Hi. My name’s Brad, and I like to write scary stories.

Great, now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, I’d like to tell you about a novel that I wrote and one of the challenges I faced while writing it.

Fear Not The Dead is about a lady, Ann Walker, who has uncovered repressed memories of a tragedy she experienced as a child. Ann’s mother was killed at a remote Bed and Breakfast called Cardinal Crest Estate. Her therapist recommends an immersive therapy, returning Ann back to the estate to work through those tragic events. As the story progresses, a sinister revenge plot unfurls, and the ghosts of Cardinal Crest Estate seek to reek havoc on Ann’s already fractured psyche.

It’s a great story, and I had a blast writing it.

That being said, there was one key aspect of this book that I had to tread lightly with. By the earlier description (and the title of this article), can you tell what it was? Backstory. This is a tricky piece of writing that, if not done right and with care, can destroy a really good story.

Backstory is everything that’s happened before the story starts. We are all the sum of everything that has ever happened to us, every experience we’ve ever had, and your characters are no different. Their abilities and motivations are influenced by what happened to them before page one. To say all of that is important is an understatement. If your character is afraid of water or the color magenta, there’s probably a great backstory that goes along with that.

Backstory creates the context in which our characters exist. Your characters, their families, friends, enemies, all existed before page one, and well-developed characters have a history. Your reader’s introduction to them happened when they opened the book, but to you, the author, they’ve lived entire lives before that point.

There are three key ingredients to backstory. The first is a wound.

The second is an inner obstacle, and the third one is your character’s current behavior and motivation.

A wound is the result of something that has happened in your character’s past that caused a physical or psychological trauma. No different than if you have a wound or a scar because you fell off your bike in the third grade, your character’s wound happened in the past and impacts them now. In “Fear Not The Dead”, as a child Ann watched as her mother died in a violent accident. Would that cause trauma? Damn, skippy. Would that impact the events of the rest of her life? You bet. I took it a step further and repressed those memories. It’s only through her discussions with her therapist that those memories (aka backstory) is uncovered.

The wound develops the other two ingredients. Without the wound, there wouldn’t be an inner obstacle. This is usually a false belief that’s created by the wound and gets in your character’s way. The key is the false belief. If your character fell off their bike in the third grade, they may have a false belief that they can’t ride a bike, or that bike riding is extremely dangerous. The wound sets up the false pretext. In the beginning of FNtD, we learn Ann’s father has just died. As a result, she began experiencing severe panic attacks and anxiety. Her father’s death reopened the wound from her mother’s death and created that inner obstacle. It set her up to believe she wasn’t strong enough to protect her own children. She became weak and timid, which isn’t who she once was.

The last piece is your character’s current behavior and motivation. This becomes apparent as you layer the ingredients. If you fell off of your bicycle in the third grade (wound), and now have a belief that bicycles are extremely dangerous (inner obstacle), you may restrict your children from ever riding a bike or go on a crusade to have bicycles banned (current behavior or motivation). In FNtD, Ann’s motivation to go to Cardinal Crest Estate is driven by her desire to overcome her inner obstacles. Ann tells her therapist in the first chapter how she can’t sit through her kids’ sporting events without panicking. She knows she can’t live with the panic attacks.

We’ve covered what backstory is and the ingredients of it. We know that backstory impacts what our characters do. But how much of those events, that history, do you include in your story? There’s the real question.

And the answer? Well, it’s that most wonderful answer…it depends. There are some pitfalls when it comes to backstory and some good techniques. I won’t cover them all, but I do want to highlight a few of each.

Pitfalls: (I pulled this list from a great article you can find here: https://janefriedman.com/backstory-is-essential-to-story-except-when-its-not/)

• Frontloaded backstory – In the movies, this is the opening scroll from “Star Wars” or the narrator catching you up on what’s going on. It can work well for a few minutes in a movie, but it is hard to keep a reader engaged.

• Flashback backstory dump – Suddenly, your character does something odd. Instead of having dripped in backstory on why they did, the reader is thrust into a flashback to explain.

• Unnecessary Backstory – This is kind of self explanatory. A backstory about one morning when your character was a kid and wanted to eat strawberry Pop-Tarts instead of blueberry and has nothing to do with the story.

• Not enough/Poorly developed backstory – This is the inverse of the other pitfalls. In this, your character isn’t relatable. There are no motivations for why your character does anything, and there is nothing for your reader to latch onto from an emotional level.

So those are some pitfalls to watch out for. Now, let’s look at a few good techniques to keep your reader turning the page.

• Relevance – First and foremost, the backstory has to be relevant to the main plot. If it’s not, cut it. If it’s not important that your character graduated with a marketing degree from Tulane, then don’t include it. But, if your story has a medical emergency and your character studied pre-med, that’s relevant.

• Slow drip backstory – I prefer backstory as a slow drip into the main plot instead of large exposition. Interweave current events with quick throwbacks to something in the past. Careful plotting can help these slow drips to come off fluid and natural. In FNtD, another character carries a knife in her boot that comes in handy. I dribble in why she does instead of a long, drawn out chapter about it.

• Specific – Be specific in your backstory. Jane Friedman, in the article above, says, “The more concrete, granular, and specific your backstory is, the more believable and dimensional it feels. “A difficult childhood” tells readers little; “an abusive parent” only marginally more. But the remembered image of your protagonist’s angry father storming into the boy’s bedroom and the rhythmic thwacks of his belt as he yanked it from the loops paints a much more vivid and visceral picture.” I couldn’t think of a better way to state that.

Backstory is a great tool to use in your writing. It gives your characters depth and life and brings them off the page. Without it, they are two dimensional. Readers connect with characters that feel real. But, to quote Marvel, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Use backstory the right way, and your readers will love your characters. Use it incorrectly, and your reader will skip large parts of your story.

Wishing you good luck in your own writing endeavors, and let me know what you think about “Fear Not The Dead” once it releases on July 12.

Brad Ricks

ABOUT BRAD:

Brad is the author of Fear Not The Dead (Unveiling Nightmares, 2024) and the upcoming novel The Night Crew (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2025). Brad lives in Central Texas with his wife Terri. Together, they have 5 kids that keep them constantly busy. During the day, he is an Account Manager for an online software company. At night, he enjoys listening to the little voices in his head and jotting down the stories they tell him. A lifelong fan of Horror, Brad pulls inspiration from everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King.