Hi Mike,
I’m posting this reply to you again because I made the error of posting it to the full thread where you might not get an alert to it at all. My apologies.

You’re making excellent use of backstory by sprinkling it in because that makes the most of readers’ natural curiosity. When we give them a big flashback all at once, it can often (unintentionally) undercut that need to read on. Our readers love assembling those little “backstory clues,” almost like puzzle pieces to a larger backstory picture. I love the way you’ve used interiority and compressed time in your sample, by the way. We feel close to your narrator and we have the benefit of not veering from your active scene for very long. Huge wins! Thank you for sharing your work with us and for chiming in on this topic!

Preach! So many of us identify with that sentiment. Keep going, though. The only way to guarantee not getting published is to completely walk away. You’ve already committed yourself so wonderfully, and I trust that’ll continue. Sending you tons of positive thoughts!

Good answer! Now if I can just get it published …
Thanks, though. I’ve been working on this for years, and it’s easy to get to a point where you second-guess everything you do.

Hi, Paul. I think your choice to rely on beta readers is a fantastic one. So often, it really is a subjective thing and the “rules” can be broken without a reader noticing. Your instincts are wonderful in knowing that we need to understand why a character feels the way they do about another character–good or bad–and bringing those emotions to life through a scene is the most effective way to do it. If you feel you’ve shown your readers what they need to know about your protagonist’s backstory, I wouldn’t feel pressured to add anything else. It sounds like you know what you need, and in spots where you might need to revise, you have those beta readers to chime in. That’s a recipe for success! Thank you for stopping by and adding to the discussion!

I lay there in the dark talking to her. I asked her questions. Where are you from? Why did you come here? What happened? What was your life like? How old are you? I got no response, of course. Wasn’t sure she was still alive.
I told her my entire life story. I confessed many things that I’d never revealed to anyone else. Including myself.
How I was strong and self-assured on the outside, but inside? Not so much. How I’d come to the road less traveled, but had stayed on the freeway.
How I had dumped the only guy I’d ever truly loved because of my stupid music career, and all my tours. How I often studied myself in the mirror, standing sideways, wondering if I should bother trying to keep myself slim and in shape, or whether I should let it all go and enjoy my cheeseburgers. How I knew I could never go for Clay, even though I knew he had a big crush on me, and he’d be a damn good catch for an aging chick like me.
How I’d never even tried to publish the songs that were the most important to me because I didn’t think they were marketable, and instead churned out all these maudlin ballads. Which of course made me a shitload of money, and allowed me to buy my dream property here on the coast, psychically as far as possible from La La Land. But which left me with this empty hole here near the core of my being.
I began to hum this one melody I’d written years before, and had never performed in public. It was my internal anthem—the music for my secret self.
My alien companion, lying in the dark covered by a horse blanket, in a tiny, squeaky voice, hummed along with me.