I love a good backstory. How about you?
Backstories reveal past experiences and events. All those details that bring characters in books and movies to life and explain why they do what they do.
What turns Bruce Wayne into Batman? The haunting memory of his parents’ murder. Harry Potter’s background as an orphan who discovers magical abilities affects the ways he responds to the challenges he faces. Childhood trauma, aristocratic heritage and powerful intellect combine to create the monstrous — and fascinating — Hannibal Lecter.
Backstories turn two-dimensional cutouts rendered in bland physical descriptions into three-dimensional individuals with vibrant personalities. And faults. The more the better. Backstories create characters to which readers relate because they empathize with their needs, problems and aspirations. Most important, readers care about these characters and what happens to them.
Compelling plots might entice readers to turn pages. But if readers don’t care about the characters or what happens to them, what’s the point? The real story isn’t so much about what happens to characters, but how characters react and change based on their experiences.
Like any good thing — chocolate cake comes to mind — backstories are best served a little at a time. There’s a temptation to tell readers everything about the hero right off the bat. There’s also a temptation to devour a whole cake as an appetizer. The pleasure in reading and eating comes in savoring the experience, especially surprises. The alternative is a tiresome information dump or bellyache.
It’s essential to establish backstory near the beginning to foster a basic understanding of what a character wants, what’s at stake and what stands in the way. Then add more backstory to provide depth and context.
Don’t tell a backstory, show it. An event — a sight, sound or smell — triggers memories. Habits like hoarding or cracking knuckles signal deprivation, anxiety and other emotions rooted in the past. The way characters talk — accents, dialects and the words they choose — reflect their background, education and personality.
Don’t show backstory for the sake of showing backstory, though. Show only what’s relevant to what characters think and do. Events, actions and dialogue should unveil backstory gradually even as characters develop.
I wrote a murder mystery featuring a small town newspaper editor as sleuth. I wanted to add a treasure hunt as well as a love story. I invented a second protagonist in a brilliant history professor.
Their backstories? My editor was laid off from his job as a reporter at a big city daily and is desperate to resurrect his career. My professor has searched for years for a cache of stolen loot hidden by the outlaw Butch Cassidy. My characters seperately avoided romantic relationships to focus on work. Together, they’re looking not only for truth and treasure, but also redemption and the meaning missing in their lives.
Here’s what else backstory can do. The professor reveals in my first novel a failed engagement to a paleontologist that left her embittered. That kernel of information serves as a springboard into my second novel in the series. That and the fact the professor learned as a teen-ager how to scuba dive. What follows is the discovery of a ghastly corpse roped to a rock at the bottom of a mountain lake, a plot to illegally unearth dinosaur fossils from public land and a search for gold bars stolen a century ago in a stagecoach robbery.
I strive to offer readers unique characters that bring distinctive skills — and shortcomings — to life-and-death conflicts. Then inspire readers to care what happens. Backstories remain an essential part of the effort.
I love a good backstory. How about you?