Because I love nothing more than giving advice. Just remember that I am NOT perfect, and all of this is from my possibly biased opinions. Except the basic writing stuff. You're not getting out of that stuff, buddy.
Wow. I can't believe it took me ten (actually thirteen) chapters before I got to something as basic and important as backstories. Can you tell I write these as I get inspired by them? Maybe one day once I'm done I'll rearrange these in a practical, sensible order.
One day.
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Aw, baby. But anyway, back to the stories. I meant the backstories, but I miss wrote that and honestly it's funny enough I'm going to leave it there. We all make mistakes. And one of those mistakes is how people use backstories. Namely that they're either non-existent or get dumped right at the beginning and then are functionally non-existent because they have no influence on who the character is as a person.
Which is not how backstories work. They're basically the story of your character before the events of the actual story that you were writing. And that's about it. Let's get into it.
The Influence On Your Character
The short answer? Lots. Lots of influence.
You know nature vs nurture? This is the nurture part, where your character's personality is build by what they experience throughout time. It literally encompasses everything the builds your character as a person (how they're raised, various events that happen in their lives, all of their childhood trauma, that sort of fun stuff.)
This is what I mean when I say that it helps you build your characters. When you look at their backstory, there's some reasonable responses to the events in their past. For example, Kirby Young from my book The World Walks Out.
Their (note: I'm using they/them at the moment because Bella Ramsey came out as nonbinary and I'm considering making Kirby nonbinary as well and I haven't decided on their pronouns yet) parents are super neglectful, and really only pay attention to them when to make fun of them (literally, their dad literally bullies his child like a high school mean girl.) So as a result they're constantly looking for attention, whether that be by being really out going or annoying people. Kirby's idea of making friends is conversational equivalent of going up to someone, holding your hand exactly an inch from their face, and chanting "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" like it's a magic incantation that will protect you from getting sucker punched.
Though you can also go the opposite way. Because while backstories have expected results, you can also subvert those expectations, and it says just as much about your character when that's the case.
