Shortish

Remember a couple weeks ago, when we talked about backstories in short stories? Well today we’re taking that topic from the other angle, from the point of view of the novel. See, last time we talked about why you shouldn’t try to fit extravagant backstories into the few words allowed within a short story. So this time, I want to tell you what you shouldn’t do with backstories in a novel.

Small Backstories

Okay, so technically it’s fine to have smaller snippets of backstory within a novel, but that’s not what I mean here.

Within novels, what you’ll want to do is come up with the full backstories for your characters, so that bits and pieces can be revealed at a time. You’ll want to make something that's rich and real, something that shows how lifelike your characters are. What you will not want to do is start working on your novel with no idea who your characters are, and no notion of what their lives were like before the story started. That’s what I mean by small backstories. Try to get to know your characters before you start writing them into a story.

See, when people read novels, they’re looking for an elaborate story. They want characters with depth and detail, with histories that might be similar to ones we face in our everyday lives. So that’s what your characters need to have.

A lot of new writers forget this, when they first start writing. They focus on the story itself rather than on the characters, and the book ends up falling flat. We don’t want that. It’s the last thing we want.

My recommendation is to write shortish backstories for each of your characters before real work on the story begins. You don’t have to write a lot, just a bullet point list of maybe fifteen to twenty things that happened in their lives and things you should know about them, so that you’ll know how they might respond in any given situation. Without this information, without really knowing who your characters are, your readers will never even be given a chance. 

Nobody wants that, either. 

[love]

{Rani Divine}