Backstory Wounds & Writers

Backstory Wounds and Writers

As a plot consultant for writers, I’ve been fascinated how a characters’ backstory emotional wounds influence the plot of a novel, memoir, screenplay. I’m just as fascinated with backstory wounds & writers. As I write in Chapter 16 of The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories, backstory wounds are created in a character’s backstory.

Characters’ Emotional Backstory Wounds

Often something in her backstory caused a wound—either physical, psychic, or both. Anything in her past that now directly interferes with a character achieving her dream or goal in the front story is called a backstory wound.

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. Stories show a character shedding her backstory toward the end of the story and reawakening a belief in the miraculous.

Each protagonist has a fabulously 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.

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 miraculous in the protagonist 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. Often, before a sense of freedom and a tranquil heart prevails, first comes forgiveness.

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.

Backstory Wounds & Writers

Not all characters have an emotional wound, of course. Characters who do have wounds seem a bit more real, interesting, provocative and complex. Backstory wounds in characters are so real because we all have them. 

Writers with their own wounds are capable of infusing true emotion and heart and sensitivity into a story. These same writers, when too sensitive, also suffer huge personal ups and downs. Writing a story with a plot from beginning to end and then all the way to publication is challenging.

Unseen forces rush to our aid as these primary wounds from the past break us open emotionally and psychologically. We remember painful events and heal.

We move inward with the belief that though acceptance we learn compassion. Reunite with our spirits, we become whole again.