Deepen Character Arcs with Backstory

Backstories are essential for creating believable characters, even if they aren't used in the final draft. Writing a full backstory helps you understand your character's motivations, actions, and worldview, leading to more compelling stories.

The 5 W's and Character Backstories

• Who: Defines the character’s fundamental identity, social standing, family history, and core personality traits, explaining who they are beyond the main plot.

• What: Outlines the specific past successes, failures, traumas, or relationships that provide the raw material shaping their personality and current actions.

• When: Establishes a consistent timeline for past incidents, lending credibility and understandability to present fears or behaviors.

• Where: Identifies the character's origins and journey, clarifying how their location and environment influence their worldview, dialect, and skills.

• Why: Provides the essential rationale and motivation behind the character’s decisions, goals, and reactions, rooting their present actions in past experiences.

A character's past is a cornerstone of effective storytelling, serving multiple crucial functions. First, it creates motivation, making present-day goals and actions feel logical rather than random by directly linking them to past experiences. This history adds significant depth and dimension, offering a life outside the main narrative that makes characters more believable and relatable. A well-developed backstory is essential for ensuring consistency in their behavior throughout the story and for informing authentic dialogue and actions that align with their unique experiences. Ultimately, by providing this historical context, an author can significantly increase reader investment, as people are more likely to connect with and care about a character whose journey and motivations they fully understand.

~Theastarr Valerie