Writing good character bios (and making them relevant to the RP)

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How to write good backstories

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Align it with character personality

When writing the character personality, you want to ask yourself why are they like this? How did they end up in this state? What enviormental factors contributed to how they are now? Perhaps they’re used to getting everything on a silver platter, then that explains why they’re entitled and bratty. Perhaps they were bullied when they were a kid and that’s how come they’re shy and reserved, or maybe their the opposite, maybe they are the bully. It’s all about history and when you have a personality in mind you want to think about how they got to this stage.

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Be aware of what could trigger other people

When writing about touchy subjects think about how it could trigger someone, so when writing bios attempt to not be extremely descriptive about gory subjects, or touchy ones such as drugs and assault. It’s completely fine to write these, in fact one should! But you should do your research in order to correctly portray them and remain respectful and avoid triggering others. If you are concerned about what you or another wrote may be triggering, reach out to @CrazyCaliope, our RP moderator.

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Go outside your comfort zone

Step out of your comfort zone and try something new! Try a character’s who been rich but fell from grace! Try someone who was born in a war-torn country. It’s always a good idea to do other backstories and histories, it makes our characters much more unique as well as diverse!

Making it Relevant

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Think of the area the RP is set in

You want to think about where and how the role-play is set, what time is it? What’s popular? How did they get there? How long have they been there? Are they a native? A newbie? Think about how they feel in the area, why or why not they can or cannot leave. Is there a certain goal in the RP? (IE: Trying to become a ‘A-Lister’)

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Is there is a certain goal in the RP?

What’s going on? Is there a certain goal? To defeat the shadow monster? Take the Prom Crown? Who do they feel about it? What’re they going to do to achieve (or even maybe sabotage :smirk: ) the goal? How has it affected their life? These are questions you want to ask as you create a backstory!

That’s how to create a Character Backstory ( And Make it Relevant) by @melancholy with a bunch of help from the AWESOME @eclipseis !! Both apart of the @RPStaff who are here to help with questions or clarifying with any specifics

@RPers

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Bookmarking because you have saved my life!

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This is really helpful!!

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Haha, glad I could! Feel free to PM me if you need any help with specific backstories in the future ^^ :white_heart:

Yay! Glad you think so :white_heart:

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Thanks for this! I usually spend the most time writing the biographies, so this would help a lot! :eyes:

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Haha, I totally get that. I often have an idea of a personality but I always take a much longer time on backstories that make sense. Glad I could help, Chi! :white_heart:

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Great post on writing bios Ani! Bios are the part I’m most comfortable writing, unlike personalities, but I know there are tons of RPers that struggle with the backstory. This is sure to be a great help for anybody struggling!

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Using Trauma in a backstory

Lots of people wish to use trauma in a backstory in order to depict some events, however trauma doesn’t work quite simply. For example, mentions of verbal or physical abuse in an character is not as simple as just writing it and remembering it months down the line. When you want to put trauma in a character it should be in their forefront of their mind all the time. Every action, every word anything they do or how they respond to their environments will have some tiebacks to the trauma before. Perhaps they were bullied? Maybe they’ll be wary of anyone who quickly comes to be their friend. Maybe they’ll be more reserved. On the flip side, maybe they’ll be aggressive and take everything as a threat. Another thing to keep in mind is that worse trauma doesn’t = rounder/interesting character. Just as making one bisexual doesn’t suddenly make them unique, or “quirky”. More importantly, if you have not experienced the said trauma do not write it without doing good research. This doesn’t mean using the first site that comes on google, use reputable sources such as medical institutions or verified experience of another’s person.

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this is actually a question that helps me a lot when writing bios
For example character doesn’t trust easily, why is that? Where do those trust issues come from? Is it something that happened? Trauma or something?
It helps trigger thinking and makes up rad stories

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This is a helpful thread for struggling RPers along with the Creating Personalities thread! Creating a story for my characters is definitely my favourite part of creation but sometimes, I also struggle with inspiration because I want it to be :100: different from my other characters. I realize though that having similar traits in your backstory is totally okay. There’s no need to brainstorm a lot tobe unique; actually, the most common things can even inspire uniqueness in some way!

Here is also a tip that will hopefully help you somehow:

  • Make it so that the backstory makes your characters’ motivations and reasoning are clear. Give your characters conflict that will spark a potential storyline. Something that will let you develop them through the roleplay. Everyone has motivations and goals in life, and you can totally write that in your biography whatever that may be. This will also keep your characters from being close to a Mary Sue.
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Just added a couple tags