Farm boys always seem to be orphans and comic book characters always need some sort of tragedy in their childhoods to gain their hero status. It’s to the point where a character having a Tragic Backstory™ is a trope onto itself. But a character’s backstory isn’t just a box to check off or a trope to subvert. Where a character comes from informs a lot about who they are and what they value. We’re all, in one way or another, products of our environment. So today we’re going to dive into three of the important parts of a character’s background that you should consider while crafting a main character. And to do that, we’re going to create a background for our own character, Honey.
Environment
Let’s start with the simplest one. What’s the physical environment the character lived in before the story began? A big city? A village under a mountain? Or did they just wander from place to place? This determines what your character is used to and influences the kind of knowledge and skills they have. Someone who grew up in a small town might not know how to navigate a large city. Someone who grew up in the forest likely knows how to identify edible plants. It’s important to figure out your character’s baseline so you can have your character react to deviations to that baseline appropriately. Also, this plays into character promises. If you show that your character’s from an environment—let’s go back to the forest example—where a certain skill—identifying edible plants—would be common or expected, it can be very satisfying for an audience to see that promise fulfilled. Even if you don’t specifically set up the skill, but you set up the environment they’re used to , an audience will be able to believe that a character has these skills. Again, with the forest example, even if your character hasn’t mentioned their ability to identify edible plants before, if your audience knows they grew up in a forest, when they whip out that skill halfway through the story it will be more believable because that fits with their established background.
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With Honey, we decided to have her live in the same small town her whole life (pre-adventure). So, one thing she’s used to is a small, tight-knit community. She would not be able to navigate a large city or the culture of that well, but she would know a lot about the people in her community and be very invested in their lives. This connects to her value of family—since the small community acts as a second family—and leads her to really appreciate her living situation. So, on top of her sensibility and family-orientation making her not want to leave, her environment being very cohesive with those values will also make her not want to leave. This will create an interesting challenge for us as we write her, since she has a lot of reasons to stay put and ignore a call to adventure.
Family
Next, consider the people who most closely shaped your character. What is your character’s family situation like? Were they one of twelve siblings? Was it just them and their mom? Were they raised by their grandparents? Or were they the classic orphan? This determines their values, since a child’s primary teacher about the world and what’s important is their caretaker. This doesn’t mean that a child will copy their caretakers’ values, but they will be influenced by them in some way. Maybe they’re doing what they can to directly oppose them, or maybe they’ve adapted their caretakers’ morals and worldview in some way, maybe they’ve combined the worldviews of the various people who took care of them. And if your character didn’t have any kind of family, consider how that impacts how they view the world.
We decided to give Honey (living) parents and a younger brother, Hunter. Like our building a personality post discussed, Honey is a very family-oriented person, and she holds that value because she’s from a close family. Her parents have always supported her—proudly displaying even her earliest tapestries and spending late nights and early mornings cuddling away nightmares or caring for her when she was sick. This dedication has caused Honey to admire her parents and she emulates them in a lot of ways. Not only is she following in their footsteps with her tapestry making, but her parents share her sensibility, idealism, and value of family and community. That’s why they settled in a small village; they both highly value the simple life and community around them. Since she gained these values from her parents—people she deeply loves and respects—she’s going to hold onto them even more than if she developed them on her own. A betrayal of these values, to her, would seem like a betrayal of the most important people in her life.
In terms of her younger brother, because she’s very family-oriented she takes her role as older sister really seriously. Her parents told her when she was young that as an older sister, her job was to look after him. So she does her best to take care of him and impart her sisterly wisdom on him. When Hunter misbehaves or runs off, she’s the first to urge him to get his act together or go look for him. As a kid, her parents had to remind her that they were the ones who would handle discipline, but that didn’t always stop Honey from playing third parent with her brother. Since she values her familial role the most and, like we outlined in our building a personality post, she doesn’t change herself too much in different situations, she probably takes on the role of “mom friend” with her peers. However, taking this trait to its negative extreme, this can also make her smothering, controlling, or—and this also plays into her idealism and its negative extremes—she thinks that she knows best and often has a very inflexible mindset.
Culture
Finally, you should account for the culture your character grew up in. This can be real or fictional, but regardless you need to determine the ways it will impact your character. Consider the values, beliefs, and norms your character would be familiar with. There can be more than this—for example, a character’s religion would fall under this category—but this is a good foundation. These don’t need to be the ones your character follows, but this will be what your character is used to. And like how I talked about in the family section, your character will still be influenced by these values, beliefs, and norms even if they don’t live by them. A character trying to fight against their culture is still being influenced by that culture.
(Photo Credit: Unsplash)
As the daughter of and student in the art of tapestry making, Honey is highly influenced by that culture. In this world, tapestry makers are the storytellers. The stories of the world are communicated and preserved through the colorful combinations of threads. Since Honey was raised to take on this role, she would have an appreciation and aptitude for storytelling. When she spends time with her friends, she loves telling the group stories to entertain them and she often gives advice in the form of stories. This also, once again pushing this trait to its natural extreme/negative, would make her a good liar. Lies are a form of fiction, afterall. But she’s not going to be aware of this trait at first. Her idealism makes her initially opposed to lying, so this isn’t something she’s been able to discover yet.
Conclusion
A character’s backstory is not just fun extra knowledge or lore to occasionally reference, it’s an active and integral part of your character. So hopefully these categories have helped you create a fleshed out character background for your main character. Next week is one of my favorite parts of character creation, so I hope you stop by next time to learn about what Honey wants and how that often contrasts with what she needs. Until then, bee brilliant!
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