Anyway. I touched upon the subject of fluidity, and different approaches that could be made regarding back story. Now personally, I favour having a rigid back story. The Canon so to speak. It may sound like a drag, sorting out the back story before you get to work on the actual writing, but if you have it all laid out beforehand, you can speed through a story faster. I guess a rigid back story is like a safety net. It’s always there, so you know that there’s something. I’m not saying you have to have all the minutiae written out for every character, but a definite outline I always find useful. Quite handily, I opted out of a rigid back story in my most recent effort, and went for the alternative.

Fluidity

What if you write more on the fly? Is it really that bad to come up with the back story as you go along? It can offer a little more freedom with characters and how they behave if you don’t have a set-in-stone back story for them.

I’ve written about improvisational writing in the past, and the dangers it can pose, and fluidity here is somewhat similar. Of course, with back story you do have to have some sort of loose framework. Enough structure that allows you to navigate, and fill in the gaps as you go. Being fluid with the back story can also be an advantage. For example, if you have a rigid back story, what if you hit a plot point that cant be resolved with that? I’ve hit this problem before, and I have gone to huge lengths to write around it, creating implausible scenarios and adding maybe thirty-forty extra minutes of screen-time (this was a screenplay idea I was working on) in order to try and get myself out of this hole. If you work with a more fluid back story, then you will encounter this problem far less frequently.

Fluidity, see?

Dangerous Waters

See, the water represents a fluid backstory, and the ice is a rigid backstory, but then it can get all fragmented and... nevermind. Fantastic image from George Grinsted (click for more)

There are of course dangers here. Especially if you try to move between the two. There isn’t much middle ground, and if you’re not careful, your back story can get fragmented all over the place. Making even minor changes can result in a ripple effect, which can result in having to rewrite huge swathes of material later down the line. Or it can open up huge plot holes. TV shows do this all the time. By either introducing siblings to main characters that have never been mentioned before, or completely changing a characters backstory, just to get some new plotlines going. Heroes did this a lot, which is one of the reasons it tanked.

On the other hand, it can allow you to experiment. Writing is after all about experimentation, is it not? Until a piece of writing is actually published, it can always be altered, and improved upon. If you do hit a wall in the narrative, then you can return to your back story and experiment. I’m not saying that you should completely change a particular character’s back story (unless its an emergency, I’ve had to do that in order to give a character, you know, motivation), but making small changes here and there to experiment can be helpful.

Above all, Experiment

Yes, I am aware that I have somewhat contradicted myself, but sometimes you have to. You may just experiment as a thought exercise, just to open up new avenues, or you may need to in order to get past one of those trouble plot issues. Sometimes even the most rigid of back stories need to be changed. Or at least clarified. I know that the few major back story changes I’ve made in my own work have been for the better. Also, remember that it’s your work. Unless you write non-fiction, it’s your world that you’re creating. You’re not going to rewrite the holocaust (unless you need to) so, as ever, experiment…

It's a hot seat. See what I did there? Courtesy of Dav

Why do I need a character backstory?

Let’s just go over, briefly, why that is so. Now it used to be that an author could spend pages describing a character and their history (or anything else for that matter. I remember reading a paragraph that lasted one whole page and was packed with dense description of a kitchen, or something. Not sure of the novel. Might have been Tess of the D’Urbervilles).

Not so these days. It’s the whole, “show, don’t tell” thing again. It’s considered much more effective to give an impression of the character through their actions and the way they perform them. Hints and clues. Less is more. This is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Feel free to disagree of course, many do.

So it might be that a lot of the backstory of your character does not get put into words in your finished novel. Why should you bother developing one, then? I refer you to paragraph one. Writers often need something solid in their heads, or preferably written down, to get a real sense of the character’s motivations, and to know what they will do next. Armed with such priveledged knowledge, characters begin that process of “writing themselves” that we’ve all heard so much about.

So what’s this hotseat thing, then?

A few weeks back, I read a blog post that dealt with this issue. The author recommended a method I had used before, but not applied to writing.

As I commented at the time, this reminded me of drama lessons. The idea is based around interviewing a character. In the drama excercise, the actor sits in a chair in front of his or her peers. The actor is in character, having read the script and so armed with that knowledge.

They are then asked questions by the other people in the class and must improvise their character’s response. The idea is to fill in the gaps left by the script and gain greater insight into the character’s past and motivations, all of which can be brought to bear in performance.

In the writing exercise of course, you are both actor and questioner. It is your job to ask questions of your character, and also your job to respond as your character, by putting pen to paper. Again, you are improvising, or freewriting, and again, such freedom will give rise to unexpected events and reactions from your character. They will help make your character whole, and may even provide some future plot points for your story proper.

Some tips

Don’t be coy when asking questions. You want to ask those questions to which you don’t yet know the answer, otherwise, what’s the point? And to help keep the flow, why not write out the questions beforehand, so you don’t keep having to pause to think of a new one halfway through the process. If you think of new questions during the improvisation, well just ask them then and there, and answer them then and there. Just as long as you’re not interrupting yourself.

When the time comes to do the answering, take a moment to get yourself into character. Imagine a scene with them in it, and imagine how they behave from what you know of them so far. Then go for it! Make your character honest for this round of questions, even if they are not normally. You’ll get more out of it I’m sure.

Anyway, that gives you an idea of how it worked for me during drama classes, and what helped then. At the moment I’m concentrating on a short story, but I’ll run through this exercise myself as soon as I’m done. I’ll let you know how I got on, and I’d like you to do the same!

I would think of Star Wars, and how Mr. Lucas started with the middle three chapters of the story (and we’ve seen what difficulty he had in trying to start from the very beginning. Born from midichloreans indeed); and I watched Akira, noticing how the vast bulk of the story actually happened in the past. Backstory was everything.

It would follow then, that a large portion of my writing time would be spent on fleshing out the backstory, and making it compelling. It was, after all, the backdrop to the story; the motivation for the characters; the very reason for the events in the story proper to now take place. Complete all this, and my story would take care of itself.

Well, okay. Maybe. But I don’t think that way now, and in truth, I never tried it out this way either. Of course backstory is important, and especially in a film like Akira, where the situation is basically, “what happened before might happen again”. But I would argue that the really important parts of your backstory, the ones that make your premise possible, you already know. The rest is for texture and theming; still important of course, but I’m not keen on spending pages and pages writing complete histories for each of my characters. And I don’t think it’s necessary.

With the story I’m currently writing, I’m taking the same approach to backstory as I’m trying with plot (see this article from Craig). I’m not entirely making it up as I go along, I have a very rough idea, but for the most part, I’m experimenting, having fun just making stuff up, and seeing what feels right. That stuff stays, the rest goes. I’ve got to be careful, of course, when I plant the seed of a potential plot development or character backstory, I’ve got to be aware that’s what I’m doing. I’ve got to remember I’ve done it, and think about where it can go, what other connections can be made. Otherwise I’ll just end up with a birds nest of ideas. I think as long as I keep my wits about me I should be alright, but I’ll keep you posted.

Any tips or discussion around backstory? You know what to do!