel satisfied with the state of the text.
Don't go into too little detail, either
While writing a blow-by-blow of every scene is decidedly excessive, you shouldn't skip over too many events, either. Remember, if someone's reading a history section, it's probably to catch themselves up to speed on the character. As such, include enough detail that the reader doesn't ask "but why were they here?" or "but how did they do that?" For example, if a character was present at some battle, say what they were doing there instead of simply "they were present at the battle"; if a character journeyed to multiple places, say where they've been, and everything interesting that's happened, rather than "for the next few years, they travelled a lot" (unless you don't know what happened, in which case, feel free to summarize it in a sentence).
Don't skip over a large chunk of character's on-page time. If something's happening, make note of it. If a character or object appears, but doesn't become important until later, do mention them, so that the reader isn't confused when they show up again.
Place events in their correct places
Histories should be chronological. If a scene has a character talking about their youth, write what they reveal in its proper place, timeline-wise, and mention "X tells Y about her childhood" in the place where that scene happens. Likewise, if some information about a character's history can only be found in the Arcanum or other behind-the-scenes material, don't put it in the Trivia section, but add it to the History.
Conversely, try to keep the article as in-universe as you can. Don't add meta information - like where Brandon came up with the idea, or what the character looked like in an earlier version of the story. This should go into Trivia. If you feel like there are enough trivia about how a character came to be, make a Development section near the bottom of the page.
Don't sweat it
Your History section doesn't have to be the world's most informative, most detailed or most elegant. A cursory history is better than no history, and a less-detailed history beats over-detailed one. Don't worry about your grammar, or style, either. Again - a bad history beats no history. And if something doesn't feel right to you and you can't put a finger on it, leave it be for a while. This is a wiki; if someone has an issue with what you wrote, they can fix it themselves, and perhaps a fresh pair of eyes could figure out the problem you can't track down. Don't worry about which tense to use, either -- so long as you stick to one, use whichever feels natural to you.
If you feel like you're not quite sure what a good history should look like, check out some of those pages: