All Characters Need a Back Story
Characters with Detailed Back Stories Write Their own Narratives
A complex, compelling back story leads to a stronger, more interesting narrative. The back story of a character sets parameters for behaviour and motivation.
Writing a novel-length work with half a dozen complex characters is no easy task. One way to begin is to create a detailed back story for each of them. What did your hero eat for breakfast? What does he carry in his wallet? What was the most traumatic experience of his life? How did this change him?
Your heroine? Do you know what she thinks about as she drives to work? What are her fears? Her passions? And why is she wearing that red scarf?
A Way Out of Narrative Quandries
There are many interesting ways to approach your narrative. If you get stuck, it’s a good idea to turn to your notebook and come at the story from a different direction. Plunge into the back story for one. Why did your character snap at her lover? Did something happen earlier that reminded her of an unsettling incident from the past? How does that lead to what happens next? This is the beginning of suspense.
It becomes simpler to create scenes between characters if you have a strong idea of the back story of each. The interactions between them then become more automatic. As an example, take the highly successful TV show, Friends. One of the secrets to its long-running success is that each of the characters has a detailed, formative and revealing past.
Monica was once overweight, now channelling her love of food into a successful career as a chef. Rachel’s father is a doctor, which leads her to be impressed with every doctor who comes her way. Chandler’s transvestite father and over-sexual mother create a kind of ambivalence in him that leads others to question his sexual identity.
These are general features. It gets really interesting when the writers put the characters together in different situations and allows each to respond according to his or her particular back story.
Back Story: A Measure of Character
Having a detailed back story helps with the aspect writers consistently describe as the most important for creating fiction: motivation. Once you’ve established the back story for each of the characters, you have a way of measuring behaviour. Is this behaviour consistent with the qualities you established within the greater story? Does this particular action ring true?
Motivation is so important, in fact, that writers often become quite good psychologists, relying not only on personal insight, but on relevant research into all areas of psychology— perhaps even asking professionals if such-and-such imagined behaviour is likely or probable.
Imagined Worlds
Some writers create a vivid landscape as part of the back story to their work. Most famously, Thomas Hardy populated the imaginary region of Wessex, writing a number of novels that take place there. William Faulkner used Yoknapatawpha County as the fictional setting for his novels. More recently, Joyce Carol Oates writes stories that take place in a fictional upstate New York, with references in some books to the settings of others.
These writers have taken the idea of creating a back story to another level altogether. They've created a novelistic world that rivals the real one. And perhaps they're onto something. Having already established the setting—19th Century rural England or the South after the Civil War—themes and character types are easy to come by. The author’s job is then to flesh out conflicts and develop the plot lines.
What's Hidden Counts
Editors, publishers and book reviewers often joke that, when dealing with an inexperienced writer, the first ninety pages of the novel can usually be tossed out. It’s often the case that the beginnings of novels are the back story to the real narrative. (When seeking an agent, obtaining a publishing contract, or appealing to a contest judge, it’s the first ninety pages that count—so remember to be brutal.)
Imagining the back story; developing a rich, complex past for your characters, then giving them the autonomy to live and behave in accordance with the qualities you’ve established makes your work fresher, more interesting. Keep it hidden underneath, and the world you create will pulse with life.
