Self-Perception

Backstory in a novel is very important. People, whether real or fictional, are completely shaped by their pasts. Still, I get annoyed when I read a book where a character (usually the heroine) wallows in events of 20 years ago, using them to affect her actions and attitude now, and never refers to anything that happened in between. I think more recent events would temper the affects of past ones, most of the time, or at least impact them.

I've had a good life. How I live it now, and who I am, have been influenced by growing up poor, with parents who divorced when I was seven, and a mother who was ill much of her life in ways that were barely identified, never mind treated properly. None of that is part of my day-to-day living, though. I don't think about it much, and certainly don't blame most of my choices on my past. But there is one overriding theme of my childhood that has a huge influence on me, and not in a good way.

I had a dream last night. I have this friend, and we're so alike in so many ways that the differences hardly matter. We could be together non-stop for a week and not run out of things to talk about. In my dream, we were at a very elegant conference where she was a Big Deal--featured speaker, presenter of two workshops, hanging out with people who are far cooler than I am--and I wasn't a part of it. It was like I wasn't even there.

(Then the dream morphed and I was trying to get my second suitcase that held all my nice clothes, that I'd left on the baggage carousel, and the airline people were giving me a hard time because it was my own fault. But that's irrelevant.)

I woke up and imagined telling this friend about this dream. She'd be irritated. She's always irritated when I tell her I feel inferior. So I started thinking about why I feel that way. It's certainly not because of her.

I went to three different elementary schools, so I didn't have a lot of friends. I've always been introverted and shy, so it was hard to make new ones. In middle school I had a few, but in the last semester my lunch was different from theirs, so I sat with some other kids in my classes. Eventually, they asked me to sit somewhere else because I didn't talk.

In junior high there was a group of girls that bullied me. I had a new boyfriend who was pretty geeky, and they were picking on me about it. I don't remember the exact taunt it was in response to, but I yelled "Because he's nice!" back through a set of doors. One girl came charging up behind me and shoved me in the back. I went flying and skidded on my stomach across the carpet.

The two years I spent in that high school developed okay. I shared most of my classes with a particular group of kids, and in our junior year they were friendlier toward me. I got invited to my first party. Then, out of the blue, they told me I couldn't hang out with them anymore. My mother said the girls were probably jealous because I was getting attention from the boys (I always had more friends who were boys than friends who were girls). But they never told me why they didn't like me anymore. I was left to feel that I just wasn't worthy.

So I have an accumulation of things that contribute to how I felt in that dream. Things since have tempered it--I moved again before my senior year and went to a great school with kids who liked me, I made plenty of friends in college, I now have a fabulous group of friends through my writing associations, and for the most part, I don't let what happened in the past bother me.

But every so often comes this inferiority complex when I start wondering what the hell someone would see in me. Why I'm worthy of friendship with this amazing, funny, self-assured, adored person who could be friends with anyone. No one would understand why I'd feel this way unless they knew my backstory.

So I think the bottom line is flavor. A story has to be flavored with backstory rather than chunked with it, and even if there is one overriding event or series of events that dictate a character's personality and viewpoint, there have to be other things that either feed or alter it. If there weren't, it should be clear why.

Something I need to keep in mind as I revise my current book. :)