[00:14] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to story magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're jam proud of.
[00:18] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And today we want to talk about backstory tips and tricks. So this question came from a listener who sent us the question, what tips and tricks do you have for digging into character backstory? So thank you, Tonya, for submitting that to us. And if anybody else wants to submit questions, please feel free to send them to [email protected]. But we love backstory.
[00:48] Rachel: We have probably unlimited tips and tricks.
[00:50] Emily: And we are the backstory evangelists.
[00:53] Rachel: We had to stop ourselves from writing too many notes for this episode. There's a lot we're very excited to talk about this.
[01:03] Emily: Yes.
[01:03] Rachel: So tips and tricks for digging into character backstory. I first want to talk about what is our goal with backstory? So I think a lot of people think about backstory and they think of those character interviews that are like, tell us about your character's life. What's their favorite color, what's their favorite food, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:22] Emily: Where were they born? Where were they born?
[01:25] Rachel: Who is their mom? What was the first time they got a haircut? Those kinds of very general questions about their past. Now, not to disparage character interview worksheets like that, but also that is not a goal with developing character backstory that doesn't get us to the place we need with backstory to actually be relevant and meaningful to the character on stage.
[01:52] Emily: It's almost like a different thing. I mean, it's a different thing. When I think of backstory, I think of what is the story of this character? What is the story of their life? And I think character interviews get at like, what are the facts of this person? And that's just a different thing. But backstory, the way that we talk about it, has a very specific purpose and is powerful in a very specific way.
[02:17] Rachel: Yes. So backstory are the specific events that have shaped a character's life and what they believe about the world. Backstory is not that random list of facts. Those are okay facts about a character. Interesting information, perhaps, but not their backstory, not what has developed them into the person they are on page one, that carries the beliefs they hold, why they hold them, and answers the question of how did you become this person? That is, our goal with developing backstory is to ask and answer, how have these beliefs developed? How have this character's beliefs developed and how have they been shaped by the experiences of their past? The reason that we ask those questions is because what happens in a character's backstory is where they start to get their desires, their fears, and their flaws. And when we understand those things, we can give meaning and reasoning to the character on the present page. We can give them thoughts that explain why they are the way they are. We can give them decisions that make sense with their worldview. And we can give them viewpoints that are flawed, but that also are relatable to your reader and that can take them on this journey of change. So if we're thinking of character arc in general, the backstory is like step one because we have to establish how they became flawed in order to set them up for the change that they undergo during a book, during a character arc. So that's what we are trying to develop when we develop backstory. As we give you these tips and tricks today, just remember, in this exercise, in this backstory development, we're not telling you to make up random scenes or to just fill space or to answer those factual worksheets. We are specifically looking at how did this character develop the beliefs that they hold and how have those beliefs influenced their life?
[04:39] Emily: Yeah, and humans are affected by events, right? So we're looking at major life altering events, pivot points in their past, in their childhood, their teenage years, depending on how old they are, their young adult years that have altered the path of their life. And oftentimes we want to look at how their beliefs have led them to make decisions that have altered the path of their life. Because when we look at those pivotal moments and we actually write them out, we'll talk about that more later. We get to live through why they believe the things they believe. Why do they want the things that they want? And how have those decisions, those big moments of their life, led them to who they are on page one? So before we dive into kind of how to do that, you want to have at least started to think about a couple of things. And those things are what deep human need does your character desire? What is the deepest human thing that they have spent their life pursuing?
[05:48] Rachel: Right?
[05:49] Emily: Something they feel they have lacked and that is driving them through their past, but also through your story, your present story. And that might be where you can start. What is it that they want most deeply? Do they want to be loved? Do they want to be respected? Do they want to feel fulfilled? Do they want to feel safe?
[06:06] Rachel: Right?
[06:06] Emily: Like, what is the thing that they are most driven by? And then you want to think about that's called their internal goal. And then you want to think about what flawed belief they carry about how to achieve that thing, right? So if they want love, what belief do they have about how people earn or gain or achieve love?
[06:25] Rachel: Right?
[06:26] Emily: If they want respect, same thing. What belief do they carry about how the world works that influences what they think they need to do in order to achieve that human desire that's called their internal obstacle. If you haven't heard of these terms before, go back and listen to episodes three, seven and 20. I'm going to say that again. Three, seven and 20. And we'll put that in the show notes.
[06:53] Rachel: But those are our episodes that really.
[06:55] Emily: Dig into what an internal obstacle is and what an internal goal is. But the reason we're kind of recapping it now is because that human desire, that internal goal and that flawed belief, that flawed worldview which we call their internal obstacle, are what we're exploring in backstory.
[07:12] Rachel: So episode three is about internal obstacles. Episode seven is about goals. And episode 20 is about internal goals. They are well worth the listen, if you want to pause here and come back to this episode or after we're.
[07:28] Emily: Finished with those episode, would highly recommend to do so.
[07:31] Rachel: Yes, when we are developing backstory and we have perhaps a rough idea of those three things, we can start to ask ourselves questions about our character's life. And those questions start with what specific events led them to becoming who they are. So what we mean by that is what specific events set up that internal goal? Like, what specific events highlighted the time that they were looking, pursuing for that deep seated need and did not get it? And then when that happened, how do they learn the internal obstacle belief instead? How do they learn that the internal obstacle belief is what gives them that internal goal? What specific events started the cycle of these two things in tandem with one another? And then the second question that we ask is not just like, okay, let's develop those things, but also, why are those events important to how they're going to change in the main story? And if you are developing backstory asking, okay, if my character has this deep seated need, and then how does the internal obstacle come into play? You're going to be setting that up because our character arcs are about unlearning the internal obstacle and learning the story point instead. But to emphasize, we're not just creating those random events, we're trying to tie them back to the arc of change that our character is about to undergo in the main story.
[09:10] Emily: So, for example, let's just say this is pretty basic and not very nuanced, but if you have a character who wants to be loved, right, they've spent their whole life not really feeling loved, and that's the thing that they most deeply desire, right? But in your story, in your main narrative, you want to explore kind of their belief around how they must be perfect in order to be loved. They have to prove themselves perfect in order to be loved. Then you have an arc in your story proper in which they're going to unlearn that. They're going to learn that they're worthy of being loved in all their imperfections, right? But in their backstory, we have to explore the moments in which they felt unloved. And if we're looking at an internal obstacle of to be loved, you must be perfect we're looking at moments in their past in which they weren't perfect and therefore love was withheld from them, or they were perfect and they gained love, and they learned that the more perfect I am, the more love I get.
[10:12] Rachel: Right.
[10:13] Emily: So we're looking at those moments in which not only are they pursuing and gaining or not gaining their internal goal, but also acting on or reinforcing or learning that internal obstacle belief.
[10:26] Rachel: Yeah. So we like to develop at least three scenes where this happens. At least three. So in this example of needing to be perfect in order to earn love, we would try to develop at least three specific instances where a character experienced that situation where either they were denied love because they weren't perfect or they were perfect and they finally gained love. We'd want, like, minimum three because it takes us through. Like, there's a reinforcement to this belief. Many of us you experience, and I'm talking, like, real life now. You have one thing happen, and you're like, oh, that was terrible, and that sucks. But the more times it happens, the more it becomes a truth to you, the more it becomes, like, an established thing that you just expect to happen. That's what we're aiming for with an internal obstacle belief. It's an entrenched worldview. It's not just like, oh, this thing happened to me. It's like they would believe that about the world. So this character would believe perfection is the only way you earn love, or you earn love by being perfect. And they've had that happen to them so many times in the past that that's their life. That is the way that the world works to them. So we're trying to reinforce it. So three specific scenes where that happens is a good place to start to aim for. How can I reinforce this to make it feel really real to my characters?
[12:01] Emily: The other way that you can kind of deepen that is by having your character take actions based on that belief that have ripple effects.
[12:09] Rachel: Right.
[12:10] Emily: Because there's something about and this, I think, is built into this idea of having multiple scenes in their past because you get to show how they learned something. And then in the next scene, however many years later, we see them act on that belief in a really big way.
[12:24] Rachel: Right.
[12:24] Emily: So in this example, perhaps there is somebody in their life who did love them or who had the capacity to love them, but that person wasn't perfect in their eyes, and so they denied themselves and that person that love.
[12:38] Rachel: Right.
[12:38] Emily: They acted on that internal obstacle belief that you have to be perfect in order to be worthy of love. And so that could be a big decision that has shaped the course of their life because they've pushed that person away, denied themselves love. And that is, like, rife conflict that can often come back in your book. And so there's just something inherently powerful about a character taking action, life altering action on a belief that digs that belief in further. Because once we've taken action on something, we don't want to admit it was the action.
[13:13] Rachel: Yeah, we've talked, I feel like a lot recently about a character's justification. This is where that justification originates. If a character makes a decision in the story present, that's a bad decision. They're going to justify the hell out of that. And their justification is, well, this happened to me in the past. I never got love unless I was perfect. So of course I'm going to be as perfect as I possibly can and do XYZ related decisions to achieve that because that's everything I know. So, no, the world can't be any different than that. This is where you're developing the justification that they're going to be using in these scenes, but also in your story present that make them feel legitimate, that make these characters decisions feel real and relatable, even if we know that's clearly the wrong decision. But I understand why you've got there.
[14:09] Emily: Even if it's a hurtful decision to others.
[14:11] Rachel: Right.
[14:11] Emily: We can be empathetic to somebody. It's that saying hurt people. Hurt people. And if we understand exactly when and why our character was hurt in a specific way, we won't agree with them hurting others in that same way, but we'll understand where it came from. And so especially if you're working with morally gray characters, this is really important so that you can understand exactly why they're making morally gray decisions and build empathy into that. Absolutely.
[14:40] Rachel: So if you're starting this exploration, it's a good question to ask is, what's the very first time that this happened? What's the very first time that they're hit with this desire to search out an internal goal and then being met with that internal obstacle belief, or being met with circumstances that make them understand or be taught or realize this internal obstacle belief? And how do they internalize that? So what's the very first time that happens and then continue to build from there and build additional scenes where whatever happened, we call it the origin scene, this very first scene, how does this origin scene ripple forwards through their life? And what's like, the subsequent next step? That this internal obstacle belief either continues to be internalized so it gets deeper and deeper inside their psyche, or it takes on another layer, takes on another shape and gets you closer to the internal obstacle belief that your character holds on page one.
[15:46] Emily: Yeah. So for our example about perfection, this would be the very first. Like, this character was not born believing that they had to be perfect in order to earn love. So what is the very first moment that that was shown to them and they internalized it? So that's usually like super early in their early right. They're like five years old, probably when they can start to comprehend this in a conscious way. And so, yes, we're asking you to go all the way back to when your character was five years old, and it might not be a huge thing. I think sometimes people can think of these backstory moments as like, it has to be this explosion, life is over moment, right? And you might have one or two of those in your sequence of backstory scenes, but they don't all have to be that way. They can be quiet moments that have life altering they just have to have life altering consequences because your character is going to start acting in a new way, right? And so this could be a subtle moment in which a character learns they have to be perfect to be loved, but it could change the whole trajectory of their life because all of a sudden now they're seeking perfection when they weren't before. And so don't overthink that. And if it's hard to write in a five year old's perspective, just let it be hard.
[16:58] Rachel: Just let it be hard.
[16:58] Emily: Yeah, nobody's asking you to do that perfectly.
[17:01] Rachel: Yes. I don't know if this metaphor is going to make sense to you, but I've used it with characters before, not with clients. I've used it with clients before. Backstory is like inception. You're inceptioning your characters, but if you give too big of an idea with zero context, it won't take. You have to give that simplest. You don't have to. But in the metaphor of inception, for this idea to really take root and to grow and to shape someone's life, you give them the simplest form of that idea, and it will continue to grow from there. So it needs to take root as this simple idea that helped me put this into context of like, okay, maybe I don't need to completely traumatize my characters at age five. Maybe I can just give them an inception layer of this belief and let it grow, continue to build on it from there. And I think for some reason it feels a little sinister to me like that, but I'm trying to create their flaws that they have. So if you're going to inception your characters, what would be like the simplest version of that idea that you could give them at age five that then they might comprehend a little bit more of at age ten and a little bit more of at age 15. This is a really valid way to do it if you're not thinking like, oh, well, I want to go to my character at age five and make them question the relationship that they have with their parents.
[18:35] Emily: Maybe I'm question political global system exactly.
[18:39] Rachel: Like at age five. Are we ready to talk about pervasive and systemic injustice? Maybe not. But maybe I could teach them that not everybody is treated the same. So you can layer these ideas on top of one another and build it the older that they grow.
[18:57] Emily: Yeah, I love that. That's really helpful. All right, tip. Do we have some other tips? A list of little tips for you. So the first one is, write the damn scene. And I say it like that because almost every single person who I come across who hears about this tool for the first time has a hesitation, a very understandable hesitation to write scenes that won't end up in their story. Because oftentimes these don't. Oftentimes they don't need to show up in your story. You have to write them because you have to live through these moments with your character, outlining them. I have tried to outline my way out of writing these scenes before, and I always fail, because the nuance lives in the experience, the nuance of what they want, why they want it, and how it develops, lives in the experience of living through their skin, living through the moment, and feeling it with them. And so it is worth it. I promise to write these scenes, every single client, every single writer that I've ever taught this to and who has done it, swears by it. I swear by it. And so it's worth it. It is 100% worth the time that it takes.
[20:23] Rachel: Yes, it might feel like when I get to the draft, I get it. I get it. But it makes a huge difference to put yourself in that character's shoes as they are internalizing this belief, and not just so you can see it from the character's perspective, but so that you can understand what these beliefs mean to them. It creates so much more is there a word for dynamicity? It makes things so much more dynamic on the page when you're having your character think flawed things, process their world, make flawed decisions, because you know in a much more intimate way how they develop these beliefs and what these beliefs mean to them. Yeah.
[21:13] Emily: If you've been listening to us for a while, you know that we don't like to talk about writing rules, and we don't like to talk about or like to say that you must do in your process. But I think that this might be the one that I would die on.
[21:26] Rachel: You must do it. I'll say this. I think you should do it. I just don't care when.
[21:32] Emily: Yeah, I don't care when either. But to write a book without this is to miss a level of depth in character development that is just heartbreaking.
[21:41] Rachel: Yeah. Work this into your process. Whether you do this before you ever start a draft or whether you do it after you finish a draft and you're working through revisions, just do it.
[21:53] Emily: Do it. Write it. And you have to write them. The process cannot be made into outlining. And you say, this is my process.
[22:01] Rachel: You're lying. Okay? So don't skip it. I would say this in this next tip, in just the nicest way. I really want you to hurt your characters. I don't mean like give that five year old trauma. Like what?
[22:20] Emily: We don't have to kill their parents.
[22:22] Rachel: You don't have to kill their parents. I don't think that all backstory needs to be traumatic. I do though, think that we need to create friction for them. We need to create conflict for them. We need to have them experience expecting something. And it not being that way because that's how you form these flawed beliefs. If their life went perfectly, they wouldn't be the flawed person that they are at the beginning of the page or the beginning of the story. So in the very best way, hurt.
[22:57] Emily: Them in order to I mean, honestly, it's built into the concept of an internal goal, right. That deep human desire that they have. If they desire it, that means they feel they don't have it. Maybe they do have it and they can't see it, but they deeply feel they don't have whatever that human need is to the extent that they want it. And so you have to withhold it from them.
[23:20] Rachel: Yeah. If they want love because they think they need to be perfect in order to get love, don't give them that.
[23:29] Emily: Make them feel like they're not loved.
[23:31] Rachel: Feel unloved. Exactly. And that could go trauma deep. That also could go their parents are really busy and they only get attention if they excel in school. There are varying degrees of how you could really hit this home for them and just choose intentionally what it is that you want and how that's going to play into the story. If you give your characters a traumatic background, you have to be prepared to deal with the traumatic like a character who has experienced trauma. And if you don't want to address that or deal with that or answer questions about how do you heal from trauma, maybe reconsider giving them a traumatic background.
[24:14] Emily: Yeah, this one's one of my favorites because I think a lot of like, you can come up with plot ideas for backstory scenes in this question, which is explore who in their life taught them their internal obstacle belief.
[24:30] Rachel: Right?
[24:30] Emily: So for our example, that would be who in this character's life taught them that they had to be perfect in order to be loved. And that might be that that person taught them that on purpose. Or it could be that they taught them that by example, but who taught them that? And explore those relationships. Put those relationships on the page and explore them in scene. Because those are people who likely are still in their life in some way, shape or form. And you can show a lot of stuff via those relationships on the page in your first few chapters. And so just ask yourself that question, who did they learn this from? And then who withheld their human desire from them? Who didn't give them their internal goal? Who do they feel they haven't received love, respect, et cetera, from and why and kind of go deeper into that to get some ideas for these scenes.
[25:26] Rachel: Yeah. And this who also doesn't need to be necessarily a super damaging person or again, a traumatic person. I'm reading a book right now where the female main character had a very serious medical issue when she was a teenager and was in the hospital for a long time. And afterwards, her parents basically became, like overprotective faunas. They would not let her do anything that felt unsafe. And so she formed the belief that vulnerability is a weakness. As an adult character, it's very difficult for her to be vulnerable. She doesn't want to feel weak. So what I'm getting at is her parents made her feel weak because they constantly over fond over her. And they still do that on the story present page. But you can tell the relationship between these characters is very loving. Like, they're good parents, they just were scared. And she is learning that she's seeing like, I know that this isn't true, but they also never stopped treating me like I'm breakable. So I'm going to try to be as strong as I possibly can. And that was not a relationship that fell apart. They are still part of each other's lives. They call each other every day. But my point is that the author is using the way her parents treat her to inform what she believes about the world. And they still love each other. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of.
[26:53] Emily: Harmful beliefs can come from well meaning love.
[26:56] Rachel: Right.
[26:57] Emily: And that's true in life as well. I know sometimes they'll have those exercises where it's like, where did your perfectionism come from? Or where did you learn this so you could start to dismantle it and you start to think about all the well meaning, loving people in your life who taught you those things. That's what we're doing, but for our characters. And so yeah, I love that it can come from a good place and still be damaging.
[27:20] Rachel: Yeah. Then you can also explore why the character wants their internal goal and why they feel they don't have it. So we were saying earlier that if the character wants love, then they feel as if they don't have that love. If they are deeply desiring love in some way, they feel as if they are unloved. So why where's that coming from? Why do they feel they don't have that love? Why do they feel like they need this internal goal love?
[27:50] Emily: It this one's big. Let them make mistake.
[27:57] Rachel: Yes, please.
[27:59] Emily: Let them make huge life altering mistakes. And I'm not saying like, trauma level mistakes, but mistakes that alter the path of their life. Have them make those mistakes based on their internal obstacle belief. Because we don't want them to be where they need to be at the beginning of the story. Otherwise they wouldn't need a character arc we need them to be lost. We need them to be on the wrong path. We need them to be suffering in some kind of way and because of their past mistakes. And so allow them to make mistakes. Allow them to be imperfect and allow those mistakes to shape their life. So that when they show up on page one, their beliefs about how to go, about achieving their deepest human desires have led them further away from those desires and down the wrong path.
[28:52] Rachel: Yes, give them agency over to a certain degree over this flawed belief. So this is going to be a little tough to say, but hear me out. As children, we have these beliefs sometimes thrust upon us. We learn them. It's not that child's fault for learning a belief that's potentially harmful or damaging, right? It's their environment. At some point though, they continue to make choices that reinforce that belief. That's what I'm saying is give them choices that they have bought into this belief and they are now going to make choices because of that belief. And those choices are not going to be awesome choices. They're going to be flawed choices. So the more that they choose to buy into this belief rather than change, the more that's going to influence the choices that they have around them, influence the worldview that they have. So make them make those choices. Make them buy into this belief and continue to buy into this belief.
[29:55] Emily: And the way that you show us that that belief is flawed and that is the wrong path for them is to give those choices negative consequences. So like we're talking about before, if somebody who believes you have to be perfect to be loved, rejects love from someone because that person's not perfect, don't make that the right choice, right? Give that bad consequences. They feel guilt, that person gets mad, they're alone relationship, they're alone give those flawed choices that are influenced by that internal obstacle belief. Give those negative consequences. And that's what we're talking about with life altering mistakes, consequences that ripple.
[30:34] Rachel: Yeah, awesome. Okay. What a wonderful, just juicy episode. This is such great content. So thank you again Tanya for this question. And again reminder, if you have a question like this that you'd love for us to tackle on the podcast, email us at [email protected] and put podcast question in the subject line and we would be happy to go over it. We have questions coming in so if you haven't heard us respond, we are planning an episode around your questions. If we get your email, we will answer it in some capacity at some point.
[31:14] Emily: At some point.
[31:16] Rachel: Awesome. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[31:23] Emily: Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to. Keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[31:33] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
