OC's History/Backstory

[𝙹𝚘𝙹𝚘.]

Here's a good question for you guys that's been on my mind lately!


I realized recently that I really don't write histories for my OCs. There's a good reason for that too. Since most of my characters range from about 12 to 19 (excluding the adult OCs I have anyway), I've always struggled to write backstories for them. For the most part, I see a teenage character's backstory as being, well, more under developed than a character in their 20s and 30s. Usually all their "backstory" is in the relationships I write between them, their parents, and their siblings (if any.) In doing so, I never found the need to write really long backstories for these characters. Usually if there's something tragic/eventful that happened in their past, I'll put it elsewhere on their profile, but it's harder to go into detail about it for younger characters for some reason. Even my OCs that lack parents usually don't get a fully written up history because I never know how to write it, especially since them losing their parents is just one tragic event that doesn't really warrant a whole backstory write up in general. I find it easier to write backstories for older characters because I'm able to write about them in their teenage years as well instead of just their childhood, which I usually find to be boring to write anyway and I just gloss over. 


Do you guys write backstory for children/teenage OC's? Or do you find it to be a bit of a hassle to write such a thing for characters with barely any history? Does it change your opinion on an OC when you come across one that doesn't have a fully written up backstory?

[Flyleaf]

My main teen OC is roughly 17-18 years old and I easily typed 800+ words for her brief background/history -- if I were to go into detail I'm sure it would have been over 2,000 words. I suppose it's because I have done a lot of paid writing in the past (in Croatian, of course) plus writing essays for uni; I guess I'm just used to typing a lot of detail about mundane topics, so when it's about something I'm interested in I can type way too much.

So, I suppose it does make me less inclined to roleplay with someone who doesn't have any/only a little about a character's background -- the age of an OC doesn't really matter to me. There's always something in someone's background that you could type a lot about! Plus even teenagers have those moments in their past that have really shaped them into who they currently are. And the loss of a parent/parents is actually something gigantic in a young person's life, which if there was only a little description saying, "parents: none - deceased" I would be left thinking, why didn't they type that out?

I'll also admit that I'm a huge fan of psychology. Something that you would think wouldn't matter could actually be a huge reason for someone acting a certain way. Like when an infant is first born -- if they are whisked away from their mother after having their umbilical cord cut seconds after they emerge, cleaned immediately, clothed, and then handed back to their mum, it traumatises them. It often causes the child to be more likely to develop an anxiety disorder despite the fact that there's no way that child could actually remember being born.

It should probably be said that yes, I'm biased when it comes to pasts even for younger OCs, heh. I know that there aren't a lot of other people out there reading psychology books or getting paid to write something for someone that's 10,000 words long.

Nevertheless, even if it's something shorter I'm far more turned off of roleplaying with someone if they have nothing for their OC's background than if they have only a paragraph or two.