60 Character Backstory Ideas

How to use these

Decide what the character must do in the first two chapters. Refuse something. Lie about something small. Keep leaving the room. Find the idea whose second line produces it, and take the first line as the cause.

Keep the shape, change the details: an event, a cost and a symptom. Turn the one you like into a full history with the six steps in how to write a character backstory, or let the generator run them for you. A history is only worth having inside a draft. Open a story now.

Secrets they keep

• They reported a colleague and nobody ever found out who. Today they are the first to defend anyone accused of anything, and they do it a little too loudly.
• They failed the exam and let their family believe they passed. Today they change the subject whenever their work is discussed, and have never invited anyone to see their office.
• They were adopted and found the file at nineteen. Today they can recite their own history fluently and have never once volunteered it.
• They kept a letter that was addressed to someone else. Today they cannot throw paper away, and they read other people's post upside down without meaning to.
• They were present when a decision was made and said nothing. Today they interrupt meetings constantly, as if speaking early were a debt they are still repaying.
• They have a second qualification nobody in their current life knows about. Today they solve a problem too quickly and then have to explain how, badly.
• They lied on the form that got them the job, twelve years ago. Today they refuse every promotion that would require a background check.
• They know which of the two brothers actually did it. Today they send money to the wrong one every month and will not say why.
• They spent a year somewhere they have never mentioned. Today they know the bus routes of a city they claim never to have visited.
• They were paid to leave a town. Today they can be generous with money in a way that looks like guilt to anyone watching closely.
• They have kept a diagnosis to themselves for three years. Today they plan everything in six-month blocks and refuse to discuss anything beyond that.
• They took the blame for something a child did. Today they are unusually patient with badly behaved teenagers, and unusually short with their parents.

A secret is only worth keeping if the story remembers it. DreamPress holds a story bible — it calls it World Information — plus a running memory, the same free as on Pro, so a secret planted in chapter two is still buried in chapter forty. Plant one in chapter one.

Debts and promises

• They promised a dying friend they would look after the shop. Today they are still running a business they hate, and cannot say the word "sell".
• They owe money to someone who has never asked for it. Today they flinch at the sound of their own phone and answer every call within two rings.
• They were put through school by an uncle with conditions attached. Today they take every family phone call, at any hour, without complaint.
• They swore they would never go back. Today they keep a packed bag in the car and tell people it is for work.
• They agreed to keep a job open for somebody who never came back. Today there is a desk nobody is allowed to use.
• They inherited a house with a sitting tenant they cannot evict. Today they are polite to everyone and secretly keep a ledger of what each person costs them.
• Someone once paid their bail. Today they cannot refuse a favor, however unreasonable, from that one person.
• They made a promise to a nine-year-old and the nine-year-old is now thirty. Today they still turn up on the same date every year and neither of them mentions why.
• They borrowed a name to get across a border. Today they answer to two names and have stopped noticing which one is being used.
• They took over their father's debts rather than let the name go. Today they are the most respected person in town and have never had a holiday.
• They promised to keep a secret for a year and the year ended four years ago. Today they change the subject with a joke they have used too many times.
• They were left a boat, a dog and a set of instructions. Today they follow the instructions to the letter and have no idea why.

A debt needs a creditor with a face. Give the idea to the character backstory generator and write the scene where the witness it returns walks in. Write that scene free.

People they lost, or left

• They walked out of a hospital corridor and did not come back. Today they cannot sit still in any waiting room.
• They were the one who moved away. Today they have three close friends, all of whom live within a mile, and they have not made a new one in a decade.
• Their sibling stopped speaking to them and never explained. Today they over-explain everything, in writing, to everyone.
• A colleague died on a job they had planned. Today they check other people's work twice and call it a habit.
• They left a marriage well and are still friendly with everyone in it. Today they are unsettled by conflict of any kind, because they know how quietly things end.
• They lost touch with the person who taught them the trade. Today they teach constantly, badly, to anyone who will listen.
• Someone they loved chose a different life and was right to. Today they are generous with other people's ambitions and ruthless about their own.
• They were left at eleven and picked up again at thirteen. Today they are early for everything by twenty minutes.
• They missed the last conversation by one day. Today they never end a phone call without saying something they mean.
• A friend emigrated and the letters thinned out. Today they keep a drawer of unsent postcards.
• They were the last person to see a missing man. Today they can describe, in detail, a Tuesday from fourteen years ago.
• They raised a child who was not theirs and then handed her back. Today they are excellent with other people's children and refuse to hold a baby.

These pay off slowly, over a long serial. A chapter costs 1 to 3 credits and 15 credits arrive every day without a card, so a forty-chapter book is evenings and no money. Start the long one.

The wrong choice they made

• They chose the safe job. Today they are very good at it and cannot watch anyone else take a risk without commenting.
• They voted with the majority against their own judgment. Today they will not join a committee of any kind.
• They picked the wrong person to trust with an idea. Today they keep everything in a private notebook and show nobody until it is finished.
• They stayed late instead of going home. Today they leave on the hour, every day, and are strange about it.
• They took the money and signed the clause. Today they cannot talk about the best work they ever did.
• They told the truth at exactly the wrong moment. Today they are famous locally for their tact, which has cost them something.
• They let a friend drive. Today they will not be a passenger and make elaborate excuses about car sickness.
• They chose the other candidate. Today they read the news about that person's career with a face nobody can interpret.
• They said the sentence that ended it. Today they rehearse arguments in the car and never have them.
• They stopped asking after the third refusal. Today they are the first to give up on anything and the last to admit it.
• They believed a forecast and moved the date. Today they will not commit to a plan more than a week out.
• They chose their name themselves, at twenty-two, and chose badly. Today they introduce themselves with a small, involuntary pause.

A wrong choice needs a person solid enough to have made it. Build them in the free character generator — name, look, personality, goal, flaw and secret — then hand one of these twelve to the flaw.

A life that was taken from them

This is the only group built on loss rather than a decision, and one group of five on purpose. A cast where everyone has been wronged reads as unlucky rather than shaped. Use one, and take the rest from above.

• A fire took the workshop and the tools. Today they work only with borrowed equipment and have never replaced a single item.
• An injury ended the career at twenty-four. Today they can watch the sport on television but will not go to a ground.
• A company closed and took the town with it. Today they talk about the place in the present tense and correct anyone who does not.
• A diagnosis arrived the week the offer did. Today they are the most capable person in any room and will not be relied on.
• A flood took the photographs. Today they describe their own childhood in the same six anecdotes, which are all they have left.
• Their qualifications were not recognized in the new country. Today they are exceptionally well-read and work somewhere that does not require it.
• A parent's long illness took four years. Today they are unbothered by hospitals, mortality and paperwork, and terrified of free time.
• They were dismissed for something they did not do and never cleared. Today they keep every receipt, email and rota going back a decade.
• A war moved the border and took the farm with it. Today they are careful about which language they use with which relative.
• The archive that held their research burned. Today they cannot start anything new and have taken up a hobby nobody understands.
• They lost their hearing in one ear at nineteen. Today they always take the same seat and get irritable in crowded rooms without saying why.
• A court gave the children to someone else. Today they are very good at birthdays and never mention the other days.

Give one to the antagonist and it stops being a sad backstory and becomes a motive. The free villain generator builds the rest of that character around it.

Turning an idea into a backstory

An idea is a shape. A backstory is that shape with a person in it. Three minutes.

Pick one of the sixty. Type its first line into the character backstory generator as the situation line, and it returns a history, a defining moment, what the character hides and how it shows today. Add the one thing only you know: who else was in the room, and where they are now. A witness can walk back into the story, which is what turns a note into a plot.

Then write chapter one with them in it. A DreamPress account is free, a chapter costs 1 to 3 credits, and you get 15 credits every day without a card, 50 more for verifying an email address, and 20 a day once a writing streak reaches seven days. Pictures of the character cost 3 credits on every plan including Pro, and narration comes with the chapter. Write chapter one tonight.

Pro is $9.99 a month or $71.99 a year with 1,000 credits a month. Credit packs run from $4.99 to $99.99, never expire, and the first is doubled. Sixty ideas and nothing written is still nothing written. Take the free credits.