Mornings And Memories
At dinner one night, we were talking about morning routines and I mentioned how, in high school, I was as quiet as my own teen daughter is. My husband shared how he would always watch the news in the morning before school.
“Why did I not know that about you before, Dad? Why do I know everything about Mama’s childhood, but nothing about yours?” my daughter asked.
She’s not wrong. I talk all the time about “when I was your age…” I’m careful to gauge the interest of my audience, though. 🙂 But Scott doesn’t often reveal those memories.
“I honestly don’t remember a lot of details,” he explained in his defence.
It got me thinking of the importance of backstory for our protagonists. There may be people who don’t remember much from decades ago, but your character can’t be one of them. The only way a reader is going to know and appreciate the challenges your protagonist faces is by understanding what’s going on in their head—even as the protagonist is trying to figure it out. They do that by looking for patterns. Since we try to make sense of the present by examining the past, we need to know our protagonist’s past. Not every moment, but enough that our reader can appreciate how the past is affecting the character in the present.
The best thing about this story element, though? Unlike our own memories that can fade, we can make them all up for our protagonist. 🙂