I
participated in Writers Helping Writers’s Amazing Race a while back where for seven days
they helped close to 350 writers with hooks, first pages, query letters, blog
posts, and much more. Each day held a
variety of prize drawings as well and I won one of the twenty seats for Angela
Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s webinar on creating and knowing your characters’
past.
A simple way to think
about your characters is to think about the real people around you. I love sitting in a mall or airport or even
church, just to watch people. How they
move. How they communicate. How they dress. Do you have someone interesting in your
life? What makes them interesting? Personality?
Accent? Behavior?
Writers need to recognize
that our readers want to read about real people—even when they know the story
is fiction. They long for something
deeper: Understanding, connection, hope. A way to make their own lives better
somehow.
“Crappy things happen
every day. Give readers someone to root
for,” Becca said. Writers can do this
through empathy. The reader needs to
care about our protagonist and whatever battle he or she is up against.
Backstory is the
key. The protagonist’s—or
antagonist’s—emotional wound is what makes for a realistic and genuine
character. Whatever the wound may be, it
has changed them. The character will go
to great extremes to avoid finding themselves in that painful situation
again. Their past affects their present
and how they respond to any given circumstance.
The character moves on
with his or her life. Challenge
them. Motivate them. What’s compelling is their goals and desires
that keep them going. Provide small to
medium-sized successes that keep moving the story, and the character,
forward. Eventually, they must face
their fear and overcome it. The goal
will always outweigh their fear. Hence,
the story arc.
But how much backstory
is too much and where and when do you put it in? The backstory must apply to what is currently
happening in the story. You never want
to stop, provide the backstory, and start again. This slows pace and causes readers to
skim. And that’s the last thing you
want.
You also want to show,
not tell. Do this through dialogue,
remembering, interaction, a pivotal moment.
If you must pause for a flashback, get in and get out. Don’t take more time than necessary.
I’ve listened to
several agent and editor panels at various writers’ conferences across the
country over the past few years. They
all say the same thing where backstory is concerned: Sprinkle it in. It’s better to do it in doses here and there
than to stop the story for chunks of writing your reader will most likely
skim. Skimming is never a good
thing.
For someone writing
memoir, like myself, the entire story happened in the past. Choose where to start your story, but keep in
mind that most of your history will not make it into the book.
How do you create your
characters and how do you handle their backstory?
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