It's All in the Backstory

It's that time of year when everyone starts looking back over the past year. And that got us thinking about backstory.

Just as in real life, people have a past, so do characters who populate a movie world. And that past (or backstory) will affect what they do in the story. Whether we realize it or no, every character in a movie has a backstory. But it primarily affects the main characters.

Characters who only show up for a limited amount of screen-time are often written as stereotypes or cliches. Why? Because a cliche allows the audience to supply a ready backstory in their own mind for them.

But, you don't want the main character to be a stereotype. You want round characters who do surprising things to hold our attention. That's where backstory may come in.

A character's past affects how that character may or may not react to a situation. It may be revealed in various ways; through flashbacks, narration, or dialogue. But the key to using backstory is to know when to reveal the backstory. All at once? A bit here and a bit there?

We have found that when it comes to backstory, we often write it into an early draft of a screenplay, using overt dialogue or flashbacks. Then, once we're comfortable that that information is part of our character's past, the dialogue/flashback is tweaked and rewritten to be leaner and less obvious.

However, occasionally an overt reference to backstory is left in the script because we're not sure if we will need it or not. It is filmed, but then it is often taken out during the edit. Sometimes it's better NOT to know too much backstory. We can get caught up in a backstory when we need to focus on the actual story.

Which is why there's that old adage about not dwelling too much on the past...