Character Backstory: Motivation

Issue #38, Backstory 3 of 4

Jan 15, 2025

Character motivation is a biggie—so big we’ll deep-dive on it in future issues. But its seeds should be planted in backstory.

In “Character Motivation – Connecting the Past to the Present,” R.M. Archer says:

“You can’t just skip backstory, because it’s an integral part of who your character is now and how their character motivation came to be.”

In the selfpublishing.com article “Character Motivation: 6 Ways to Craft a Compelling Story,” Hannah Lee Kidder adds that:

“…to build a believable character motivation, it has to make sense in the context of their backstory.”

Or consider this from “How to Write Character Motivation”:

“Motivations are best created by writing out your character’s backstory.”

An Exercise

As an illustration of how to approach character motivation through backstory, let’s get personal. Go into your own backstory. Zero in on a good or bad habit, a fear, accomplishment, opinion, or shame. Now, it’s self-analysis time.

Can you can trace this outcome back to anything specific in your past? In other words, can you find the backstory aspect that might explain your current behavior or result? It’s possible this process has even come full-circle, if you have found the motivation to ditch the habit in question, face the fear, or fully embrace the opinion. At this point, you have the makings of a proper story.

An Example

Here's a positive example from my life. As explained in a previous post, the death of a dear and talented writing friend spurred me on to resolve that I would write every day.

My friend’s repeated advice and his passing was the backstory. The emotional resonance of this motivated me to make lifestyle changes in order to follow his advice. Ever since, I’ve managed to stick to that goal (this is all spelled out in detail in Writing Rhythm Issue #23).

[Since daily writing is a goal of many writers, my personal story thus became an HEA: “happily ever after,” a well-known acronym in romance-novelist circles in which the ending falls on a positive note.]

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Q: I’m almost there on backstory, but can you recommend book resources for further study?

A: Titles focusing specifically on backstory are available. Here are several books and links on Amazon.

“Focused Backstory Workbook” by Carol Alwood, “Build Better Characters—the Psychology of Backstory” by Eileen Cook and others, and “Weaving Backstory into your Novel” by R.C. Matthews.

As mentioned, we’ll return to character motivation without the backstory element in the near future. But after the very next post, we’ll put the topic of backstory to bed, and all will be well, leaving every one of us smiling forevermore. Which is a ham-handed clue for the following.