Character Backstory Writing
After I had created and written the character profiles and biographies for each of my primary and secondary characters, the next step was to create the backstories for each of my characters (backstory for all eight characters, antagonists included).
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The links to the pages with each individual character story (and their planning) can be found below.
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Why did I do this task
The task of writing and creating the backstories for my characters was a necessary task as it would allow me to develop my characters, but also help explain why those characters are how they are within the game/story (e.g. explaining why they have the skills/roles they have, such as doctor or engineer, or even giving a reason for the characters personality, and then exploring the reason).
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How did I carry out this task?
Upon starting the task of writing the backstories for my characters, I found that the task was rather daunting, as this would involve me writing the backstories of eight characters with the stories each being different and unique in some way. Because of this, I decided to look back to some research that I had carried out a just before this task. This research was my research into the League of Legends (Riot Game, 2009) character biographies. Now at first, you may think that this would be irrelevant, as they’re character biographies, whereas the task I am now faced with is backstory writing. But that assumption would be dead wrong.
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As I frequently play League of Legends, these character biographies had interested me since before this project started, and so I had already read through a number of them. However as the project started, I still decided to carry out a research task where I looked into some specific biographies, as I wanted to see what they included. In addition to this, I carried out a similar research task to this during my last project, and so I went back to my previous blog to look over this. These tasks will be further explained on the research section of this page. However, upon researching them with the intent of helping me with my character biographies, I realised that they have all of the features that would be needed for them to be classed as backstories, and so I continued looking into them and made lists about what each story looked at included, as I could then use this list while writing my backstories, as they showed a number of areas/topics that professional/official backstories cover.
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Now after having completed/having looked at my research, I decided to start writing my own backstories. This is where I’ve made the same problem as I have for a few other tasks, where I tried to jump straight in to writing, which resulted in my having a lack of writing ideas. I then decided to take a step back and plan out the events I could write about for each and every backstory (this including concepts I would include, and other being concept that I could include).
Two examples of my planning can be seen below, but all of this planning is shown on the page with the respective character backstory.
Additionally, while carrying out this planning, I looked back to my character profile templates, and my character mood/word boards, as well as my character biographies, just to make sure the stories I was planning were still according to the concepts of my characters.
Once I had completed my planning, I felt more ready to write all of my character backstories, and so writing began.
The writing process itself was relatively smooth, as the planning for the events that would be included in each backstory allowed me to prepare a number of areas to write about, there were some problems that I encountered though, but they will be talked about further under the problem solving section of this page.
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Decision making
The main decision making that was made throughout this task (the task of writing all of my backstories) was deciding on what I would write about.
As shown above in one of the previous sections of the process of the task, I created a list for each backstory with a number of topics/events that I could write about/include for each backstory. While writing, I needed to choose which events in particular I would write about out of the lists, as some concepts for events were better/stronger concepts than others, and then there were some which didn't fit in the same story with some other concepts (e.g. conflicting concepts of the origin of the shark).
These decision did end up impacting the different stories, as the decisions were about what would be included in the story.
In addition to this there was two main decisions that I made regarding the concepts of the protagonist backstory, and the antagonist backstory.
For the protagonist's backstory, I had originally planned for his to have lost his arm to a mechanical enemy (during an attack at sea). However, while I began to write it, I thought that the concept might be too violent/gory for my audience (as the idea was for something to slice/tear the arm off). Because of this, I went with a secondary concept, of how the protagonist was born with out an arm (which would be the reason as to why he has a mechanical arm in the game).
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Then for the Mecha shark, I had two ideas in terms of its origin. One being that it was a natural occurrence/born into the world, and the other being that it was created by an ancient civilization.
I decided to go for the second concept, as I then had the idea of how I could further explore this idea, and also use the ancient civilization as the rumoured location (final level) of the game/story.
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Finally, there was one more decision that was made after completing this task (of writing all of my character backstories). Backtracking a bit, when I began writing these backstories, they weren't actually meant to be backstories, but were instead going to be extended biographies (hence the influence from the league of legends biography research). However, after having completed all eight of the writing pieces and reading through them, I realised how they all included what I would've included for my backstories, and so I made the decision to use these as my backstories.
After having made this decision, I feel as though it was definitely effective, as if I were to write another eight writing pieces, I would have definitely ran out of time to go back and do updates to tasks/my blog for the project, which would have likely ended up in my overall work in the project being more rushed and of a lower quality.
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Problems/Solutions
During this task, I encountered a number of problems. Most of which have been mentioned in the sections above, but I will still go over them again just to make sure.
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One of the first problems that I encountered was that the problem of not knowing what I would need to include for the backstories. To get around this problem I looked back to my research into the League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) character biographies/stories. By looking back to these, I was able to see what the League of Legends character biographies/stories (that are more like backstories than biographies) included, which helped me spot some of the areas which I could be writing about in my own backstories.
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Then when I went on to write the backstories themselves, I found my next problem, which was that I wasn't sure what topics to write for my own characters. Becuase of this, I decided that before writing the backstories for each of my characters, I would write out a section of planning where I listed a number of events/topics that I could write about. This was a common solution throughout this project, as the solution was to effectively plan before writing (which I have carried on for every task from this point).
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Another problem that I have spotted is that the beginning of the backstories are more comparable to biographies than a backstory.
This problem has occurred as when I began writing these backstories, I had the intention of them being extended biographies, but after completing them and looking back through, I realised that the content reflected that of a backstory more, and so I decided to make them my backstories. To solve this problem, I hope to go back and edit the backstories if I have the time remaining, but even if I can't I won't be too concerned, as the beginning of the stories being comparable to biography isn't a huge and terrible problem.
However, this might just be me being too picky about my own work.
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After looking at the backstories after having completed the backstories, I feel as though the ending of the backstories aren't as good as they could be, as I did struggle to end them. If I have time, this is one area (for almost all of the backstories) that I will revisit
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How research influenced me
Previously, I have already mentioned how research has influenced me and helped me during a number of occasions (while carrying out this task), but just to highlight them and to further explain, I shall go through the main areas.
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One of the first areas of research I carried out was a piece of book research with the hope of just finding some useful tips/pointers on characters writing. One section of useful information I found was in the book Writing Fiction for Dummies (Ingermanson R., Economy P, 2009). Some of the areas I found important are shown below
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"You have to understand where your characters came from, or you'll never understand what your character wants or why he acts the way he does. If you don't know, then neither will your reader."
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This was what I was hoping to portray in the backstory itself, explaining where my character is from and where they've been, and then linking some of their key life experiences and events to their personality (to explain why they're how they are).
"Developing your character's motivation is hard, dirty, messy, creative work. You can do it in any order that you like. You don't have to define the character's values first, then ambition, and then story goals. You can work out each character's motivation before you write you write your first draft or afterward or while you're writing. But you must do this work eventually, or your readers will complain that your characters are flat and boring. (A flat character is one who lacks depth and is therefore predictable.)"
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This made me think about the motivation of my characters, which I hadn't really thought about before now (apart from for the protagonist). I then tried to link a motivation of a character to an event in their life, to strengthen their character. Two examples of this with my characters is how the 2nd crew member, Shurik, becomes a doctor due to his sense of helplessness and uselessness after experiencing an attack on his home island and experiencing the impact/injury the mechanical fiends can deal. And then the final crew member, Rosa, seeks for the destruction/downfall of the Mecha shark/antagonist as it was the reason for her parents' death.
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I believe that this section of research was beneficial to me, as it broadened my understanding of character creation/writing, but also becasue it allowed me to improve my character backstories by strengthening my characters.
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One of the next pieces of research that Influenced me was my research into the League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) character biographies.
To begin with, this was a research task I carried out during the last project to help give me an indication of what a biography should include, but upon returning to the research this project, and continuing the research, I found that the biographies are similar to backstories, and so I decided to look into these stories to help with my own backstories.
In addition to carrying out further research into the biographies, I also looked back at the research piece carried out during the last project on my last blog.
The of research from this project can be found on the page linked below (first button), and then the page on my previous blog can be found linked below.
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This image shows the conclusion to the previous projects research piece into bios. Although at the time of research, I was looking into this specifically for bios (same as the extension of the research this project), this has still proven useful to me for the task of my character backstories.
Another piece of research that had an influence on me during this task was my research into different roles on a pirate ship. This research was only slightly influential though, as this was research that was carried out to strengthen the character concepts, which I was then trying to show/explore with the use of my backstories, by explaining the origin story of how/why they have the roles they have within the game story (E.g. how Shurik became a doctor before the events of the game story).
Reflection/Evaluation
Speaking in terms of writing all of the backstories as one/a whole task, I feel as though the task actually somewhat went well. But there are some sections that could be better.
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When writing my backstories, I had the intention of labelling them as 'extended character biographies', so there are a few sections (in each of the stories) that I would like to go back and edit as there are parts that are somewhat noticeably similar to the style a biography could take (such as the opening to almost all of the backstories).
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However, I feel as though this isn't a necessary task, but is more of an additional task I could do to improve the writing pieces if I find some spare time at the end of the project (upon completing all of the other tasks), as this being a part of the story doesn't really take away from the writing pieces, but it actually introduces the character by name and age, and a bit about their current status (around the time the story of the game would be), which could actually add to the effectiveness of the introductions.
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In addition to this, I still feel as though all of the backstories were able to fulfil their role, as I still believe all of them effectively explained the origins/important events that occurred in my characters' lives, which is what a backstory is. But also just to add to the effectiveness of the task, I managed to give each character a different event to focus the stories on, which makes each of the eight unique, and I'm hoping will also make them more interesting.
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If I was to repeat this task or go back to edit what I have done, I will likely try to focus on improving the beginning and end of the backstories. I would focus on these areas in particular as the beginnings are the sections which reflect a biography the most, and might give the impression that the writing piece is a biography, and then I'd like to improve the endings as I feel as though this is just an area that could be improved for all of the stories, as most were rather abrupt endings.