Building Character Backstory
Story Steps Five As I was winding up my undergrad degree many, many years ago, for fun I took a Creative Writing class. Somewhere along the way I lost the handy dandy writing how-to book we used in the class, but one recommendation stuck with me: write a detailed biography for characters prior to writing the story. After the class, I subscribed to several writing magazines. They echoed the author’s opinion that a writer had to “get to know” story characters completely before you could write about them. Over the years, I read articles and attended workshops that abounded with character lists. Hair color. Eye color. Date of birth. Educational background. Height. Weight. Favorite foods. Foods dislikes. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I wasted a lot of time writing biographies full of trivial information for characters. Information I never used and soon forgot after writing it down. Gradually, my biographies changed. I started concentrating on events t