Pageturners: Why you should give your character a back story
Captain Hurricane in Valiant is a case in point. At the time, he was a huge hit (there were even Captain Hurricane chews). But he had no back story whatsoever, which is why he’s mostly forgotten today
Welcome to Pageturners, a book I’m writing in which I share what I’ve learnt – and am still learning – about comic writing, film writing, novel writing and how new writers can sell their stories. I’ll publish a chapter or a section per week, available for free here on Iconoblast. And I welcome your feedback or questions, so do leave a comment below!
Missed the Pageturners intro? Read it here.
How much of a back story should your characters have? Traditionally, in British comics, protagonists rarely have one. Because it involves an extra layer of work which – if the comic or the story is cancelled – has all been for nothing. And British publishers don’t take such character development into account when they buy all rights from you. So why should a writer go to all that extra effort? There is even a certain lightness of tone and immediacy about a ‘superficial’ story that is not weighed down by an intrusive back story.
In the case of Bill Savage from 2000AD’s Invasion, all I had was that he was a long-distance lorry driver, married with two children, and his family died in the Volgan invasion. I knew absolutely nothing else about him – other than he was a Londoner and a Sweeney sort of bloke. The serial worked up to a point, but it did limit the character almost to the point of parody. In the first adventure it was little more than Bill Savage and his trusty shotgun: ‘Laugh this off, Twinkletoes.’ In some ways, I think the readers actually liked it that way, it’s ‘easy reading’, and maybe they weren’t always that keen on character development, particularly younger readers. When I brought him back, I worked out a detailed back story, but I suspect some readers maybe preferred Bill ‘shallow’ to the point of parody. That’s not a perspective I buy into and I actually vetoed an attempt by another writer to do a piss-take version of Savage and ‘the Volgs’. If you wish to do that, then create your own characters and by all means, take the piss out of them, but not mine. To me, it’s disrespectful and trading on someone else’s creativity and hard work.
Often characters who appear to have no back story, actually do. So Reagan in the TV show The Sweeney has a back story of being ‘Jack the Lad’ and Carter was married. Both characters were written by screenwriters who knew a lot about the Metropolitan Police, and had spent serious drinking time with cops. So there is an implicit back story for them.
As far as I know, Johnny Red (by Tom Tully and Joe Colquhoun) didn’t have a back story before ending up in Russia, but it wouldn’t have harmed him as a character and may have solved the repetitive nature of some of the storylines that I was aware some Battle readers didn’t like because they were ‘too samey’.
My Celtic warrior Sláine was greatly enhanced by having a back story from the very beginning. His King is dead, so he is returning to his tribe after having been exiled because he made love to Niamh, the King’s Chosen One.
So I think the case for a back story is made – even if comics, traditionally, love to keep things shallow. Or ephemeral – as the IPC comic publisher John Sanders used to say. I’m sorry, that’s lazy, short-term thinking and gives comics a bad name. Captain Hurricane in Valiant is a case in point. At the time, he was a huge hit (there were even Captain Hurricane chews). But he had no back story whatsoever, which is why he’s mostly forgotten today.
Similarly, D Day Dawson, created by me and John Wagner and written by Gerry Finley-Day, was the number one story in Battle for most of his long run. This dying hero, with a bullet close to his heart, was the prime reason Battle was a commercial success. But he’s forgotten today, because he had no back story. He was two-dimensional. John and I saw the character running for only 12 weeks, covering the last 12 months of his life, from 1944 to 1945, so no back story was required. To our surprise, he was so massively popular, managing editor John Purdie said we had to keep him going. Aesthetically, we found this hugely embarrassing, so we found a way to kill him off. I’d better not go into details, but let’s just say we found a different writer and artist and that did the trick.
There’s also a solution to the extra cost of creating a back story: if the project dies, the back story can be recycled elsewhere.
So – for the anniversary years of the Great War – I devised a similar story to Charley’s War, unaware of the levels of censorship in publishing today. I wrote a detailed outline called Fred’s War, which followed a soldier from the beginning of the war. This progressively morphed into Brothers in Arms, following Fred and his interactions with soldiers of other nations, including the Germans and even a Russian soldier. Because there were Russian regiments in France on the Western Front who were massacred by the French when they rose up in rebellion following the communist revolution in 1917. The shared humanity of all this ‘cannon fodder’ fascinated me.
Brothers in Arms was the story of FRED, TOM, and NED, three brothers in the Great War and the Brothers In Arms they meet: HENRI (France), KARL (German), ANTON (Russian) and SEAN (American).
They were brilliantly illustrated by David Hitchcock. David also worked with me illustrating the poem Dead Man’s Dump (by Isaac Rosenberg) in Above the Dreamless Dead, a collection of World War One poetry, published by Macmillan. It showed something of the dark nature of General Haig. So Dave’s credentials were also impeccable.
I was in for two surprises. I had absolutely no idea how fierce the censorship would be. It’s covert, so it can be denied, which is the British way, but I eventually got the message. This censorship also affected Charley’s War, which I talk about in my Secret History of Charley’s War. At one important publisher’s I had an insider enthusiastically promoting me and he was in contact with the decision-makers. Despite his earnest efforts, the message still came back. ‘Our list of titles is full for this year. And for next year.’
We didn’t ask about the year after.
A second publisher said ‘We have an established author who writes about World War One. It wouldn’t be fair to him to have another Great War writer on our books.’ This is how deniable censorship works in the UK. I could give you other examples, but you get the idea.
So if you’re hungry for success, don’t follow my example. Write stories the establishment will love. ‘War is hell but necessary. And Britain is always the good guy, a force for good in the world.’ That theme will go down well with them. Doors could open for you.
But my project wasn’t wasted because it provided a ready-made back story for the protagonist in my forthcoming WW1 thriller novel.
Recyling material means you can make economic success of comics. So the main plot for the first Marshal Law plot – Fear and Loathing – actually comes from Mekomania, my abortive robot history of the future.
If you can’t recycle, I would still recommend writing the origins of your own character as an aide mémoire. It’s necessary to know your hero’s origins, their back story, even if it’s barely referred to, whether it’s a comic, a novel or a film. The trick is not to let it swamp your story. Otherwise it will be an endless series of flashbacks which is likely to have rather limited appeal. Swamping is avoided by having a clear vision of your plot, tone, theme, genre and – most important of all – what your audience is looking for from your story.