Make Plot and Backstory Mesh

Janet here. Everyone reading this has a past. That past includes major events and life changing situations that shaped who we are. The same is true of our characters. The writer's job is to fit the plot and characters together perfectly, as if they are tailored made for each other. How do we do this? We look at backstory.   

What is backstory?

Backstory is anything relevant that happened to the characters before the story starts. Past experiences, treatment, birth order, lifestyle, choices--anything that has shaped who they are and what they believe about themselves, believe about others and believe about the world they live in. Characters with a well-developed backstory are three-dimensional and will hopefully leap off the page and into readers' hearts.

How does backstory impact both the character and the plot?

Backstory shapes the characters values, creates strengths and flaws, which impacts their actions during the story. If wounded in the past, especially in the area of relationships, characters will likely refuse to risk their hearts. We can use external conflict in the plot to force characters to confront and overcome the pain of their childhood. Negative experiences like abuse, death and addiction create mistrust, shame and isolation. These create internal conflicts that distort their perceptions and keep them stuck in the past. 

How do writers create the characters backstory?

We make things up, but not just any old things. When we create characters, we want to mesh their backstory, which produces internal conflict with the external conflict of the plot. The right plot for that character will force them to act and change. Think how backstory will affect the characters' actions and how external events will force the internal wounds to the surface. When we mesh the external and internal together, at the story's end, the characters should be changed, able to do what they weren't able to do at the beginning. 

How do we go about creating a story that will mesh backstory and plot?

It's that age old question: What came first the chicken or the egg? Do we come up with a story, a premise, then flesh out characters to fit? Or do characters come into our head and demand their story? It doesn't matter which comes first, just as long as they work together. Alicia Rasley in The Story Within Guidebook says it perfectly: The plot needs this person and this person needs this plot. 


To get to specifics on how to do this, ask questions about the character and the plot. What does this character need to learn? What does this character want? Will the external conflict not only advance the plot but, also, force the character to grow? 

             Here are possible ways I used in my books to mesh backstory and plot:

• Use backstory to create characters' external goals. For example, in Wanted: A Family pregnant widow Callie wants to turn her dilapidated Victorian into a home for unwed mothers. Her motivation: a childhood friend got pregnant in her teens and unable to face the shame and judgment took her own life. That painful experience created Callie's goal of helping these ostracized women. 

• Use backstory to create characters' internal goals. For example, in Wanted: A Family, Callie's internal goal is to forge a family with her child and the unwed mothers and not risk her heart to another man. Her motivation: the deaths of her parents and husband left her feeling abandoned. Even married, she'd felt emotionally abandoned.  

• Put wounded characters in situations that test their mettle. If an experience in her past made her afraid of tight places, then use the plot to put her in a stuck elevator. 

• Create backstory that ensures heroes and heroines are exactly wrong for each other. In The Bounty Hunter's Redemption, Carly's dead husband was a violent guy. Hero Nate is the bounty hunter who killed him. To Carly these two men are cut from the same cloth, making Nate exactly the wrong man for her.   

• Create wounds that hinder faith or judgment. In Courting Miss Adelaide, Charles's father was a church-going hypocrite who beat his family, leaving Charles with a dim view of God and with a past that blinds him to the possibility an orphan is being abused. Or on the flip side the backstory gives the character special insight and a strong faith.

• Create past wounds that impede the goal. In Wanted: A Family, Callie's sense of abandonment escalates when parishioners rebuke and avoid her for bringing unwed mothers to church, making her question herself and her goal.

• Create secrets that open past wounds. In The Substitute Bride, Elizabeth's father gambled away the family fortune and left them destitute, the reason she became Ted's mail-order bride. She's devastated when Ted's secret past as a gambler is revealed.  

• Create a plot that clashes with the character's value system. Ethics clash with the external goal in The Bounty Hunter's Redemption when Nate's loyalty to his widowed sister requires him to hurt another widow and her son. Truth and loyalty clash in An Inconvenient Match when Abigail is caught between loyalty to her father and the truth of what caused the feud between her and Wade's families. 

Once we've developed characters and plot, we can look at the external conflict to make sure it's strong enough to force the characters to overcome their wounds and grow and change. Then they'll finally able to get the "happily ever after" ending they've earned.

What is the favorite story you've written that meshed a character's backstory with the plot? 

What book have you read that meshed plot and character together perfectly?

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I brought tea and coffee, powdered and chocolate frosted cake donuts along with apple fritters. A sugar-fest!   

Janet Dean grew up in a family who cherished the past and had a strong creative streak. Her father recounted fascinating stories, like his father before him. The tales they told instilled in Janet a love of history and the desire to write. Today Janet spins stories for Love Inspired Historical. She is a two-time Golden Heart finalist, a Genesis and a Carol finalist and a member of Romance Writers of America and American Christian Fiction Writers. Her novels are also Golden Quill, Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, Booksellers Best and Inspirational Readers Choice Award finalists.