Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

Backstory is one of those hot button topics. You know how you don’t want to mention politics around your uncle Joe, or religion to those nice young men in suits riding their bicycles through town? Well, you should probably avoid mentioning backstory in a room full of authors unless you really enjoy being stuck in the middle of a long and heated argument.

I can sum up the camps for you pretty quickly.

The first group of writers is of the opinion that backstory is, well, boring. They want to concentrate on the action, the fights, the invading aliens, or the current heart throb. To them, the character’s past is just deadwood that gets in the way of them moving their story forward.

Your second group of authors is more middle of the road. They figure nobody exists in a vacuum, so they put some kind of skeletal story in place to flesh out the character. Often, there are only one or two pivotal moments in a character’s history that come into play, events that explain why the characters hate each other, or whatever. For them, the backstory is usually the justification for current attitudes and behaviors.

Then there is the third group. For these authors, back story is what makes a character whole. A lot of the backstory they generate won’t ever end up on the printed page, but they need it to decide how their characters will behave, what they will think, and how they feel. I’ve known these folks to draw up astrological charts, or fake college transcripts for their characters. Though the reader may never know it, these writer’s know what vegetables their characters hate, their deepest fears, and their 2nd grade crush.

Personally, I fall somewhere between the second and third group. I can’t say I have ever even thought about what astrological sign my characters are, but then I barely pay attention to my own. (That might be because I’m a Taurus, so all the columns ever say is what a stubborn sensualist I am. Accurate, perhaps, but not all that informative.) How far I am willing to go depends on what kind of story I am writing.

Romance novels only allow about 80,000 words, so there isn’t all that much room for backstory. This is especially true if you are writing dark or paranormal romance, where in that time you need to build a believable world, develop two characters, and throw in a ton of danger and skin. Given those constraints, backstory almost has to be minimal.

Fantasy novels tend to run in the 120,000 word range, and those extra 40,000 words give you more room to explore the characters and the world you’ve designed. Naturally, being a long winded kind of person, I prefer the longer format.

The core of the issue I can’t resolve for you. It is true that a person’s past often informs and to some degree controls their future, but it is far from absolute. The thing about the past, for a character or a living person, is that it is written in stone. It doesn’t change, because it can’t. The future does not yet exist, so like the element of air it is impossible to pin down. The present, though, that is a liquid that does not take solid form until a person acts. Whatever their backstory, they are free in that moment to make any available choice.

At least living humans are. Characters are stuck with whatever foolish course of action their author chose for them.

Cheers,

Michelle