Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to write BACKSTORY

My good friend, Ironie, told me this: “A good rule of thumb for characters is that if they can't stand on their own without backstory, you need to develop them more as a person.”

Truer words have not been spoken.

Backstory should FACILITATE your character, not DEFINE your character. Backstory is seasoning on the roast. What your character does during the story is the roast.

This is where the brooding, tortured soul comes into play. It's an overused and cliched archetype that many people are very annoyed with for the very reason that the only thing defining the character is their past. They don't do anything substantial in the story. They just sit there and brood and look hot. That is, unfortunately, a very bad character to have.

A character can definitely have a tortured past, BUT they also have to do something substantial DURING the story. Many writers seem to think giving a character "a past full of dark secrets" makes them interesting. I personally find the whole dark secrets thing boring, and it would be more interesting for the character to CREATE those dark secrets during the story.

Let's analyze why the whole dark secrets/tortured past thing is so boring. What is the most common way for people to get across this dark secret/tortured past to the reader? Two choices:

1. Flashbacks

2. The character just tells us what happened to them

Flashbacks

Flashbacks are so ineffective at holding our attention because it halts the forward momentum of the story just to go back to the past. As readers, we don't want to stop that momentum. We want to keep going forward. Flashbacks don't progress the story (other than providing information). There's no ACTION associated with a flashback, which makes it flat. Flashbacks move us backwards, rather than forwards.

The character just tells us what happened to them

This is self explanatory. It's TELLING us what happened instead of SHOWING, so it'll automatically be more flat and boring because of that.

Of course, you can most definitely still use flashbacks and telling of the backstory, but try to keep it to a minimum as much as you can. Everyone has a backstory, so don't take this as permission to leave out a character's backstory. A roast without seasoning would taste bland, yes? Just like a roast with too much seasoning would taste horrible. You need to find the proper ratio of how much backstory you want to add, and that would be different for every story.

If you remember from one of my older how-to's, I believe I said that every character should have a motive (in your mind), including the minor characters. Backstories are the means to give your character a motive, so they are important. Keep in mind that some characters may have a ton of backstory, but some may have barely any.

Remember the most important thing to making an interesting character is having them TAKE ACTION in the story. It's lovely if they took action before the story started and now have some horrific past weighing them down, but if they don't do anything during the actual story, they'll be boring. If someone killed their parents, have them take action to actively find the killer and enact revenge, or even better, make them help someone else who just experienced the same thing. If they accidentally killed someone, make them do something to repent for their sins such as striving to become a doctor so they can save lifes and make up for the one they took.

If they made mistakes in the past, fine. Now make them fix those mistakes. If someone wronged them, make them do something about it. Don't just have them sulk in the dark with their shirt off to reveal their beautiful abs and disheveled hair with a brooding stare. That's not sexy. That's idiotic.