StoryCraft Novel Challenge Day 10: How deep should you build your character backstories?
This week, we’ve been talking about the bones of our novels, and now that we’ve explored the emotional arc of our protagonist, it’s time to dive a bit deeper into their backstories.
As you’ve been exploring building your character arcs, you’ve likely already begun spinning the yarn of what their lives must have been like up until this moment. In order to understand the choices our characters make, we need to know exactly who they are, and that takes a deep knowledge of the fabric of moments that have made up their lives.
Humans are complicated creatures, and as writers, we need to understand the psychology of our characters so we can convey them accurately to our readers. There’s no worse feeling than when a character makes a decision that doesn’t align with who we think they are, or if it feels unearned.
Imagine if Elizabeth Bennet didn’t fight away Mr. Darcy with all her might? Or if Katniss teamed up with Peeta in the Hunger Games right from the beginning? It wouldn’t feel consistent with their characters, and it would strip away the conflict needed to sustain the story.
An easy way to make sure this doesn’t happen is by making sure your characters’ backstories are solid so the choices they make track for both you and the reader.
There are a lot of fun exercises involved with building character, and we go through even more in our online course, StoryCraft: Writing Your Novel. The course is currently in Beta, and you can save $150 right now using SCBETA.
To get started, ask yourself questions like:
How did the character grow up?
What were their parents like? How did they raise them?
Did they have siblings? Pets?
What were their pivotal “firsts?”
Which core traumas affected them the most?
Not all of these details will make it into the final novel, but when you as the author understand the histories of your characters, you’ll be able to convey their choices confidently and consistently.
Use hashtag #StoryCraftNovelChallenge to share your progress and connect with other writers!
Happy Writing,
Jess and Theo