Back Story

Over the last two years, I have been working heavily on the front end of my third fantasy novel for the series, A Royal Life, and I've finally reached the midway section to realise that not only is the ending of the novel going to change once again, but that the tail end of the story is going to be much easier to write. 

Why is it going to be so much easier to write? Because the tail end has a lot less to do with the characters back story. 

It's really tricky to integrate characters back stories without info dumps, so today we're discussing the importance of knowing a character's back story to avoid that and instead create a smoother reading experience for your readers. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So I've recently been wrestling with my third book in my fantasy series Aurora Life and it's definitely been a wrestle. I mean there's there's been moments of good flow, but it's yeah, it's still a bit of a wrestling match. It has once again surprised me recently in the fact that we've changed the ending of it. Not so much the ending, but we've kind of brought the ending to the book forward because honestly, I don't even know why. I mean I do know why, but to articulate it would be too hard. And honestly, at this point, I'm just sort of like letting the characters do what the fuck they want because I'm just so tired of fighting this manuscript and where these characters keep switching and changing the stories. I have to say it kind of then indeed change because of one particular character, she just kind of, yo, editing Scarlet dropping in here. I have been going back and forth over that last little segment so many times trying to figure out what the hell happened with the recording, and I didn't know if I just spoke too fast for the microphone and it just kind of shrunk all my words into one. I know Australians are very good at doing that. We kind of have an accent which kind of comes across like a sing song because we just speak so fucking fast. But what that short little snippet was trying to say is that the ending of my novel changed because of one particular female character. If you listen to it really closely multiple times, you might hear something like that, but good luck. You know, what comes next. And then in doing that, it did change the ending, and yeah, fuck it. I just learned not to argue with these characters and accept that this book is gonna be a nightmare until the very end. So the bit where the character kind of changed everything was kind of like mid-kind of mid-book, I want to say. So it's about 70,000 words in, which for most novels is actually the ending, but because these stories are so fucking long, it's just the middle. But anyhow, so it was kind of like the midsection that this character kind of changed everything for me and the ending. And so I've been working on the first 70,000 words for just like two years non-stop, just pain my ass. And I was kind of reflecting on the first bit of the novel and then the second bit of the novel, and now where it's ending and how they compare and whatnot. And the second part of the novel is gonna be much bloody easier to write. And I was thinking about that. I was thinking, why is it so much easier? And it's easy, it's gonna be easier for a lot of reasons, but one of the one of the biggest reasons is that the first part of this novel is just there is so much so much family trauma between so many characters, and it's been a real struggle to try and ensure every character's motivation is not only authentic to that character, but coming across the page authentically, and that they are all staying within character and whatnot. And that it they're just complex scenes where there's just lots of different trauma and survival modes and things coming on the page, which is just it just makes it really kind of hard to get out because it's not just it's just not it's not just focusing on the sentence structure and the word choice and punctuation and all that shit. It's it's it's just focusing on a different level of psychology around these characters and their motivations and actions and then responses, because you know, actions have consequences. So and one thing I realized was that the front end of the story is really focusing on a lot of backstory. The backstory doesn't really end up much on the page because I'm not the type of writer that does that. I kind of detest writers that do that, to be honest. But the problem is that the characters' motivations are all based on their backstory, all based on stuff that happens, has happened off the page, but has shaped them so much that is still currently coming out in their present situation, like the best traumas do, right? So it's been a real fucking headache. And I realize one of the one of the tricky aspects about it all is that unlike two other characters in this series, I never really spent a lot of time or any time writing these characters' backstories. Like I had done it in my head, but I hadn't done it on the page. Um, so like I knew what the trauma had been, I knew what these characters had gone through together, and I knew basically the rough timeline of one of the characters and when they'd left and what they'd done with their lives since then and and whatnot. But the the point is I hadn't actually written it down like I had the other two main characters. And it's funny because when I first started writing this series, what I actually ended up starting with was the backstory. I didn't really realise that at the time, but that's exactly what it ended up being is their backstory. And it's funny because we always talk about where's the best place to start a novel. And I I don't think starting at chapter one is ever a good idea. Um, chapter one has to do so much for your novel that it's just easier to do that later rather than start there. But I appreciate that a lot of people, myself included, a lot of the time, can't just fuck off chapter one and go write something else. So the next best thing to do is actually to start with the backstory. And I think that's naturally where a lot of writers end up, whether they want to or not. They will generally start writing and think, oh yeah, this is chapter one, this is where the story's going. And then as they grow and mature in their craft, they realize, well, actually, no, this is completely shy, this can't be in the story at all. But what they've written has actually become the story, the character's backstory. And in doing what they have, they've actually become very well connected with their character. So this is the funny thing with characters, is you have to really know their inside and out. And writing their backstory allows you to do that. And the great thing is once you know your character inside and out and you know their backstory, it's much easier to weave their backstory into the main narrative without doing it the shocking way that a lot of writers do with lots of huge info dumps and flashback scenes. I mean, admittedly, I do do a little bit of that myself. It's hard to avoid that completely. But the great thing is when you know the characters so well and you know their backstory so well, you're not leaning on those styles to show or tell that to the reader. You can bring it forward through other means in like how how they do things or what they say and their thought patterns and things like that. It's just a little more on the nose, I'm gonna say, and also I think makes the characters seem more real on the page because I guess characters are like people in the sense, or especially for the reader, is that you know, you they're kind of getting to know shit. I just hit my microphone. Um, you you're getting to that real for readers when they get to know a character, it's sort of like getting to know a person. You kind of get to know the character the more you read them, and you get, you know, layers of them come off and you kind of get closer and closer to them and whatnot. And that's like the same with people in real life, isn't it? You get to know someone, and you slowly get to know who they really are and what their likes are and their dislikes are. And that's a lot more enjoyable to do when you say you're spending time together with someone and doing shit. If you were sitting across from someone at a cafe, at a cafe, at a cafe, and um, sorry, that just kind of so stupid. Um if you were sitting across from someone at a cafe and then for the next 40 minutes they just decided to basically mansplan you about their fucking backstory and all their trauma, you're just gonna be sitting there wondering when the fucking get out of there. And the same is true for when you're writing a story, and you do that to the reader with doing fucking flashbacks and backstory in your writing. You essentially want the reader to get to know the character slowly and through unraveling of layers like they would a person. That is what a good writer will be able to do. Now, can I say that I've nailed this? Absolutely fucking not. I'm a person, I'm naturally born. And as much as I can say, well, I know this is how you should do it, doesn't mean that I'm actually going to be able to do it once I get to my story and do the page. I will say that I have given it a fair fucking crack to do it this way. Um, but you know, at the end of the day, it's not up to me to say whether I've done it right. That's up to the reader, isn't it? So I guess we'll just wait and see on that front. But what I'm trying to say is that backstories are good. Backstories are important. So if you find yourself wanting to write, but you're not sure what to write, and you're not too sure what the story even is, but you've got a character, I'd really recommend writing their backstory, like writing about their childhood, writing about their parents, writing about their home, writing about their family dynamics, you know, writing about their experiences, writing about the, you know, shit that happened to them and getting to kind of know them that way. I mean, you could do character profiles, that's totally fine. But I thought of I sort of find character profiles a bit dull, sort of like filling in forms at the waiting room. It's like, yeah, you can put in your name and your weight and your height and you know, your social social security or Medicare number and whatever fucking health insurance you might or might not have. But does that form actually accurately then say who you are? I I don't think they do. They're just the kind of most black and white version of you and the most logistic details about who you are, but it doesn't at all display your experience or who you are as a person. And I think that's when writing the backstory is really handy and really useful, especially if you're gonna write a series like I am. Because as much as I'm writing a series and I technically have that space where I could give to the backstory, at the same time, I've got so much fucking story to get through. I don't really want to be wasting any of my precious word count on the backstory if necessary. I mean, that's the other thing. I think some writers get a bit indulgent in thinking that their character's backstory is really fucking interesting. And really it's not. I'm sorry, but most people's backstory isn't interesting, and majority of people don't want to hear people's backstories. They just want to hear what's going on for them right here and right now. So if you can find a way to get to know your character so damn well that you can weave their backstory into the current plot and action that's happening, well then you fucking nailed it.