Crafting Compelling Backstories
Sometimes, a character's backstory is key to understanding their motivations or mindset. It's crucial to learn how to weave these elements in without getting bogged down in lengthy flashbacks. Here are some tips to help you master this.
The 5 w’s of story – where, what, why, who and when – can all change to create variety and interest. None of these elements must change. The characters in your novel or your setting could remain fairly constant. Yet change opens up possibilities for new developments and intriguing new scenarios. These keep your novel exciting and interesting. To avoid your story stagnating in a single location, shift somewhere new – another town or country, from the city to the countryside or vice versa. Make sure any change of setting makes sense in relation to the story.
If the middle feels slow, trim it without hesitation.
This is the first part of our series on writing and developing backstories. I'm excited to share more tips in upcoming articles. Don't forget to leave a comment letting me know what topics you'd like to see covered next!
Travel Pro
It’s great that you share these tips with young and aspiring writers. Even though they may not be writing novels, I believe it will be very useful for them to learn something new from a really skilled writer like you. I’d be glad to hear some recommendations on how a writer can develop the plot without cutting down chapters (I often see it in the books of young writers). Anyway, thank you for this post, it is very informative!
Deep Dive Explorer
I totally agree with your last point, but I also think it would be awesome to find ways to develop the right relationships between protagonists. That would be super interesting.