The Three Uses of Backstory and Some Good Rules
Write Better Now
Hey baby, what’s your back story?
It should be a pick-up line at a bar, yet it somehow is not a pick-up line at any bar that I know of except maybe in a New Yorker cartoon or a bar in a town where there’s one of those MFA programs in writing literature for literary people doing literary things.
Anyway, it’s a term writers throw around all the time and it is basically just how we imagine our characters’ lives went before they are in the actual story that we’re writing.
I know! How can you imagine that your character had a life before your story? It’s like imagining your spouse had a life before you that wasn’t totally centered around you. Us narcissists have a hard time with that.
Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space, I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important.…
– Steven Moffat, Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol
Yesterday we posted on WRITE BETTER NOW’s podcast all about backstory, but we wanted to go a bit more in depth here.
Lots of writers and coaches tell you that you should start with the character’s demographics. How old are they? Rich? Poor? Gender? Sex? Race? Religion? Class? Where do they live?
Most authors I know don’t have an issue with figuring out those things.
THE IMPORTANT PART OF BACKSTORY
The important part of backstory isn’t the characters’ demographics.
The important part of backstory is why they are who they are, what has happened to them in their past to create the personality, goals, wants and actions of who they are now.
As Neil Chase Film writes,
“Identify your character’s core values, goals, and motivations. What is most important to them? What experiences have they had that have shaped who they are? What are they striving for? When you know what drives your character, you can start to develop the events of their backstory that led them to where they are today.”
So let’s talk a bit more about this. First we have some old things we’ve talked about a few months ago, and then some new brilliance!
According to a post on Now Novel
There are three uses of backstory.
1. Developing the understanding of the characters. Like if your dad died of a heart attack in front of you and you couldn’t save him, then your character might have a savior complex. It helps the reader understand your characters’ motivations.
2. It can heighten the stakes and the suspense. You were once addicted to dating cops. Cops were always bad for you. Will you date this one? NO! YOU MUST NOT.
3. It makes it real damn it. By the time, you make it into a book, you’re not going to be a blank slate, born out of Zeus’ head or a clamshell fully formed on page 1. We all have prologues.
Standout asks how much backstory does a story need and answers its own question pretty simply:
“If judged solely on complexity, the answer to ‘how much backstory should I include?’ would be ‘enough to pay for the reader’s efforts,’ however you also need to consider immersion.”
Ah. Okay?
Here is our advice:
Don’t be fake. Don’t be pretend. We all know people who show up at a party, engage in small talk about absolutely nothing other than the weather, the traffic, where they work. There is no underlayment. It’s like they are a rug thrown on the floor, but if you touch that rug it will just slip away because there’s nothing holding it there.
Do not let your characters be rugs.
Ground those suckers with nails and staples if you have to. ModPodge them to the floor, give them a life before you.
Don’t tell us everything about them. We do not know that they prefer Aquafina to Poland Spring water or that they had an ingrown toenail when they were twenty-four any more than you want to know about the guy at the party’s hemorrhoid treatment unless it’s really good. Be sparing.
The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
― Stephen King
Now, let’s get to the sexy stuff. How do you use the backstory in the plot, right? That’s sexy. As Neil Chase says:
So what do you want to do with that backstory? How do you use it?
You want to be strategic in your reveals.
You want to sprinkle it in strategically too and not just have MASSIVE AND EPIC FLASHBACK SCENES and INFO DUMPS.
You want to make sure that it makes sense with how your character is motivated to do things.
As Kyle A Massa in a Pro Writing Aid post says,
“The X Files does an excellent job connecting the protagonists’ backstories with their current motivation. For example, Agent Fox Mulder witnessed his sister’s abduction by aliens. This event drives him to seek truth in the present, even when it’s otherworldly.
Likewise, Mulder’s counterpart, Dana Scully, has a background in medicine, earning years of experience in the field of science. Therefore, she seeks truth in rationality. Her history provides a pleasing counterpoint to Mulder’s; Scully believes in scientific explanations, while Mulder believes in pretty much anything. It’s an excellent example of the past affecting the present.
Why is this important? Because fictional characters should emulate real-life human beings, and we’re all shaped by our experiences. If a character’s past doesn’t reveal something relevant about them, it’s not just unrealistic—it’s purposeless.
I’ll give you an example. The other day, my wife and I watched one of the Twilight movies with friends over Zoom (don’t ask). No offense to the author and the people who worked on this film, but I found it mostly unwatchable. One reason: the flashbacks.
I went to bed before the movie ended, but in the brief time I watched, I counted three different character flashbacks. Great, we got some backstory. The problem? None of it was relevant.”
Just like everything else in your story or film or novel, you want the backstory to matter. The more things matter, the better. This goes for life too actually.
LEARN MORE!
https://www.standoutbooks.com/characters-backstory/
https://prowritingaid.com/art/1284/character-backstory%3a-a-guide-for-writers.aspx
https://www.nownovel.com/blog/talking-character-backstory/