Backstory

Posted byjenniferannerainesPosted inUncategorized

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been thinking about backstory lately.

Backstory is the history that has made your characters who and what they are. In last month’s blog I paraphrased Shannon Curtis who conducted a craft session on backstory at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference. Backstory, of necessity, includes the emotional shrapnel embedded in our character(s)—the wound; their bedrock belief, which is in fact a misbelief built on flawed, yet convincing logic. And their fear—whether real and well-founded or perceived. Because of this fear, the character changes their behaviour to avoid threats, and this prevents him/her/they from finding love. Characters become whole at the end of a romance through the transformative powers of love and courage.

Backstory is what allows readers to relate to characters. There are all sorts of rules and prohibitions about when you reveal backstory, and it’s easy to get tripped up. A common criticism of new authors is “you’ve given the reader too much backstory too soon”. The solution is to dribble in the backstory, because if you give away too much too soon, you dilute your story’s tension. So hoard your backstory, as Grace Burrowes says, and never answer a question until the reader has been asking it for a few pages.

If the theme of romances is love conquers all (Gwen Hayes, Romancing the Beat); or rather love conquers distrust, or betrayal, or loneliness, or abandonment, or shame, or something else, then backstory is the “all”.

In my current work in progress, the main protagonists play a critical role in each other’s backstories through a shared traumatic incident. This past complicates their present. So, we’ve got guilt, regret, atonement and unworthiness all scrambled together. They need to forgive each other as well as themselves. Without empathy, my characters, who are perfect for each other, won’t be able to build a positive, shared future.

Authors invite their readers to empathize with their characters, and the best books achieve this.

But backstory is critical to every human being. While authors focus on the specific characters we’ve selected for our stories, each person you pass in the street has a backstory. Do we empathize with strangers in the street, people we’ve never spoken to or met? Would it make a difference to our shared world if we tried to understand what has shaped their life?

I’ve also been thinking about this recently because of political developments in Australia. We’re having a Referendum to change our Constitution. It seems pretty uncontroversial; recognise First Nations people as the original owners of the land. A no-brainer because they were here when white settlement occurred, and we are one of the few countries on earth where settlers didn’t sign a treaty. Recognising First Nations people in the Constitution is a straightforward correction of an historical wrong.

The second part of the question is about establishing a permanent advisory body of First Nations people to advise the Parliament and Executive on policies that directly impact Indigenous communities. We’ve had advisory bodies before, but with no requirement for permanence, a change of government can mean existing bodies are abolished, and expertise and knowledge of issues that impact First Nations people are lost. This notion of a permanent advisory voice, designed by Parliament and regulated by whichever party is in government, seems to be trickier for a lot of people, and has been a touchstone for a deluge of misinformation, deliberate lies, and personal attacks on First Nations individuals.

I can’t help but feel that backstory is playing a role here too. Some people are uncomfortable with the notion that the actions of their grandparents and great-grandparents influences what happens today, but ask anyone who’s just received a DNA test result that tells them their beloved grandfather isn’t in fact any sort of relation to them, and the past becomes integral to the present.

Nations across the world still struggle with their histories, the conversation on reparations for slavery is fraught, and historical genocides are still disputed. There are many difficult questions and answers in Australia’s history with its First Nations people. Many see voting yes in the Referendum as a chance to listen to the lived experience of Australia’s First Nations people and move forward with courage and love.

You can find my books at major booksellers, or through the My Books page on my website.

Taylor’s Law—The Anderson Sisters Book 1 (Second Place‑Romance Writers of New Zealand Koru Awards 2023—Best First Book)

Grace Under Fire—The Anderson Sisters Book 1

Planting Hope, a standalone slowburn contemporary romance

Lela’s Choice—due out in December 2023.

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