Characters - Backstory
Backstory is right up there with personality when it comes to characters. It is what made your characters who they are. Backstory affects everything from how a character reacts, to how they treat others. Someone with a typical rich family will probably come off as cocky or arrogant, whereas someone who had a rich family, but was secretly abused would not be so confident, and if they were, it would probably be a mask. Something to make sure people didn’t see the real them.
Backstory should be complex; it should show the reasons and events that shaped your character to be who they are. Nobody’s life is as simplistic as they make it sound. One of the best things to do is tell bits and pieces of a character's backstory through the book or whatever you’re writing to leave the readers hungry for more. Good backstory adds more layers to a character and makes them more complex, which is exactly what you want.
Creating good backstory may sound hard, but honestly it can be quite simple. Sometimes just thinking off off-the-wall ideas can be helpful. You could be in the shower and randomly think, “Wow, wouldn’t it be crazy if this had happened?” Those ideas are usually the best, and are usually the ones I use if I’m being honest. That big jock? Maybe he experience bullying when he was younger, resulting in him becoming a bully to protect himself . That quiet kid? Maybe as a kid, they were the bully. Cocky rich kid who thinks he’s better than everyone? Maybe he’s secretly insecure because of his family. Piecing together backstory can be fun if you let it. Making up crazy ideas and incorporating them makes characters entertaining to read about and fun to write about as well.
Go nuts with character backstory. It’s truly one of the most carefree parts of creating them.
