Wednesday, June 16, 2021
by Martha Alderson
The present day story that unfolds in scenes on the page is known as the front story. Behind the front story is a character’s backstory made up of everything that has happened to her before the present moment. The beliefs and people she was raised with, her education, and her emotional development define her backstory. A character’s backstory often directs and always impacts her front story. Often, something in her backstory caused a wound—physical, psychic, or both. Anything in a character’s past that now directly interferes with achieving her dream or goal in the front story is called a backstory wound (you, as the writer, likely have your own backstory wound, one which often directs and always impacts your writing life).
All protagonists have a character flaw that serves to heighten tension, suspense, and curiosity in a story. Usually this character flaw—something she does or believes that limits and weakens her ability to succeed at her goal—develops as a coping mechanism to manage negative emotions from her backstory wound. Her flaw is designed to compensate for a perceived vulnerability or a sense of insecurity and feeling threatened. No matter how confident she is today, she continues to fear lessons learned from the wound inflicted in her past and remain deeply lodged in her core belief system.
The backstory wound can be conscious or forgotten. Either way, over time, a buildup of pain and suffering forms a burden on the protagonist’s heart. Each protagonist has a valuable asset just waiting to be mined that she and most others don’t even notice until she shrugs off her backstory, at least long enough to seize the prize at the end. Stories that show a character confront her emotional wound toward the end of the story reawaken in the reader a belief in the miraculous.
The wound can happen at any age and at any point at which the protagonist is diminished. Something occurs to mask the sense of the protagonist’s gifts with thoughts and beliefs that reflect a misrepresentation of who she truly is. This illusory identity then becomes like a ghost structure and the basis for all of her future interpretations about life. As long as she defines her sense of self from old damage and as being less than extraordinary, she lives an unfulfilled life. A backstory wound is a lesser or greater trail of damage across her heart and limits her capacity for love. Because a backstory is usually filled with fear, loathing, and pain, it is often buried. Thus, the backstory reveal toward the end of the middle of the story is often painful and difficult for the character to discern and integrate.
In the beginning of the story, the protagonist exhibits an unproductive repetition of behaviors and habits and patterns that interfere with her forward progress. These unproductive habits are shown in various degrees depending on your genre.
In the middle of the story, as she is subjected to greater and greater complications, her backstory wound interferes in greater and greater measure. Often, around three quarters of the way through a story, a crisis strikes. Some dark nights are serious enough to be the emotional center of your story. Devastating news and unfortunate events have the potential to awaken the jaws of phantom pain and reveal a giant seeping wound deep in character’s inner life.
After the crisis, she acknowledges the true source of her limitations—herself. Throughout the final quarter of the story, she struggles to trust, rely on, and be true to herself and find she has all she needs. Slowly she modifies her behavior, acting in a manner most natural to her. When she begins to use her innate abilities, life begins to improve for her. For the protagonist to complete her transformation at the end of the story, first she must reshape her center in herself and find stability in her own inner ground. The same holds for you, too. Freed from her self-imposed limitations, she seizes the prize at the end of the story.
The backstory wound makes the character less than perfect, which makes her believable and easier for readers and audiences to identify with. When a reader connects with what happens to the protagonist, she becomes united with that character in an intimate way. The reader’s concern and compassion comes alive as they live the story.
A powerful way for the reader to connect with the protagonist of your story is through her backstory wound.
For more about your character’s backstory wound—The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Write Compelling Stories
For more about your own “backstory” wound—Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-Doubt, Emotional Traps and Other Creative Blocks
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Known as the Plot Whisperer, Martha Alderson has had a lifelong passion to support women’s voices through their storytelling and creativity. With the help of the Universal Story, she invites writers in Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-Doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks to imagine yourself as the protagonist of your own story as you embark on a journey through all the major turning points found in stories and every creative endeavor.
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