Ha ha, we’re back! I came across a handout from a class on backstory at last year’s National Romance Writers of America Conference.

Author Winnie Griggs says on her handout: “Whether you are a plotter or a pantser, the more time you spend figuring out what makes your character tick, the easier your story will be to write and the more depth it will have.”

For significant events in the characters’ lives, she includes how that event impacts her character’s life-view. The handout also outlines several ways to reveal the backstory (obviously, the full content was covered in the class, and I didn’t attend the conference, so I can’t help you fill in all the blanks).

This handout also features a chart for tracking your backstory against the backdrop of the historical events before and during your novel—an important aspect that we haven’t really discussed. Especially if you’re writing a historical novel, mapping out the events in the years before your novel may help you find some events that could have an impact on your characters.

Using a chart may or may not help you figure out your character’s history and personal motivations. But as I looked over the chart, I wondered how other people come up with backstory details. When it comes to backstory, are you more of a planner, a fixer/grafter or a happy coincidencer? Are you more likely to allow the story to grow out of something that happened before your story starts, or to fill in the blanks in your characters’ pasts as you write them?

How do you craft what came before?

Photo by Earl