Backstory and unknown facts

[Arlingtonn]

Do your characters have backstories that the reader will never know? Or little facts thats won't come up in the finished story?

Because I spend so much time thinking on my story, I come up with all sorts of character quirks and histories that won't ever really fit in, like the fact that one of the elderly cousel members was a pirate in her younger years.

I found this very same thread in another guild, but it was being... inactive, so I thought I'd try it out here. I'm crossing my fingers, hoping it will do better, cause this is really interesting to me.  

[Fujiwara Kazunari]

I try to fit in everything I can about my characters. Since there's a lot of times when they're relaxed, and 'at home' I normally have lots of random coversations, like I would in normal life, which means there's a lot of chances to insert those random little facts.


But somethings never get in ._.  

[Joonbong]

Ah, for some reason, I don't have that. You see, if you realize it soon enough, there's always a place to naturally put it in. biggrin
Somehow... sweatdrop
No really. neutral

Actually, there are sometimes whole chapters to introduce one character. The main character meets them in someway, or remembers them from a past meeting way back. But once they see them again, there's something wrong. And then that something wrong could connect to what happened in their backstories. That's the easiest way to put in a backstory, I think, even though how I described it was very vague.

For the fact that one of the elderly counsel members was a pirate... you could, for example, describe her grudge against her rival pirates by making her put up a scary expression whenever they are mentioned. Or she could show her knowledge about sails and ships, somehow leading us to that fact. [shrug]

Just don't put a pig where a hulahoop should be.  

[Undead Superstar]

yep...a lot of my novels involve several oflashbacks so I give every character a extremely detailed backstory, just so when I use a flashback i don't confuse anything  

[Arlingtonn]

JunichiJay

Ah, for some reason, I don't have that. You see, if you realize it soon enough, there's always a place to naturally put it in. biggrin
Somehow... sweatdrop
No really. neutral

Actually, there are sometimes whole chapters to introduce one character. The main character meets them in someway, or remembers them from a past meeting way back. But once they see them again, there's something wrong. And then that something wrong could connect to what happened in their backstories. That's the easiest way to put in a backstory, I think, even though how I described it was very vague.

For the fact that one of the elderly counsel members was a pirate... you could, for example, describe her grudge against her rival pirates by making her put up a scary expression whenever they are mentioned. Or she could show her knowledge about sails and ships, somehow leading us to that fact. [shrug]

Just don't put a pig where a hulahoop should be.

I like your suggestions. Its actually really fun to read a book and pick up on little hints like that, so I would like to try and weasle the little tidbits into my book.  

[SaraDiva728]

I can't write a story without fleshing the character out in fine detail first, even though MOST of it will never be known anyway. And many times their background sounds way better than the story I made to put them in (its so unfortunate that I'm not a better writer gonk ). My RP characters are good examples. What is known about one in particular, is that he is a Lycan whose loyal, sometimes funny, sometimes just weird, but an all around dependable guy despite not being old enough to have his powers yet. He can be headstrong, but knows his gifts and weaknesses and won't back down from a chance to help others--even at his own expense.

What you'll never know is that my character is a Prince in hiding for his life, after his family was shunned from their kingdom by their own people because the Lord they'd helped to power betrayed them. He can't tell you this for fear of being discovered by those who might still seek his life. He preaches the need for unity and loyalty in times of crises because of what his people had done in shunning his family, and many other families of war heroes now deemed traitors to their kind though they stood valiantly for the newly-found freedoms they plan to enjoy. He also cherishes the lives of his friends above all else because he has nothing else left--assuming the worst has happened to those few surviors he's now seperated from. That's not even including his father whom, by now, is possibly captured already and awaiting execution despite how badly the character hopes that he's actually well on his way to making things right again as his mother promised he'd be. And the character occationally acts as the clown and desperately desires peace between his new teammates because he'd had so much practice within his own family. He wants everyone to get along because, despite his efforts, he's never been able to win over his step-siblings who hate him over the fact that his mother killed theirs to claim her title and they now have to kiss up to her or they'll find themselves homeless strays. No one would ever know these things because its never going to come up during a survival class at a new school hundreds of miles away from where he used to live (expecially considering that the class is currently off-world anyways...).

I worked really hard on it, even working out any kinks I could find so that no one could find a singular detail out of place if they had the chance to look. And I went through all the trouble so that I could better understand my character's psychology and make him act accordingly when situations arose. I even gave the mom and dad's characters small backgrounds and personality profiles because the character takes after them in many respects and I didn't want to have to stop and think about that later. Pretty extremist I know, but my perfectionism seems to know no bounds and being my lazy gene doesn't seem to mind work that excercises the brain rather than the body, I'm not really bothered by it. It's really the fact that I don't get to show the whole iceburg. I mean, what is the tip anyway?  

[Zaviire]

*posts*

I tend to think of back stories for just-in-case times where I might want to write little tidbits in. c: So yes, all my characters have random facts that nobody will ever know... Unless I tell them or write it into a story somehow. Usually, my characters only reference backstories, though. For example, in a tiny one-shot, and I think it might have come up in Fading Light (I'm too lazy to pull up Google Docs and check), Cyrii references the fact that he hasn't always been blind. Xauc references that Genocide only popped up after he became a Warrior.

So yeah, a lot of the stuff I'd like to put in my stories never, ever make it into them. :c it's sad, really, most of my characters have supermegahuge backstories that I could probobly make an entire story out of. (... *makes note to do that sometime*)

I try not to rely on back stories, though, because I find them frustrating to think of and write out. Hence why Vyral and Cyrii don't technically have a full backstory yet ha ha

*steals topic*