Going back is going forward

Backstory is crucial in understanding your character

Feb 12, 2025

If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an essay in my ongoing “Writing Fiction to Heal in Real Time” series where I deep-dive into my writing fiction to heal method as field work and a case study. To begin, I will be working through my story, The Archive, which you can find more information on here.

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burning questions answered.

Before we hop into today’s essay, I promised that I would try to weave in some of the questions I’m receiving as we go.

Does writing the essays ever change the direction of the fiction? Since you’re reflecting on your process in essays **do you ever go back and tweak The Archive based on realizations from the essays?

This is such a great question! The answer right now is — no, the fiction influences the essay. My literal process looks like this:

Gather up notes, inspo, thoughts → draft an entry → light revise → reflect on notes + chapter in WF2H essay

Will that change though? I don’t know!

How does it feel to let readers see both the fiction and the process behind it? Most writers keep their process private, but you’re exposing it as you go. Does that feel empowering, vulnerable, or both?

Not gonna lie — it feels terrifying AF. But yeah, it also feels empowering because it feels a bit rebellious! I’m sure there are readers who will think what I’m writing, why I’m writing it, how I’m writing it is too… [strange, self-indulgent, stupid, amateur, silly, etc.], but I don’t really care because the other thing — the most important thing — is showing all the writers out there who still believe that there’s only one way to be a “writer” that there is, in fact, many ways to “be” a writer.

going back to basics.

This week, I want to talk about the importance of going backwards with your character and story. I think ALL writers love backstory, whether they admit it or not. It’s where the juiciest, meatiest stuff is and almost NONE of it makes it way into the actual prose of a story. Our brains are wired to think in backstory.

Example — Think about how much easier it is to answer the question:

“What happened right before you…”

than it is to answer:

“What happens next?”

Just because we love it though, doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Because excavating the past of your character is a lot like excavating your own past. And there are so many of us who will do everything we can to avoid that.

But with writing fiction to heal stories — you don’t have a choice in the matter. Going back is going forward.

In Chapter Seven of my book Forged in Fire: Writing Fiction to Heal, I talk about this in much more depth (and give other examples). I also provide writing exercises. I do some of those same exercises myself and that’s what I want to reflect on with you today.

life messages + scripts.

I have a set of writing exercises designed around life messaging and scripting — which essentially means — what kinds of things did your character pick up in their childhood that they brought into adulthood? Some of these will be explicit and obvious, while most will become evident the more self-aware a person becomes. Here are some question/answer examples with Ari and The Archive.

What childhood messages and life scripts did your character receive?

Emotions are a liability — She was taught to repress emotions in favor of logic or action, she now struggles with vulnerability. She values efficiency and control, seeing sentimentality as a weakness—though deep down, she likely craves connection.

When I love, I love all the way — Ari doesn’t trust easily, but when she does, her loyalty is unshakable. Maybe she learned early that people leaving is painful, and so when she chooses to love someone, she does it completely, with no halfway measures. This is why she holds onto Finn, onto her animals, onto The Archive—she’s incapable of just walking away from the things that matter to her.

If you lose control, you lose everything — Ari internalized a strong sense of self-discipline, perhaps because losing control—whether physically, emotionally, or situationally—led to punishment or danger in her past. This manifests in rigid self-control or an aversion to letting others take charge.

Humor diffuses things — Because sarcasm was always the way emotions were handled in her household, she probably never learned any alternative. If things got too real, her father cracked a joke, changed the subject, or deflected. She absorbed that behavior completely, so now, when things get too emotionally heavy, she defaults to humor or cynicism rather than sitting in discomfort.

Animals are better than humans — Ari learned early on that animals, unlike humans, love unconditionally and that they provide a type of connection and companionship that she is unable to find anywhere else. She thinks, “They don’t leave. They don’t judge. They don’t ask for explanations for justifications. They just love.”

What is the life script they hear the loudest and why?

“If you lose control, you lose everything.”

Ari has spent her life internalizing the belief that control—over herself, her emotions, her surroundings—is the only thing keeping her from chaos, failure, or harm. Growing up, she likely saw emotional vulnerability as something that led to disappointment, pain, or even danger, whether from her emotionally immature father or from other experiences in her upbringing.

This script is reinforced by the collapse. In a world that’s falling apart, her instinct is to grip even tighter onto control—over The Archive, over herself, over the people she lets into her circle. If she loosens her grip, even for a second, she fears everything will crumble.

How do they react when these beliefs are challenged?

Immediate Reaction: Resistance, Deflection, and Snark

Ari’s first instinct when challenged is denial wrapped in sarcasm. She’ll meet any pushback with a sharp remark, an eye-roll, or a dismissive, “Wow, thanks for the life advice.” She’s not the type to immediately acknowledge she’s wrong—even if deep down, a part of her knows she might be.

If someone directly calls her out on her control issues or emotional avoidance, she might double down, insisting that her way is the only practical or rational way. Logic is her shield, and she’ll use it to justify why she keeps people at a distance, why she relies on herself alone, and why emotions are “pointless distractions.”

What internal conflicts arise in relation to these messages?

Ari’s entire identity is built on the idea that control = survival. If she’s forced to accept that control is an illusion, then what does that mean for her?

There will be moments where she has to choose between holding on and letting go. And every time, it will feel like a battle inside her—the part of her that trusts only herself vs. the part of her that’s slowly realizing she can’t do this alone.

Which life script needs to be challenged the most in order for your character to grow?

“Control is the only thing keeping me safe.”

Ari needs to learn that letting go—trusting others, accepting emotions, embracing uncertainty—is not the same as losing everything. Right now, she equates control with survival, but true survival (and true connection) requires adaptability. She needs to see that rigidity is actually making her more vulnerable, not less.

This also ties into her snarky, emotionally avoidant nature. She’s spent so long using sarcasm and cynicism to distance herself that she doesn’t even realize it’s a form of control—keeping people at bay so they can’t hurt her. If she wants to grow, she has to challenge the idea that emotions and vulnerability are liabilities.

What events or experiences can your character have to challenge their life script?

A Situation Where Control Fails Her

She makes the “logical” or “calculated” choice, and it backfires—badly. Maybe she trusts data or strategy over gut instinct, and it leads to a loss she can’t ignore.

This would shake her foundation, forcing her to question whether her way of operating is actually as foolproof as she thinks.

A Relationship That Requires Vulnerability

Someone in her new life sees through her defenses—and doesn’t leave.

Maybe they call her out on hiding behind sarcasm, or they refuse to engage on a purely surface level.

She has to decide: does she push them away, or does she take the terrifying risk of being known?

What does your character’s internal voice sound like? How do they interact or engage with that voice?

Ari’s internal voice is sharp, analytical, and relentlessly critical—a mix of her own pragmatism and echoes of her father’s snark. It’s the voice that keeps her alive, the one that tells her to stay sharp, stay wary, stay in control. But it’s also the voice that questions, doubts, and second-guesses.

It’s sarcastic, sometimes outright mocking. When she’s struggling with emotions, her inner voice might sound like:

Oh, great, let’s just cry about it, that’ll totally fix everything.

Fantastic job, Ari, real genius move there.

You’re getting sentimental again. Dangerous.

It’s rationalizing and self-justifying. When she makes emotional decisions (like keeping her animals or holding onto sentimental objects), she’ll try to frame them as practical choices—even when she knows deep down that’s not true.

a few unorthodox childhood questions.

Finding and using “unorthodox” questions is a sure-fire way to infuse not only you into the character and story, but also depth. These questions force you to really dig into what the backstory of your character is in order to answer them. Your average-stock-character-sketch is not going to do here. When you are compiling and getting ready to answer the question — here are the questions I ask myself:

Which question would make my character freeze before answering?
Which question would bring back a memory your character hasn’t thought about in years?
Which question would make your character resent the question—not because it’s wrong, but because it’s too right?
If you had to force your character to answer one question honestly, which one do you think would shake their foundation the most?

Here are a few examples I did with Ari.

When you were little, what did you think “being strong” meant? Do you still believe that?

I thought that strength meant being able to “handle” whatever happened. Being able to withstand every single thing that comes your way and continue on the next day. Strength to me was getting up after you fell down, no matter how much it hurt. Do I still believe this today? In a way, yes. I’ve learned that in cold, hard way, your choices in life are either: survive or die. And sometimes, the only way you survive is by getting up, anyway. But I’ve also learned that there is strength in survival and death.

If your childhood self could see you now, would she be proud, confused, or disappointed?

Oh, my. Little Ari would be so damn disappointed in me. laughs. Maybe she’d be a little proud. But the me that read and sought out adventures in books would look at the adult me and ask, “what happened?” And I’d have to be mean to poor little Ari because I’d have to say, “Life happened, Kid. Life. It fucks you up.”

If you had to describe your childhood in a single object—not a memory, but a physical thing—what would it be and why?

A book, obviously. Books are how I explored the world. How I learned. How I coped before I learned to journal. And even though reading books provided me with a thousand different lives to live and places to go — the physicality of books never changed. I knew when I picked up a book, what it was, what it could do for me, and the wisdom that lived inside. It was my one constant throughout my life.

If you could go back and say one thing to your father and/or mother at their most vulnerable moment, what would it be? And if they could see you now, what do you think they would want to say to you?

My father: “It’s okay to be real. It’s okay to feel. Please, let me in.”

My mother: “You are so much more than what you give yourself credit for.”

I think my father would crack a joke, avoid anything emotional and say something like, “I would’ve bought all the guns at Walmart if I’d known what was coming.” My mother would tell me she loved me and maybe whatever she thought I needed to hear in that moment.

I hope this essay gave you a good idea of how I build backstory for a writing fiction to heal novel. I’m far more concerned with the emotional backstory than I am with certain events or circumstances or situations that she’s been in. Those will naturally come into play if they are important and will arise when they need to, but the emotional probing is where the good stuff is at.

Next time…

Next week I’ll be talking about finding, working with and using “guiding myths” that align with The Archive. Myths and ancient stories hold potent energy and finding a story for your story creates magical results.

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