The 7 Biggest Character Backstory Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Characters are super important for any story and the backstory of your character matters a lot in the long-run development of how your character turns out. However, something I noticed when I first started writing was that I think I was just giving my characters a bit too much backstory and way too much happening that it didn’t feel like it balanced out well with the progression of my story. Something that some writers don’t realize is that even if you develop an entire novel’s worth of backstory for your main character, some readers just won’t care for those little details. What your readers do want is to relate, understand, and learn why your character is making the choices that they are currently making. So, throughout this post, I’ll be covering 7 of the biggest character backstory mistakes writers make and I’ll also be helping you learn how to avoid them. 

1. Writing Your Character’s Entire Life Story

I’ve read manuscripts where the first chapter is basically a biography. Five pages about childhood trauma, a sports commentator-level play-by-play rundown of their average life, and a bit too many opinions about things that just aren’t even relevant to the story. Imagine a Disney movie opening, but it’s in a book. Disney openings are not meant to be in story formats for a reason. 

The problem is that dumping an entire life story kills your forward momentum. Your plot gets buried under all that history, and readers lose interest because they came here to watch your character do something, not to read their autobiography.

The fix? Only include past experiences that directly shape what’s happening in your story right now. You don’t need a biography but what you need is relevance. Ask yourself: does this detail change how the reader understands this moment? If not, cut it.

2. Piling on Trauma For No Reason

Not every character ever written needs to have insane levels of trauma. Oftentimes, you’ll see a single character just go through it all, but there’s not any real depth to that character anyways, so it sort of cancels out the depth of the trauma. 

If you pile on suffering just to make a character feel deep, but none of that pain shows up in how they actually behave, it feels like it was just tacked on. Worse, it can feel exploitative to readers who have real trauma.

Here’s the thing about trauma: it should create real, believable conflict that drives your story forward. A character with abandonment issues might push people away even when they desperately want connection. That’s not just backstory, but that has an active role in the plot.

Use trauma only when it serves a purpose in your story. How does that fear, guilt, or anger influence their decisions? That’s where the real character development happens.

I cover backstories and elements of backstories in my Ultimate Character Creation Guide, which you can check out over here. It comes with over 150 pages of detailed instructional content and workbook pages to help you learn how to create the perfect character from the ground-up. If you’re interested, you should check it out here: The Ultimate Character Creation Guide.

3. Starting with a Backstory Dump

Starting your book out with just a character ruminating on past experiences is basically akin to writing a backstory dump. Like it’s not right to info-dump your world building in the beginning, as I discussed in another blog post, it’s not right to info-dump the backstory so early on either. 

Dumping the backstory on the reader within the first chapter will undercut the mystery and tension of your story. Readers don’t need to understand everything to care about your character. Instead, your readers need to have some level of curiosity and feel some level of “mystery” around your characters. 

The beginning should be in the middle of something. It should feel like some sort of action is happening and we are joining in with the protagonist in the middle of that action. 

4. Avoiding Backstory Completely

On the flip side, some writers get so scared of slowing down their pacing that they avoid backstory entirely. Their characters feel like they were born five minutes before chapter one.

But here’s the reality: readers connect with characters who feel real, and real people have internal conflicts just as much as they do external conflicts. When we understand why someone acts the way they do, their flaws become sympathetic and their victories feel earned.

You don’t need pages of backstory, but you do need some emotional foundation. Give each main character 2-3 meaningful moments from their past. Then find subtle ways to show how those moments influence their choices in your current story.

5. Everyone Gets the Same Tragic Origin Story

Most books tend to have multiple characters and the thing is, if you’re just assigning backstories to these characters without any true depth to why you’re assigning these backstories, it’ll just feel repetitive to your readers. 

When every character has the same style of trauma, they start to blur together. Your emotional beats feel predictable, and readers start guessing the backstory twist before you reveal it.

The fix is variety and specificity. Let backstories reflect different backgrounds like culture, class, family dynamics, personal psychology, etc… A character from a noble family likely won’t have the same wounds as a street thief, even if they both lost someone important.

6. When Past and Present Don’t Match

Something that can really break immersion for readers is when your character’s backstory and their present behavior doesn’t seem to match. You say your character grew up poor, but they act like nobility. You claim they’ve been betrayed their whole life, but they trust everyone immediately. The backstory and current behavior just don’t align.

This breaks immersion faster than anything else. Readers can’t invest in characters who feel like they’re made of conflicting puzzle pieces.

Cross-check your backstory against how your character actually behaves. If they fear abandonment, they should struggle with intimacy or lash out when people get too close. If they come from wealth, they should have blind spots about hardship.

7. Using Backstory to Avoid Moving the Plot Forward

I’ve been there. You’re feeling stuck and you aren’t sure where to take your plot in the next chapter. So, you decide to write another flashback or a long internal monologue about the past. The story is basically stalled the more you do this, and readers will definitely notice at some point. 

The backstory shouldn’t replace, delay, or push the plot. Instead, it should support the plot and it should serve your current story. 

It should raise a new question, create a new obstacle, or help us understand a choice your character is making right now. Ask yourself: why does the reader need to know this at this exact moment? What tension does it create?

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use flashbacks and dream sequences and things like that. In fact, I discussed how to use them properly in another blog post. But the key is using them with balance in mind. 

Conclusion

Backstory shouldn’t be treated as filler but instead should be considered fuel for your story. When you use the backstory with intention, it helps create a foundation and add depth to your main character. However, you have to be sure that you’re using it with balance and precision so that it doesn’t end up feeling like it’s overtaking your story. 

If you want some extra help with your character’s backstory, I’ve created a Character Backstory Cheat Sheet equipped with questions to help you walk through the things that matter for your character’s backstory. You can get it by signing up for my email list below: 

If you’re ready to dive deeper into character creation, then check out my Ultimate Character Creation Guide. It’s packed with step-by-step walkthroughs, prompted questions, and practical tools and instruction to help you build unforgettable protagonists, antagonists, and side characters that your readers will actually care about!

Want more insights like this? Sign up for my newsletter to get real advice about writing, exclusive discounts on my guides, and all the latest updates. You’ve got the stories. I’ve got the tools to help you tell them right. 

And be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga. You can start reading Book 1 on Kindle Unlimited right now!