My elder son is entering the world of professional writing. I am blessed to be able to “talk shop” with him, to be honest. He’s got a great brain. Today, the subject of character backstories arose in conversation.
Because we’re fun, like that. 😉
I shared with him how Donald Sutherland, may he rest in peace, wrote about the character of Coriolanus Snow when he took on the role in The Hunger Games series. He wrote a series of letters involving the character of President Snow and how he got to be the way he was. It was rich backstory that actually added to the script of the film, as it was so vital to this character.
All characters deserve to have a backstory. In many works of derivative/fan fiction, secondary characters are given rich backstories that may or may not affect their canon personalities. It’s a lot of fun to explore these. For my own writing, I love giving my characters involved backstories. There are childhood details, how they feel about their parents, any aversions to certain animals, and so on. I give “sofa seminars” to my furniture about all of that.
No one who reads my books ever knows these stories the way I do, because they don’t appear on the page. They’re ingredients.
Explaining this to my son this afternoon, I told him it was like a cookie. You see one rich, tasty, cookie and you hold it, smell it, take a bite, enjoy. But before that cookie got to you, there was this whole involved process in the kitchen involving ingredients, measuring, mixing, rolling and cutting or spooning and dropping. The baker had to prepare a baking sheet in some manner and watch the time during each set of cookies baked.
The result of that effort is a cookie. (Or many cookies!)
Do you have a favorite secondary character who has a rich backstory?
Sandi Layne 