Backstory: the Meaning Behind the Character

The best story characters are characters that people love, hate, relate to, and feel sorry for. What makes the reader feel that way? Well, think. What makes you feel any of those things for a real person? You know something about them, beyond their name and where they live and work. You know what they're like, what they've been through, what they stand for or don't stand for. It's the same way with a character.

Say we start with a character in a historical setting (my favorite). Let's make them an indentured servant in colonial America. Ok, naturally, you might feel a little sorry for them if you're a student of history and know a little about what it was like to be an indentured servant -for a specified number of years, you were essentially a slave, doing a master's bidding, not free to live your own life, until your debt was paid.

What was this debt for your character? Were they a criminal working out a labor sentence? If so, what was their crime? Did they steal? What drove them to commit that crime? Were they hungry? Did they have a sick relative they were trying to provide for?

Or were they working to pay off their passage to America? How did this come about? How could they not afford to pay passage? Were they poor, with no money to begin with, forcing them to sign an indenture before setting sail to the new world? Was there a sponsor who was supposed to meet them and pay their passage when they arrived, who failed to show up? Did a drunk father gamble away the passage money while they were in port? (Why was the father a drunk? Did he just like drink, or was he trying to cope with something: guilt, grief, war memories?)

Are they alone or do they have friends and family? Often relatives were separated from their families by indenture. Is there a longing to be reunited with the ones they love? Did their family die on the way to the new world or shortly after arriving, leaving the character all alone in a strange new land? Is your character an adventurer who left their family behind and went to the new world for themselves -or do they plan to make a better life and send for their family later?

Ok, say you have a time period for someone to be coming to America. What country were they coming from? What was happening in that country at that time that would give people a reason to want to go to America? Was there religious persecution -were they seeking freedom to worship as they believed? Was there a famine or an economic crisis -were they seeking a better life? Was there a revolution or a war -were they seeking safety and peace? How does that play into their life now in America? (For example, someone trying to get away from the revolutions in the German states in the 1840s and just find peace and safety; twenty years later, they've made a good, peaceful life for themselves and suddenly they find themselves embroiled in the conflict of the American Civil War!)

All of this backstory influences your character who is presently in colonial America working out their indenture, perhaps involved in the American Revolution or some other colonial events. Backstory is essential. Even if you don't use parts of it in the actual story, it's still imperative that you have it all there, in your head, as you're writing. Because, whether you realize it or not, knowing that person's story influences you as you are writing about them and what they are doing. And, here and there, bits of that backstory will reveal themselves, within the natural flow of the story (don't info-dump the person's entire life story right there at the beginning of the story -total spoiler!).

A well-developed character is important. Yes, the intrigue and the action and dialogue of the present is important, but just as important is what came before your story. What brought the characters to the place where they are now in the story? What happened to them in the past that is influencing the decisions they are making in the story?

Answer as many of these questions as you can, before you ever start writing about your character. Then, with all of this information in your mind, your character will write themselves into the pages of history, and find their way into your readers' hearts.