Why Emotional Backstory Is the Secret to Writing Authentic Characters
Emotional backstory is a valuable tool in your writing toolbox– here’s why it matters and how you can build it out.
In his book, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maas writes, “Why is it important to look at fiction writing through the lens of emotional experience? Because that’s the way readers read.”
Readers don’t just follow a story for the plot—they stay for the emotional journey. Emotions are what make fiction resonate. But crafting a character who feels real, rather than just functional, requires deep exploration of the emotional foundations that shape who they are.
There are so many ways to talk about emotionality in fiction, but today I’m taking us back to the basics and focusing on the work that happens off the page. How do you create a character with layers of emotional depth? Where do you start if you want to create a character that feels real? One way to do that is to think about your character’s emotional backstory.
Emotional backstory isn’t just about past traumas or formative events; it’s about the accumulated emotional experiences that shape how your character sees the world. By weaving in a character’s emotional undercurrents, you can reveal layers of personality that make characters feel authentic rather than one-dimensional.
How emotional backstory shapes your character:
1. It informs interiority
Our emotional experiences inform our inner world. A character who grew up with a parent who was a gambling addict might obsess over financial security as an adult. Even after achieving stability as an adult, they carry that experience and the emotions that it inspired with them. They might grow up to be frugal and resent their partner’s daily $7 lattes—or they might become overly generous with the money they finally get to enjoy without the stress of their childhood. A character’s emotional backstory directly ties to their hopes and fears, and their interpretation of the world and others around them. The events that inspired your character’s emotional makeup might not be written on the page, but the impact is carried onto the page through your character’s interiority.
2. It drives relationships
How your character interacts with others is often a reflection of their emotional past. A character who had an absent parent might crave validation from authority figures— or reject it entirely. Someone who was recently betrayed by their best friend might be more guarded in new friendships. Emotional backstory provides opportunity for tension and conflict between characters, and it also adds richness and depth to their relationships.
3. It fuels the plot
Your character’s decisions shouldn’t feel random. They should come across as inevitable, a result of a lifetime of emotional experiences. I’ve read many submissions where my feedback has been along the lines of “this doesn’t make sense. Why would they act this way in this situation if they have always been X?”
The plausibility of your plot also depends on your character’s emotional backstory. You want your character’s choices to feel realistic. You want the reader to think, “It makes sense that a character with X emotional backstory would do/feel/ say this when Y happens .” How your character reacts to conflict and whether they make a characteristic or an uncharacteristic choice is directly related to their emotional backstory and their relationship with their emotional history.
10 questions to ask yourself to build out your character’s emotional backstory:
What do they expect of people in their inner circle? What about people in their outer circle? And why are these their expectations?
What was the last time they felt disappointed? And what was it that disappointed them?
What was their first emotional wound?
What kind of parent or parental figure did they have? What kind of parent would they hope to be?
Who does your character look up to? Look down on? (This can be a specific person or an archetype.)
How do they act at various extremes of emotion (elated, depressed, anxious, scared, angry)?
What kind of person did they want to be when they were a child?
Have they ever felt ashamed? What caused it?
Did they always believe in the things that they believe in at the start of your book?
What were they like on the playground as a child?
