Character backstory – the past events and formative experiences that shape who your characters are – is key to creating characters of breadth and depth. Here are tips to weave backstory into your story believably:
First: What is a backstory?
‘Backstory’ is a literary device authors use to give characters and their story arcs a sense of history. Backstory is the imagined pasts characters’ lives and worlds possess. These events take place before the main narrative of the story.
What are the uses of backstory in storytelling? There are several:
- Developing readers’ understanding of characters. For example, gradually revealing a character’s traumatic past could give the reader context (over time) for the choices a character makes or the fears they carry with them
- Backstory can raise stakes (for example, if we learn a character has battled for years with addiction, the appearance of temptation becomes more suspenseful)
- Backstory gives characters psychological realism: Ms Havisham’s cynical view of love (and her efforts to turn her adopted daughter against it) in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations makes more sense when we find out she was once jilted by a husband-to-be
So how do you make backstory feel real?
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