Backstory! Not mine but those that authors create to give characters depth as they traverse the obstacles thrown at them in a story. That’s the backstory I’m talking about. I’m still navigating the best way to create backstory for my characters. With my first novel, HOST, I had these in depth profiles that outlined everything from character traits to physical appearance. It was exhausting to come up with before starting to write. I vowed to find a better way to approach this with my next novel, or at least try something different. Instead of having highly detailed profiles and every detail about their childhood and their favorite color before I start writing I’ve simplified it a bit. This time around I’m doing more exploring while I’m writing to see what comes out in the moment versus having it stored in a spreadsheet for me to lookup. I’ll have some basic idea of the character, maybe where they’re from, age, physical traits or ticks that might stand out or separate them from other characters, but at the very least knowing their fear / what holds them back and what they want helps me get started.
What it’s done so far? Well, it’s gotten me to writing faster/sooner and as I come across these moments of needing a bit from a character’s backstory I’ll work with at the time of writing then fill that into their profiles, building as I go, refining with each draft. So far it’s working, but I won’t really know until I get into subsequent drafts if I’ve just left myself with a ton of work later, that maybe I could’ve avoided up front. Feels like it’s a whatever works for you template but know that the work of backstory does need to happen sooner or later. If it doesn’t you’ll be missing out on adding that depth to a character, or that nugget that connects a reader to them. Making them more believable and in turn making their conflict with the plot/story, other characters, and decision making believable.
I’m very much a planner but this partial planning mixed with pantsing has been not only a fun way to write and create on the fly, but also hasn’t sucked the life out of the process which I felt when I did heavy, in-depth character bios up front. Tim and I chat about this in episode #56 of Writer Syndrome, check it out!
