On Backstories

I had two interesting experiences with backstories today.

The first was when walking to a meeting about volunteering today, I passed the girl who was my best friend in elementary school.  We didn't greet each other - I half-smiled, but I'm pretty sure she didn't recognize me.  (To be fair, I was wearing sunglasses, and I have far shorter hair now than I did in fifth grade).  She and I have barely spoken - we said a few words in middle school when we still had mutual friends, but in high school she and I saw each other maybe twice, and each time was completely by chance.  It could be a situation of interesting backstories, because our paths have diverged so much.  Our family situations are completely different, for a start, but we haven't been in the same school since fifth grade, and our personalities have probably developed to be completely different.

The second event concerning backstories was after the volunteer meeting.  Since the place was on the way to Starbucks, I stopped there on the way home.  I sat down with my pound cake and drink and tried to discreetly observe everyone and made up a back story for each of them.  I will type them up here later.

Backstories are the important part of the character in a novel - it can haunt a character; it can come back to bite them; they can avoid or pursue a certain thing or feeling if they've had a certain experience with it in the past.  We see it in everyday life; for example, I now avoid insects that sting with a passion because I've discovered that I will swell up and be miserable for the better part of a week if I get stung by something.  Because of that unfortunate experience with Things that Sting, I avoid them at all costs. Interestingly, all the unfortunate things that have happened to me have not been when I'm abroad; I've sprained my ankle before black belt tests and before hiking in Switzerland; I've gotten allergic reactions at home but not in Peru.  Interesting how things work out.

How to Defeat a Dragon

I've discovered something that can be kind of interesting if used right.

My play for FYEC is going to involve dragons and people who contemplate suicide.  I know that much for certain.  However, I making my main character, who attempted suicide multiple times, also fluent in Old Draconic (like Old English for dragons), which brings up the interesting point: will she kill the dragon, negotiate with the dragon, or talk to the dragon in Old Draconic and win it over?  (I'm not telling you this.  I already know.  I've already written that part).

But this proposes an interesting alternative to dragon-slaying.

Yes, yes, I know, fantasy is supposed to teach us that dragons can be beaten.  But 'beaten' does not mean 'killed.'  'Beaten' means foiled, quashed, clobbered - not killed.

As the (modified) saying goes, there's more than one way to clobber a dragon.  Just some of the ways are more difficult than others.  The easy way out is just to kill it (though, considering it's twelve times your size and can breathe fire, might not be that easy); the more difficult way is to talk it out with the dragon; this may be only more difficult because the dragon is older and larger and smarter than you, and a battle of the wits is one of many situations where a Dragon of Old benefits from having a larger brain than you (it means it has plenty of room to think about gold and also clobbering humans).

Of course, talking to the dragon is dumb, according to every movie and fairy tale ever.   Who talks to dragons?  Who gets along with dragons?  WHO CARES ABOUT THE DRAGON'S OPINION?
The dragons care about their opinion, thanks very much.

Character Stuff!

So, over the course of Winter Break, my character sheet for the Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I'm doing at school went missing.  This is rather irritating - not only do I have to re-invent my character from memory, I also lose valuable points (we started at a high level, and I had really good bonuses for my basic stats, which I lost).

This is also an opportunity, however, to reinvent my character.  I have learned through the course of the first episode of the campaign that Bards can be useless in fights and easy to hit (and one of the irritating things is that, in the course of re-doing my character's stats, I lost some Hit Points, so she's easier to hit).  Saturday's session was the last of this episode (think Star Wars), and our DM has said that the characters will have three years between the end of this episode and the start of the next one (the characters will do their own thing for three years; the actual group is going to meet up again in a few weeks).

In that time, we'll have the chance to level up our characters and give them any items we want.  We'll also have the chance to budge around our classes and feats if we want to - this means that my character, Anaïs, is going to get a new job, essentially, in addition to being a Bard, and will learn how to do a lot of cool things.

I used to hate character building, because it's a very tedious process (involving, among other things, a crap-ton of dice rolls and adding those rolls together, and that's just the beginning).  Maybe it's gotten easier because I'm not working from scratch on Anaïs, but it's a lot more fun now that I know a bit more about what I'm doing.

There are several books you can use for character building, but those normally just cover the basic classes, skills, feats, armor, and equipment that you can use.  The Player's Handbook is designed for the new kids who don't know how to set up a character.

Once you start getting the hang of what number gets what bonus on what, you can actually start looking into the cool things on the DnD wiki page, which is actually a lot of fun.

For example, now that I have the ability to cross-class my Bard with something, I decided that I was going to give her a few levels in Fighter - a warrior that's not as stupid as a Barbarian, but will still let me use more weapons and get cooler feats and class skills.  Then, however, I found out that the important stats to a Fighter were the stats that the Bards tended to do without.  Bards rely a lot on Charisma and Intelligence, and can do without Strength and Constitution; Fighters tend to rely more on Strength and Constitution than Charisma.

After looking on the DnD Wiki, I found a homebrew class that I really liked (homebrew means that Wizards of the Coast didn't invent it, but it's developed to work in a DnD-type campaign and available for public use).  It's called a Songblade, and it's a tactician/ fighter; it gives me the weapon usage I need while still using my good stat.

I'm starting to like character work. :)

stress!

first of all, as I said I would do for our sign:

I know it's not exactly what I said I'd do for it, but it's something.  Huzzah!

Now onto the important stuff: I'm writing NaNo, and I've realized that the plots that my friends have come up with are a lot better than my plot.  Maybe it's because my backstory is more coherent than my actual plot, and has to be explained in more words (DEATH!  REGRET!  DESPAIR!  PARANOIA!), but still.  Tonight we're having a final plotting session and, with luck, I'm actually going to figure out what the heck I'm writing about.  Well, I KNOW what I'm writing about, but I don't know.  I know Storm and Eden and Melody are going to trump Jericho, who has lots of psychological issues and is trumped similarly to the biblical Jericho, except not actually because I have no idea how to do that.  But I need PLOT POINTS.  What drives the plot forward?  What actually happens to get Storm to Eden and Mel, and to get all three of them to the palace, and through a bunch of traps, a dungeon, and a whole lot else?
I don't know yet.
AAAAAHHHH!!!

Welcome, my friends, to the Writer's Process.

On Backstory

(I have to do homework soon, so I'm going to try to be direct in this).
You have a story, yes?  Your life, I mean.  You were born, then you did stuff, and now you're here.  Pretty simple, yes?
Naaaah.
Your story is what makes you - the little things that affect your choices later on.  That one time that you accidentally put lemonade mix in your hot chocolate and it tasted really good is the reason you now ALWAYS make your hot cocoa with a bit of lemonade mix.  (yes, this is somewhat biographical, and I do recommend it).  That other time you went rock climbing and pissed in your pants is the reason you now avoid rocks and the group of friends you went with.  Things like that.

Similarly, your characters have backstory.  They had moments where they were so scared they ran away and have never gotten over it, or they had such a bad experience with something else that they will go out of their way to avoid all things associated with it.  It is those things that make a person, wether or not they are part of a written story.
So give them a story before the story.  I didn't grow up in the same way my parents did.  Both of them moved around a lot, and the first time I spent more than three weeks away from home was when I went to college; other than that, I've lived in the same place my whole life.
But it's more than where they grew up.  It's the weird things, like lemonade in hot chocolate.  You don't have to put every little detail in there, obviously, but if you are going to make any character scared of anything, you need to give them a reason why, beyond 'they had a bad experience with it when they were younger.'  THIS IS THE TIME THAT YOU WRITE WHAT THAT BAD EXPERIENCE WAS.
With NaNoWriMo fast approaching, character writing becomes even more relevant.  The only excuse you have for not having a backstory is that your character is an amnesiac for 90 percent of the tale.  I'm still giving my amnesiac a backstory, though, because I still think it's an important thing to have.  It's a part of who she is and what she does, even if she doesn't know why she's so mad at the government or why she needs to find the King's advisor RIGHT NOW.

Though you don't have to include all the details (I wouldn't normally admit that I avoided bowtie pasta for years because I threw up after eating it one time when I was ten; I don't mention it because I'm not studying anything culinary and I don't intend do, and what sort of pasta I eat is not exceedingly important), include the bits that may be relevant.
And then throw in one or two "bowtie pasta incidents" for good measure.  They might be important.