Good Will Hunting has some of the best backstory integration ever in a script.
Backstory.
It’s essential to every screenplay.
Yet so few writers understand how to apply it.
Some choke their screenplays with so much backstory, their
story suffocates and passes out. While
others add so little, it’s like their characters were born the second they
typed “FADE IN.” How much backstory
should you be adding to your screenplays?
The answer lies in why you’re adding backstory in the first
place.
Backstory is the key to character depth. Some teacher or writer started a rumor a few
years back that nobody cares about a character’s past. The only thing that matters is the present –
what the character is doing right here and now.
The sentiment of that opinion is correct. The character present – the choices your hero
makes right now – have the biggest influence on how your character is perceived. But your character can’t make a single choice
that isn’t motivated by his past. Which
is why backstory IS relevant.
For example, if a character was sexually abused growing up,
their choices in pursuing a serial rapist are going to be different from
someone who’s never experienced abuse before. Or, if you want to go to even more of an extreme,
than someone who’s a closet rapist themselves.
This is why laying out an extensive backstory for your
characters is essential. The more you
know about your character’s past, the easier it is to inform their present and future. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of
those things that separates the great scripts from the average ones. I can tell when someone’s done their
backstory homework. Their characters all
act and speak specifically. Whereas when
a writer knows nothing about their characters’ backstory, their characters
speak in generalities and clichés, usually those that echo popular movies
they’ve seen.
For example, one of the reasons Will Hunting is such an
amazing character is because of how well Matt Damon and Ben Affleck knew his
history. They knew the neighborhood Will
grew up in, the friends he ran with, the girls he slept with, that his father
beat him, how his father beat him, that he was self-taught, how loyal he was,
how he’d kill someone before embarrassing a friend while out for drinks. They knew the same thing about Sean, Robin
Williams’ character. They knew when he
met his wife, how he met her (during the Red Sox game), the type of cancer that
killed her, how long he had to take care of her. These two characters were memorable BECAUSE
of how well the writers understood them.
And that all goes back to how much research they put into their
characters’ backstory.
Not only that. But
the more backstory you know, the more intricate and textured your story will
be. The backstory is where you’ll find
out Marty McFly wants to be a rock star, that he’s become best friends with a
mad genius, that his father’s been a loser geek his whole life, that his mom
used to be a bad girl, that he’s fallen in love, that the clock tower died in
the 50s after a giant storm. The
backstory is where you’ll find out John McClane’s wife moved to Los Angeles to
pursue her career, leaving him behind.
It’s where you’ll find out Thor’s complicated relationship with his
brother. It’s where you’ll find out
Hannibal used to eat his victims.
But how do you integrate backstory into a script? How do you know when you’re writing too much
backstory or not enough? First, you need
to understand the two types of backstory – VISIBLE backstory and INVISIBLE
backstory. Invisible backstory will
account for 90% of your backstory research.
It’s everything from where your character grew up to their first love to
their level of education to their biggest tragedies to their biggest fears to
who they had the best sex of their life with.
Yes, all that stuff matters. The
more you know about your character, the easier it is to make them original and
interesting. The thing is, rarely will
invisible backstory show up in a script.
It’s there more to inform your own relationship with your
character. It’s there so you can
understand them and motivate their choices.
For example, if you’re writing a Romantic Comedy and your
hero, Kate, is about to get married to the love of her life, the boring yet “perfect”
Thaddeus, and the dangerous guy she had the best sex of her life with, Cabe,
just happened to come back into town, you’ve created the perfect opportunity
for conflict. Without having done your invisible backstory research, this
knowledge, this opportunity for conflict, may have never presented itself.
VISIBLE backstory is different. These are the 3-4 major things that have
happened in your character’s past that WILL PLAY A PART in the movie itself.
You only want to bring visible backstory up if it’s going to be relevant to the
story in some way. So in Taken, we learn
that Liam Neeson has been a terrible father and husband. He was not there for his family, which
resulted in his wife falling out of love with him and running off with another
man, taking his daughter with her. His
desire to win his daughter over again, to repair that relationship, is what
creates the bond necessary for us to root for him saving her once she’s kidnapped.
Or in Bridesmaids, Kristin Wiig’s failed bakery stole a big
part of her confidence away. When it
went under, she was forced to take a job she hated, leaving her desperate to find
a man. When she starts dating the police
officer, baking again becomes a major theme in their relationship. And when she
experiences her rock bottom at the end of the second act, baking visually
represents her rebirth.
The point is, visible backstory represents 3 or 4 major
things that will influence the story.
Your character may be the world’s pre-eminent Depression-Era nickel
collector. But if collecting nickels
never influences the story in a relevant way, then log that under the
“invisible” category, not the “visible.”
You only want to mention backstory that influences the plot (“Save the
Clock Tower!”) or a character arc (Sean not being able to live life after his
wife died in Good Will Hunting).
So now that you understand backstory, how do you get it into
your story? Do you just throw it in
there willy-nilly and hope for the best?
Of course not. The way backstory
is placed in your story is almost as important as the backstory itself. The
worst thing a writer can do is have a character dive into their backstory
unprovoked. You guys know what I’m
talking about. Your characters may be
between chase scenes. It’s a quiet moment. Then all of a sudden one of them launches into
a monologue that starts off like: “I was six years old when my father first
beat me. I still remember it like it was yesterday…” Ugh.
Groan. Please never do this.
Instead, use Scriptshadow’s Fabulous Five Ways For Better
Backstory Integration. You’ll thank me afterwards.
Resistance – One of the best ways to reveal backstory is
through resistance. The character revealing their backstory shouldn’t want
to. This eliminates the falseness that
comes with your character revealing backstory in the first place. For a great example of this, watch the “Cage”
scene in Silence Of The Lambs. In it,
Hannibal refuses to give Clarice the information she wants until she tells him
the lamb story. She’s desperate not to
tell him, but she knows it’s the only way she’ll be able to get to Buffalo Bill
before he kills the girl. So she tells
him.
Argument – Hiding backstory is easily achieved when two
characters are going at it. Because
we’re so wrapped up in the argument (or conflict), we’re not aware that the
writer is actually giving us key pieces of backstory on the character(s). Watch the Good Will Hunting scene where Will talks
to Sean in therapy for the first time.
Will starts challenging Sean’s credentials, and ultimately, his love for
his wife. The end of the scene gets very
heated, with Sean physically choking Will – something he clearly deserved. The conflict in the scene is top-notch, but
check out what we learned during it – Sean’s storied education as well as how
much he loves his wife. Use those
arguments baby. They’re backstory
batter.
Another Character Reveals The Backstory – You want to avoid
your hero revealing his own backstory.
It just never comes out right. A
great way to avoid this is to have someone else reveal it for him. Check out the limo scene in Die Hard for a
great example. We need to know why John
has come to LA to visit his wife.
Instead of John telling the driver (which would’ve been totally out of
character), the limo driver takes some guesses.
He figures out that she left to pursue a bigger job. He figures out that John thought she would
fail and crawl back to New York. John
never says a word about his life in this scene and yet we get a ton of
backstory on him.
Showing, Not Telling – This screenwriting staple is a great
way to reveal backstory. Why? Because you don’t have to say a word. You show it instead. And showing always resonates more with an
audience. In Moneyball, there’s a scene
where Brad Pitt’s character comes to his ex-wife’s place to pick up his
daughter. Do we ever get a monologue
about how he screwed up his marriage and wasn’t there for his family and now
rarely gets to see his daughter?
No. But we get a scene where he
awkwardly waits in a living room with his ex-wife and her boyfriend while his
daughter gets ready that tells us everything we need to know about his
past. Great screenwriters use this
technique as much as possible.
Bits and Pieces – The longer you dedicate a moment to
revealing backstory, the clearer it becomes that you’re revealing
backstory. The naturalism of the scene
disintegrates, and pretty soon it feels like the writer’s stopped the story
cold to directly remind the reader what’s going on. A great way to combat this is to reveal
backstory in bits and pieces. Spread it
out instead of throwing it at the reader all at once. This will hide it, making it harder for the
reader to discern that backstory is being disseminated. One of the best examples of this is Field Of
Dreams. The reason Ray reuniting with
his father in the climax is one of the great endings of all time, is because
the writer mentioned Ray Cancella’s issues with his father in tiny bits and
pieces throughout the screenplay. You
were never bombarded with any huge father backstory moments. So spreading out backstory
in small easy to digest pieces is a super way to hide it.
And there you go folks.
You now know everything you need to know about backstory – one of the
more underrated facets of screenwriting.
I can’t stress enough that if you haven’t done an extensive amount of
backstory research on your characters, your story is never going to have enough
depth to impact a reader. So go back to
your current screenplay and see if that depth is there. If it isn’t, it might be time to go back to
the beginning of your character’s life.
Find out everything you can about him before your story started. I
promise that once you do, your story is going to come alive.