What is backstory? It’s the life your character lived before he walked onto the pages of your story. It’s his history, what defined and molded her and made her what she is today. It explains his motivations, what he holds dear.

K.M. Weiland wrote an excellent article about it on her blog WordPlay. I’d like to quote part of what she posted:

“The key to crafting stories with many layers—stories with depth and ballast—is to never ignore the blank spaces in your characters. Don’t let them get away with telling you only what they must to make the story work. Search out the shadows in their pasts, discover their parents, their childhood friends, their catalysts. Don’t just accept that your main character is a cop; find out why he became a cop. Don’t just slap a scar on your heroine; discover where the scar came from. “

I couldn’t agree more. The better you know your characters, the better your can write them. Giving them a history gives you a huge resource to draw on. Being able to have the hero’s buddy say “Remember that time in Malta” helps support the reader’s being drawn into the hero’s life at that moment. It makes them more of a person, someone with a past – just like we do.

Similar Posts:

• Worldbuilding in the Gates of Amduat: History
• Creative Stuff For Character Creation
• Other Side of the Street Character Building Guidelines
• 4 Techniques for Getting to Know Your Characters
• Journals as a Character Development Tool.

The Importance of Backstory originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on February 15, 2011.

I’ve finished the first three “exercises” of the workbook, and I’ve already learned something new about Alex: what it is she really wants. It’s not what I originally thought it was going to be, but it’s something she will never be able to have. How’s that for inner conflict?

The workbook recommends reading Writing the Breakout Novel (which I will refer to in the future as WBN) first, so you can learn about the concepts before trying to put them into practice. I’m glad I did that. While each set of exercises are prefaced with examples from actual books in print – ones Maass has identified as breakout novels – there’s not a lot of explanation there. WBN has pretty thorough explanations of the characteristics of breakout novels, but really not much in the way of practical advice on how to do it. And that’s what the workbook is for. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to attend one of the workshops Maass runs in person, so I’m using the workbook as a surrogate.

Okay, enough procrastinating. Time to fold some laundry then get back to “class”. Similar Posts:

• Where has all the time gone?
• Housekeeping
• About Lisa Hartjes
• 100 Book Challenge: #1 – Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs
• A Place to Start – Research Starters for Writers

Working through Writing the Breakout Novel, Part 1 originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on September 10, 2009.

Anyone who writes fiction starts out with a general idea of who their characters are, their personalities, their likes and dislikes, who they’re going to fall in love with, and or who they are going to hate. Some of us begin our story by just writing, and listening to our characters talk to us about themselves. But what if you aren’t this type of writer? What if you have an idea for a story and characters but not very much of an idea about who the characters are? This happens to all of us at one time or another, even the ones who just write and let their characters “talk” to them. So, what do you do if this happens? There are several techniques you can try to help you get to know your characters better.

1. Interview your characters. That’s right come up with a list of questions you want to know about the character, and have the character answer them. It sounds a little silly when you think about it, but since our characters come from us, it’s probably not as difficult as it may seem. This technique gives you an opportunity to really think about your characters and what they are like, and where you want to go with them in your story.

2. Get together with some friends and or fellow authors, tell them the premise of your story, and what little you know about your characters and have them come up with the interview questions, and then you pretend to be your character and answer them. Sometimes your comrades will think of questions that you wouldn’t, and this will make you really think about your characters and how they fit into the story.

3. Think about possible scenarios either from your story, or just from your imagination, then ask yourself what the character would do in that situation. Think about the character’s reactions, and what they might say. This can give you further insight into them.

4. Create a story board. Look for and find pictures of people that fit what your characters look like either from pictures you find online, or from magazines. Take a large piece of poster board and create a visual scene from your story or imagination. You can do this for more than one scene, then put it up somewhere close to where you write so you can look at it when you are feeling stumped about where to go next. This technique serves 2 purposes, to have a visual picture of your characters, and to help jog your imagination when you are stumped about where to go with the story.

These are only a few techniques for getting to know your characters, I’m sure you can think of others. Knowing your characters is important because as a writer if you have your characters do something that is contrary to who they are as people, this can disappoint readers. And that is the last thing you want to do.

Want to use this article for your blog or newsletter? Feel free to do so, providing you give me credit by keeping the bio section below at the bottom.

Regina Paul is a full-time freelance writer, and author. She writes both web content and romance fiction. She has six books published, and over 300 articles published online. For more information on her books you can visit her website at http://www.reginapaul.com or if you are interested in hiring Regina to write web content you can visit her freelance website at http://www.freelancewriterforhire.110mb.com for rates and more examples.Similar Posts:

• What Kind of Role Player Are You?
• The Importance of Backstory
• Other Side of the Street Character Building Guidelines
• Journals as a Character Development Tool.
• Creative Stuff For Character Creation

4 Techniques for Getting to Know Your Characters originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on March 19, 2009.

Why do I write them? It’s a way to record my character’s thoughts about what’s happened. It also allows me to explore her, learn new things about her, and express stuff that really ought not to be brought up in game because it is either inappropriate or would derail the scene. For example, in journal entry #3, Brigid talks about the scars she got. She goes on to explain why they are so important not to just her, but to her own kind. That kind of exposition (I had to look that word up to make sure it meant what I thought it did would have been out of place in the game. It was an ensemble scene, and it was a point of transition between one act of the story and another. A completely inappropriate time and place to be talking about things the character already knows, and is unimportant to the story as a whole.

The reason why I bring up these character journals is because they are a great thing to do for characters in regular fiction. You can’t have pages and pages of inner monologue in a book. Not if you want your reader to keep turning those pages. Not can you afford to ignore that stuff going on in your character’s head that wants – and needs – to come out. An in-character journal is the ideal tool.

It’s not something you ever have to include in your book, or even show anyone. The important thing is that it lets you work things out. It allows you to verbalize your character’s thoughts and feelings and figure out what they’re thinking. You might know your hero hates the color red, but it’s in a journal entry where you discover the playground bully in elementary school always wore a red jacket. That specific piece of information may never make it into your story, but it’s an important piece of background that colors (if you pardon the pun) your hero’s actions.

Why not consider creating a journal for your characters, to see what they’re thinking?Similar Posts:

• “Promises, Promises” – new fiction (adult content)
• What Kind of Role Player Are You?
• Creative Stuff For Character Creation
• How to Organize Your Worldbuilding Notes
• Other Side of the Street Character Building Guidelines

Journals as a Character Development Tool. originally appeared on LisaHartjes.com on January 23, 2009.