Friday Feature Creating new stories using Character back story
The other night we watched the movie Fred Claus. It’s the story of Santa Claus’ older brother (bet you didn’t know he had one!) who found himself in the position of the less favored son. (Makes sense since Nickolas became a saint.) It was a cute story about a dysfunctional family and how they sorted their problems out one Christmas.
What caught our attention wasn’t the dysfunctional family story, but the story the writers found in back story of a new character they created to compliment a well known character.
This isn’t the first time someone has used this plotting trick. Gregory Maguire did something similar when he wrote the book Wicked, the story of how the wicked witch of the west became wicked. He went on to write an entire Wicked Years series featuring familiar and new characters from Oz.
The movie Oz: The Great and Powerful is a prequel to both the Frank Baum’s novel and the 1939 film The Wizard of Ox. Oz: the Great and Powerful tells the back story of the Wizard of Oz.
The television series Once Upon a Time (no longer on TV) also used this plot mechanism. Have you ever wondered why the wicked queen hated Snow White so much, beyond the simple and obvious she’s-prettier than-I-am motive? The writers of this series tell the queen’s back story and turned all the fairy tales in this series sideways.
Chances are you’ve read Wicked or seen the stage play, have heard about Once Upon a Time, or have seen the movie Oz, the Great and Powerful, or seen some other movie or read a book that turns well-known stories upside down. If you’re like us, you wished you had come up with those ideas.
So how can you and us find ideas like this? The key is to think outside the box. Here are 5 suggestions you can use to change the norm into the abnormal.
1. Consider placing your classic characters in another time and space and see what happens to them.
2. Look for an interesting minor character in a story and figure out what makes them tick. Then give them a life and a back story, and, yes, back story is okay here because it is the premise of your story.
3. Find a classic story you love and turn it on its ear. Think Jerry Lewis as Cinderfella.
4. Don’t be afraid to go outside the conventional box when considering options. Catherine may not like vampires that can walk in sunlight and twinkle, but there’s no doubt lots of readers do. Readers can often suspend what they know about a subject if you give plausible reasons for the changes.
5. Apply and unexpected plot twist to a well-known character or set of circumstances. In Once Upon a Time the writers took Little Red Riding Hood and made her the Big Bad werewolf. Her magical red cloak protected her against her curse—and Grandma knew her secret, but Red didn’t.
In all the stories mentioned, we did not see the twist coming, and that’s the kind of thing writers, and readers, want. We walked away from each of these stories saying, “I wish we had thought of that!”
Do you have a favorite book that has used this creative back story method?
How about checking out one of our books to see if it can be a favorite. You can find our books on our book page, under the menu at the top of the page or on our Amazon Author Page
