Playwriting - Part 5E - Creating Characters and Giving them Backstories

When you create characters, something that can help you identify with them is to create backstories. These are more details that are usually not known to others who read your play. Sometimes a few things may end up being mentioned in your play, but it is likely that most of the things you write for a backstory will not be mentioned.

Whlie it seems like the character biography may be a backstory, it isn't. A backstory actually tells the story of something that happened in a character's life. Start out a characters backstory by making a list of significant events the character when through in life.

Maybe my character is named Peter and grew up on a farm and rode a bus ten miles to school. Perhaps at school, he got in a fight with one of the other boys, named Jacob, because Jacob was picking on of the girls in his class and Peter wanted to defend her. That would be a significant event in the character's life. My list might look something like this:

• My fight with Jacob
• Winning the basketball game in junior high
• My first date
• Accidentally setting the hayloft on fire
• The time I almost drowned in the local creek

What are your character's past significant events? Make a list and find out. You might surprise yourself in finding that you've created more about this character than you think you have.