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Writing a character who remains composed when everything around them is falling apart is a hard thing to do, especially since I’m sure a lot of us don’t feel that way when we’re in tricky situations. My significant other is cool as a cucumber when something is genuinely stressful, and I’m in constant awe of his ability to just be calm and take charge.

When it comes to writing a calm character in an overwhelming situation, the balancing act comes when you want them to feel grounded and in control, but not so detached that they seem robotic or unfeeling. The trick is understanding that being calm isn’t an absence of emotion; it’s managing those emotions in a way that serves the situation they’re in.

Understand where their calm comes from

Before you can write a calm character convincingly, you need to understand why they’re calm. Their composure ought to have a source. Does their calm come from:

Training or experience? Military personnel, emergency responders, or anyone who has faced repeated crises may have learned to compartmentalise and therefore find it easier to remain calm in situations outside of their normal experiences.

Personality? Some people are naturally less reactive and process their emotions internally rather than externally.

A coping mechanism? Their calm might be a learned defence against trauma or chaos in their past.

Responsibility? They may stay calm for others because someone has to, and they’ve taken on that role.

Neurodivergence? Many neurodivergent people may panic or stress at the little things in their lives, but when something genuinely big and dramatic happens, they’re suddenly calm and collected as adrenaline and dopamine flood their systems.

Understanding the root of why they are calm will help you write it authentically because those reasons will feed into their entire characterisation. It will feel genuine in the moment because you really know your characters.

Separate internal experiences from external behaviour

What a character shows and what they feel are not always the same thing. Even the most composed person experiences physiological stress responses that might not be visible to others. Their bodies react even if their behaviour doesn’t.

You can show this through:

Physical sensations like a racing heart, a tight chest, or icy hands.

Controlled breathing to ensure they have a strong and calm voice when they speak.

Micro-reactions like a brief pause, tightening their jaw, or a moment where their eyes flicker before they respond.

An internal monologue that lets readers into their head where the storm is happening, even as they appear calm externally.

Duality helps to create tension and makes characters feel three-dimensional rather than emotionless. Just because other characters can’t see the emotions doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t experience them. It can also make a good revelation later on down the line if someone misinterprets a calm character as cold and distant.

Use their actions to show competence

Calm characters often show their composure by doing rather than feeling. When chaos erupts, they act. They do things deliberately and with calculation. You can show them:

Assessing the situation methodically.

Prioritising what needs to happen first.

Giving clear, steady instructions to others.

Focusing on solutions rather than dwelling on the problem.

Stepping up to take charge, whether it is reluctantly or unasked.

Use strategic cracks in their facade

To make your composed character feel real, build in moments where their control slips, even just a little. This might look like:

A sharp edge to their voice that they quickly smooth over.

Hands that stay calm but finally start to tremble when the crisis is over.

A private moment where they come close to a breakdown.

Delayed emotional reactions that surface later.

I should say upfront: I don't write romance. My last three manuscripts have had exactly zero kisses in them, on principle, mostly because I don't trust myself to write one without it reading like a Terms of Service update. Categorically unromantic. So when a beta reader flagged a hug between my ship's engineer and her best friend the mechanic — a hug I had written as, generously, the emotional equivalent of a firm handshake — with the note "OK WAIT are they finally getting together??", I was, to put it mildly, surprised. They were not getting together. They had never been getting together. There was no getting-together arc. I built an entire found-family plotline on the premise that these two people are permanently, structurally just friends, and somehow the reader didn't get the memo.

So I did the thing I do at my actual job when a system produces output nobody asked for: I stopped assuming I knew where the bug was, and went and actually read the function.

A hug is not romantic or platonic on its own. It's neutral input. The reading of it depends entirely on what is happening around it. Same action, wildly different output, depending on what you put into it. When I re-read my work with that readers feedback in mind, I went through every physical-contact beat in the manuscript and started tagging them like log lines: whose head is this in, what does this scene dwell on, what happens in the three beats after? The pattern showed up almost immediately, and it was humbling, because the hug itself wasn't the problem. It was what I'd bolted onto either side of it without noticing.

What I discovered is that I'd given my POV character a beat of noticing. I'd described the warmth of the contact and the ship's mechanic registering the height difference. None of that is explicit romantic content. I didn't include a swoon or a pounding heart; nothing you could point to and call a romantic tell. But noticing a friend's body and lingering on the sensation of contact is, structurally, the exact move romance writers use to signal attraction. It doesn't matter that I didn't mean it that way. The reader's pattern-matcher doesn't check your intentions; it checks your syntax.

Once I saw that pattern, I started seeing it everywhere in my writing. Romantic contact almost always gets held a beat too long. It's a hand that doesn't quite let go, or a hug that runs on past the point where either person needed it to. Platonic contact, in the stuff I actually admire (I'm thinking of the crew dynamics in shows like Firefly, or the found-family ensembles in a lot of the space opera I grew up on), is brisk. It does its job, it's over, and nobody comments on it afterward. My engineer's hug ran four sentences past the point of usefulness, which is apparently a marriage proposal in prose terms.

I also hadn't given the touch a job, which sounds obvious written down, but wasn't obvious to me at 11pm rewriting a chapter. If the honest reason a hug is happening is "I wanted a tender moment between them," that instinct is a romance convention, whether or not you're writing romance. Give it a function instead: relief after bad news, the reflexive squeeze when someone gets good news, the shoulder-clap that's just how these two have always said goodbye, hauling someone up off a deck plate because the ship just lurched. A touch with a job reads as a touch with a job. A touch that exists purely so the reader can feel something reads as foreplay.

The history between characters matters too. Their history is their context, and if it reads as something more-than-friends, then readers will make inferences from that context.

Here's what I mean: the history I'd given them was bickering. Barbed one-liners, mutual exasperation, one of them always turning up right when the other one needed rescuing, a running list of small grievances neither of them will drop. In my head, while I was writing, that was a neutral history, but for a reader, that follows a lot of romantic tropes. That's the shape of friends-to-lovers, (or maybe even enemies-to-lovers depending on the severity of the bickering), which shows up in about half the romance-adjacent plots I've ever read. I didn't give my characters a friendship's worth of history; I gave them a slow-burn's worth of history, and then I acted surprised when a hug on top of it read as the payoff to a slow burn. Readers don't just track what's happened between two characters in a single scene, they track context, and there are context clues that readers have been trained on a hundred times to read as romantic setup, independent of whether anyone touches anyone.

So the fix wasn't "give them more history," it was "look at what kind of history you're actually writing." A few things helped once I started paying attention to that. I stopped isolating them as a pair. I put them in scenes with the rest of the crew regularly, so the story wasn't quietly implying these two are each other's whole world. I gave the protectiveness a two-way, low-stakes, and non-exclusive quality (she'd have hauled anyone off that deck plate, and the narration says so). And I let other characters treat their closeness as unremarkable, which does a surprising amount of work; if nobody in-universe reacts to two people being close the way you'd react to a couple, the reader tends to borrow that reaction. None of that touches the hug itself. Fix the trope shape and the hug barely has to work for its living at all.

What I actually did, in the end, was ugly but effective: I cut the noticing beat, cut three of the four lingering sentences, and gave the hug an explicit job (she'd just found out the drive core wasn't going to fail after all. It was a hug of relief, not romance). Read it again and it's just two exhausted friends being relieved together, which is what I wanted the whole time. The wedding, such as it never was, is officially called off.

I'd really want to use smells in my writing to have the full sensory arsenal, but it's so hard to describe something I've never felt. Any advice?

We always get told to be descriptive in our writing, but not having a full suite of the senses can often feel like a hindrance, but believe me, it doesn’t have to be. The thing about writing descriptively is that you’re not usually describing the actual thing. What you’re describing is a feeling that the thing evokes, and that’s a completely learnable skill.

Describing smells isn't really about scent

When you describe a smell to a reader, you’re not really asking them to understand the olfactory processes. What you’re actually asking them to do is to come on a journey with you that can take them through memory, mood, and association. The framing is what’s important, not the smell itself.

Our experience of smells is often incredibly subjective, so it would be impossible to create a universal constant when you describe the way something smells. But you can use the idea of the smell to evoke a sense of something else. If we take the smell of rain as an example; if you’re being direct, then this doesn’t have to be described. Everyone has their own experience of what it smells like, and just knowing that it’s what you mean is enough. No further description (or personal experience) is necessary. But if you’re talking about the scent of rain on context, then the smell could conjure anything from childhood memories to feelings of relief or dread, depending on your framing. We use senses to do emotional work in your narrative rather than purely sensory.

What this means is that your job isn't to reproduce an scent, it's to reproduce the effect it has on a character. Once you shift that focus there, you’ll soon realise that you don't need firsthand experience of the smell itself.

Borrow from other writers

You don't have to invent vocabulary from scratch in order to describe a scent. Other writers have spent a very long time doing that work for you, and you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to descriptions of senses.

Some scents have long-established descriptions attached to them, but there are more out-of-the-box ways you can draw inspiration too. Looking over wine tasting notes, perfume reviews, and food writing and be a treasure-trove of descriptions that, while not directly applicable, can show you how professionals build a smell profile from comparison.

Professional scent reviewers don’t use smell comparisons to actively try and build a scent profile. They combine other, more familiar things to make the unfamiliar feel familiar. A wine that someone describes as smelling like leather, smoke, green apple, and wet stone doesn’t literally smell like those things. Those items act almost like an analogy to how the smell should make you feel and what it should remind you of.

You can adopt these analogies in your own writing. A “sharp” smell versus a “soft” one would use different comparisons. A smell that's “green,” “warm,” or “metallic” would conjure different moods. You can borrow words from touch, taste, and even colour, and readers will accept them instantly because that's how we actually process scent language.

Lean on your other senses

This is probably the most useful shortcut available to you because senses never operate in isolation. Our senses rely on each other, which means you can often use descriptions borrowed from other senses to fill in the gaps in your own experiences.

Taste and smell overlap

Most of what we think we taste is actually smell. Your tongue can only detect sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savoury; everything else, the difference between a strawberry and a raspberry, coffee and tea etc, comes from your nose sensing molecules through the back of your throat as you chew and swallow. It's called retronasal olfaction, and it means taste and smell are basically the same neurological event, sorted into two labelled boxes we've been taught to keep separate.

Practically, if you can taste, you already have a functioning library of smell-adjacent sensations, even if you can't name individual smells in isolation. When you're stuck describing how something smells, think about tastes that you associate with it. For instance, a bakery might smell of yeast, butter, with a hint of sugar, or a fruit tea might smell like roses and honey.

Recruit texture and temperature too

Smell also borrows heavily from touch. A “sharp” smell and a “sharp” pain use the same word for a reason: both describe something sudden and piercing. A “heavy” smell, like old smoke in curtains, shares its emotional weight with something weighty or a heavy silence. Temperature works the same way; a “cold” smell (metal, rain, hospital corridors) versus a “warm” one (bread, skin, candle wax) gives your reader an instant emotional temperature to work with.

Describe the reaction, not just the sensation

When in doubt, write a character’s physical response to a smell. A character wrinkling their nose, stepping back, or feeling their stomach turn tells your reader that a smell is bad more vividly than any description. A character closing their eyes, breathing in slowly, or being flooded with a memory tells a reader that a smell is good (or at least meaningful) and does it with more narrative weight.

It’s ok to borrow when you write about something you haven't personally experienced, whether that's a setting, an era, or a sensation.  Focus on the universal, observable truth of how people respond, rather than the specifics you can't verify firsthand.

A few things to avoid

Don't reach for the same three smell words (musty, sweet, acrid) every time. If you're borrowing language, borrow a variety of it.

Don't over-explain a smell with a paragraph of analysis. One well-placed detail does more than five stacked together; this is as true for smell as it is for any other lyrical, sensory prose.

Any writer who has spend even a small amount of time doing any worldbuilding completely understands the trap of the dreaded infodump. When you've spent so long building out the intricacies of an entire setting, from its architecture to its politics, it can be so difficult not to want to share all of that detail with readers. Everything feels like it matters. If you know it, and developed it, it must be important, right?

Why infodumps happen

Infodumps are usually a sign that you care a lot about your story world. You're invested in it, and you want to share that with readers. You know so much more than what will fit on the page, which results in a real fear that if you don't explain it, the reader will be confused later, or won't appreciate how much thought went into it. That's not a bad thing in and of itself. It doesn't make you a bad writer, but it usually means that you need to be more thorough in editing.

For a reader to be immersed, they need to build an understanding of your world through the way the experience of it. Anything you learn in real life is because you've built up that knowledge over time. Sure, you can read a book about a topic, and you might remember some facts, but to really understand something you need to dip into it over and over again to really get to grips with its nuances. If worldbuilding is learning, then infodumping is a lecture. It will get the point across, but it won't make the information stick on its own.

Readers don't need to know everything. And they definitely don't need to know everything all at once. Knowing things as the writer can help you write a more compelling story, but not every detail that you know will be plot relevant. And sometimes it might not be plot relevant now, but might become so later. The instinct is to give all the available background up front so that a reader can just enjoy the story. But a slow release of information is part of enjoying a story.

Give the reader a reason to want the information

The fastest way to make backstory boring is to explain it before anyone's curious about it. The fastest way to make it interesting is to raise a question first and let the explanation answer something the reader already wants to know.

Instead of opening with the history of a decades-old feud between two houses, open with a scene where a character flinches at a name, or refuses to sit at a table with someone. You need to give readers a reason to be curious and to wonder why something is the case. The "why" is what makes them lean in, and it means when you do explain something, you're satisfying their curiosity instead of front-loading a lecture.

Spread it out

Lore doesn't need to arrive all at once. Backstory and context spread across many scenes do a lot more for immersion than a large dose dropped in one place.

This means resisting the urge to explain everything the moment it becomes relevant. If your magic system has a cost, you don't need to explain the full mechanics in the scene where it's first used. Show the cost happening. Let the reader see a character pay a price without fully understanding it, and fill in the "why" when it matters more.

A useful metaphor here is a mosaic. No single tile tells you the picture, but by the time you've stepped back and looked at several of them together, the image is clear. Readers piece the worldbuilding together the same way, and they tend to trust an author more when they're given credit for being able to do that.

Let dialogue and conflict shine

Straight narration explaining history reads as exposition no matter how well it's written. The same information delivered through people who disagree, resent each other, or are actively trying to hide something reads as story.

If two characters need to discuss a war that happened twenty years ago, don't have them recite it to each other like they're lecturing. And don't forget, a real person wouldn't explain something to someone who already knows it, so pay attention to how you provide that context. Instead, give them a reason to talk about it. Maybe one of them fought in it and the other only knows the official version. Let a back and forth reveal the facts, and let their emotions about the past tell you as much as the past itself does.

Conflict between characters can do a lot of heavy lifting, from advancing the current scene to revealing history at the same time. The result is that neither feels like a detour, and both build organically into the story structure.

Readers don't need hand holding

One of the harder things to accept as a writer is that readers can hold questions for a long time without needing them answered. In fact, a story that never leaves anything unexplained can start to feel over-managed, like you don't trust the audience to stay interested without spoonfeeding them additional details.

You don't need to explain the significance of a symbol the first time it appears. You don't need to clarify why a character reacted the way they did the moment they react. Some of your most satisfying reveals will depend on the reader having noticed something earlier without fully understanding it. The gap between noticing and understanding is often the key to pacing and narrative development.

When do you need to infodump?

Not every piece of lore can be discovered gradually, so some degree of exposition is always going to be necessary. Some information needs to be stated clearly, especially anything the reader needs to follow the plot's basic mechanics. When that's the case, a few things help it go down easier:

Anchor it to a character's point of view and their emotional stake in it, rather than presenting it as neutral fact.

Keep it to what's needed for this scene, not everything you know about the topic.

Place it during a quieter beat rather than in the middle of tension, so it doesn't stall pacing.

Cut it short before you think you need to. You can usually trim more than feels safe (editing is your best friend here).

Getting interior scenes just right is all about finding the balance between setting the mood, showing the unique personality of your story world, and keeping the plot moving. There are lots of ways you can use senses, action, and background to set a scene, all of which can work seamlessly with the type of story you want to tell. Here are some tips on how you can achieve that:

How does it look?

Lighting: does your space contain the soft glow of lamps, harsh fluorescent lights, or natural light?

Use colour and textures like peeling paint, plush velvet, or sleek marble.

Size and scale: is it claustrophobically small or impressively grand?

Architectural features: does the space have high ceilings, crown mouldings, or exposed beams?

Furnishings: are they modern, sparse, antique, or cluttered?

Style and decor: what style is represented, and how does it affect the atmosphere?

State of repair: is the space well-kept, neglected, or under renovation?

Perspective and layout: how do spaces flow into each other?

Unique design features: describe sculptural elements, or things that stand out.

Spatial relationships: describe how objects are arranged—what’s next to, across from, or underneath something else?

How does it sound?

Describe echoes in large spaces or the muffled quality of sound in carpeted or furnished rooms.

Note background noises; is there a persistent hum of an air conditioner, or the tick of a clock?

Describe the sound of footsteps; do they click, scuff, or are they inaudible?

Include voices; are they loud and echoing or soft and absorbed?

Is there music? Is it piped in, coming from a live source, or perhaps drifting in from outside?

Capture the sounds of activity; typing, machinery, kitchen noises, etc.

Describe natural sounds; birds outside the window, or the rustle of trees.

Consider sound dynamics; is the space acoustically lively or deadened?

Include unexpected noises that might be unique to the building.

Consider silence as a sound quality. What does the absence of noise convey?

How does it smell?

Identify cleaning products or air fresheners. Do they create a sterile or inviting smell?

Describe cooking smells if near a kitchen; can you identify specific foods?

Mention natural scents; does the room smell of wood, plants, or stone?

Are there musty or stale smells in less ventilated spaces?

Note the smell of new materials; fresh paint, new carpet, or upholstery.

Point out if there’s an absence of smell, which can be as notable as a powerful scent.

Consider personal scents; perfume, sweat, or the hint of someone’s presence.

Include scents from outside that find their way in; ocean air, city smells, etc.

Use metaphors and similes to relate unfamiliar smells to common experiences.

Describe intensity and layering of scents; is there a primary scent supported by subtler ones?

What can you do there?

Describe people’s actions; are they relaxing, working, hurried, or leisurely?

Does the space have a traditional use? What do people come there to do?

Note mechanical activity; elevators moving, printers printing, etc.

Include interactions; are people talking, arguing, or collaborating?

Mention solitary activities; someone reading, writing, or involved in a hobby.

Capture movements; are there servers bustling about, or a janitor sweeping?

Observe routines and rituals; opening blinds in the morning, locking doors at night.

Include energetic activities; perhaps children playing or a bustling trade floor.

Note restful moments; spaces where people come to unwind or reflect.

Describe cultural or community activities that might be unique to the space.

How is it decorated?

Describe the overall style; is it minimalist, baroque, industrial, or something else?

Note period influences; does the decor reflect a specific era or design movement?

Include colour schemes and how they play with or against each other.

Mention patterns; on wallpaper, upholstery, or tiles.

Describe textural contrasts; rough against smooth, shiny against matte.

Observe symmetry or asymmetry in design.

Note the presence of signature pieces; a chandelier, an antique desk, or a modern art installation.

Mention thematic elements; nautical, floral, astronomical, etc.

Describe homemade or bespoke items that add character.

Include repetitive elements; motifs that appear throughout the space.

What is its history?

Mention historical usage; was the building repurposed, and does it keep its original function?

Describe architectural time periods; identify features that pinpoint the era of construction.

Note changes over time; upgrades, downgrades, or restorations.

Include historical events that took place within or affected the building.

Mention local or regional history that influenced the building’s design or function.

Describe preservation efforts; are there plaques, restored areas, or visible signs of aging?

So much of what makes a plot interesting is character chemistry. And that goes for both positive and negative. Stories are all about characters: how they interact with each other and the world around them. Whether they’re friends, rivals, lovers, family, or enemies, their relationships need to be believable.

What is character chemistry?

Character chemistry is the intangible quality that makes a reader believe in a relationship that characters share. It’s what transforms names on a page into people who seem to know, understand, and affect each other and the world around them. Chemistry can exist between best friends, siblings, a mentor and student, or even enemies who have a grudging respect for one another, so don’t be afraid to explore these relationships beyond romance.

Generic interactions create generic relationships. When characters have unique ways of relating to each other, like their habits, rhythms, and interpersonal dynamics that are theirs alone, they’ll feel more real. Character chemistry comes down to knowing your characters well enough to know how they behave.

How do you write it?

Behaviour

One of the most effective ways to show chemistry is through the small, often unconscious behaviours that characters exhibit around each other. Things that might signal chemistry to a reader could be characters unconsciously mirroring each other’s actions. Something like picking up a drink at the same moment or shifting their stance at the same time.

In a relationship, chemistry will often show up as characters prioritising each other’s needs without making a big deal of it, or developing habits they only exhibit when they’re together. Perhaps one character only laughs a certain way around another, or they share inside jokes.

Vulnerability is also a very powerful way for behaviour to signal chemistry. Characters who can let their guard down around each other show a level of trust that reads as genuine intimacy. Over time, you might even have characters unintentionally adopt each other’s mannerisms or phrases as a subtle signal that they’ve become intertwined.

Meaningful interactions

Dialogue and shared scenes are where chemistry lives or dies. The secret ingredient is subtext. Characters with real chemistry rarely info-dump, because they’re usually in sync with the way they’re feeling (even if it isn’t conscious). For this reason, there’s is often something hiding just underneath the surface of their conversations that readers should be able to pick up through context clues rather than a character monologuing their feelings.

Dialogue that shows chemistry will often include playful banter and light teasing that reveals affection. But it also allows for moments of comfortable silence, because when you’re really in sync with someone, not every moment needs to be filled with words. When conflict happens between characters with powerful chemistry, it can be heated but should ultimately strengthen their relationship.

Body language

What characters do with their bodies often speaks louder than their words. Subtle touches like brushing hands and lingering glances can say a lot. Characters who lean towards each other while talking signal attraction or deep interest, and if their eyes light up or soften when they look at one another, or they instinctively position themselves between the other and a perceived threat, then you’re signalling a connection to your readers.

The right attitude

The attitudes that characters hold toward one another shape how readers perceive the relationship. Characters with strong chemistry show a unique respect toward each other that differs from how they treat others. They’re consistently patient with each other’s flaws and willing to compromise. They give each other the benefit of the doubt during misunderstandings and offer unconditional support during difficult times.

Genuine chemistry is often demonstrated by pride that is untainted by jealousy. Characters with chemistry applaud each other’s successes. They have faith in each other’s abilities and decisions, openly express admiration for one another’s talents, and maintain a positive outlook on the other’s intentions even when they make mistakes, and even if they don’t always like a decision or agree, they at least respect it.

How chemistry affects your story

Strong character chemistry creates ripple effects through a story. On the positive side, it can lead to stronger alliances, deep romantic subplots, and believable character development as characters influence each other. Moments of triumph become more powerful when achieved through combined strength.

However, chemistry can also drive conflict. Misunderstandings become more painful between characters who genuinely care for each other. Antagonists can exploit strong connections to create obstacles. Betrayals hit harder, sacrifices carry more weight, and tragic outcomes resonate when chemistry makes characters act irrationally for each other.

First, congratulations on identifying a specific pattern in your writing! Seeing those patterns is often the bit we struggle with most as writers, so the fact you’ve already identified it as a shortcoming means you’re looking at your work with a critical eye. And once you understand why you default to them, it becomes easier to find different ways of phrasing things.

So, what are participial phrases, anyway?

A participial phrase is a group of words beginning with a participle (a verb form ending in -ing, -en, or -ed) that acts as an adjective to modify a noun. Examples of participles might be “running,” “broken,” “sitting,” or “exhausted.” And a participial phrase might look like “Running through the park, she spotted her friend” or “Exhausted from the long journey, he collapsed on the couch.”

Participial phrases are useful for adding action or description to a sentence without starting a new clause. For example: “Running toward the station, Maria checked her watch.”

The phrase “running toward the station” tells us what Maria is doing while she performs an action, checking her watch.

Why do we overuse participial phrases?

Participial phrases feel efficient. They let us combine actions and descriptions into a single sentence, which is something we’re often taught as a good thing in writing class. Efficiency helps keep your prose tight. But just because you can combine information doesn’t mean you should.

Often, the impulse to cram everything into one sentence comes from a fear that shorter sentences are somehow less sophisticated. They’re not. Variety in sentence structure is what makes prose feel dynamic, and that includes the flow of how they start.

Practical techniques for adding variety

Separate your actions

Not every action needs to happen simultaneously. If two things are sequential, let them be sequential. Instead of “Grabbing her coat, she rushed out the door,” try: “She grabbed her coat and rushed out the door.”

Vary your sentence openers

If you’re starting multiple sentences with participial phrases, the repetition will become noticeable. Mix it up. Start with the subject; with a prepositional phrase; with dialogue. Your readers crave variety.

Is what your character doing truly simultaneous?

Participial phrases work best when they describe genuinely concurrent actions or states. “Smiling, she handed him the letter” works because smiling and handing can happen together. “Putting on her shoes, she made breakfast” doesn’t, because those are clearly separate activities.

Let some details go

Tragic backstories can create sympathy, explain motivation, and give characters depth, but there’s definitely a fine line between a backstory that readers will respond to and one that feels like a checklist of trauma dumping.

Ultimately, the key isn’t how much tragedy you include; it’s how that tragedy connects to who your character is now. A well-crafted backstory (especially a tragic one) isn’t about shock value. Instead, it should be about creating a basis for building on your character in the present.

Start with the present, not the past

Before you write a single tragic event into your character’s backstory, you need to understand who your character is now. What are their current fears? What kind of defence mechanisms do they have? Are there any contradictions in their personality?

Once you know who your character is, you can work backwards from there. If your character struggles to trust people, you can ask yourself what specific experience might have taught them that trust is dangerous. It doesn’t even have to be a series of events. It could be just one formative one.

Your character’s backstory should be the answer to questions raised by their behaviour in your plot, not a random collection of bad things you feel you need to include to justify it.

Make the tragedy specific

Vague trauma rarely lands with readers. But remember, specifics don’t necessarily equate to detail.

Someone having a vague “rough childhood” could mean anything. But saying that a character was abandoned by her mother at infancy and was raised by a neglectful father will have more impact. But knowing the details of that neglect also won’t add to a reader’s understanding unless plot relevant, so this is a great way to avoid trauma-dumping. You give enough details for the character’s current actions to have context, but not over share to the point of it becoming an act of voyeurism.

Once again, the rule of thumb is that if it’s plot relevant share it. If it isn’t, don’t.

Connect backstory to present behaviour

Every element of a tragic backstory should be directly relevant to your character’s current actions. If it doesn’t affect how they move through the story, then ask yourself whether it really needs to be included.

If we look at the character of Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, his backstory feeds into every part of his character through the present actions of the novel. The fact that he was born into poverty and lost Daisy because he wasn’t wealthy enough directly shapes every aspect of his behaviour throughout the novel.

F. Scott Fitzgerald doesn’t dump Gatsby’s backstory on us in chapter one. He shares it in fragments as the story progresses to contextualise the behaviours we’ve already seen Jay Gatsby display. By the time we understand his backstory, we already understand him as a character, making his backstory feel earned rather than manufactured.

The danger of tragic backstories

A lot of writers will equate a tragic backstory with character depth. And nothing could be further from the truth.

A tragic backstory doesn’t automatically make a character interesting. What makes a character interesting is how well-rounded and realistic they feel as a person. Every part of their backstory, the good and the bad, needs to feel genuine to the person they are, which means that you, as the writer need to know the really well.

Another pitfall with tragic backstories is the dreaded info dump. It can be hard to share information naturally, peppered through the story, and I think we can all relate to the feeling of just wanting to get the context out of the way so you can continue with the story you want to tell now. But too many flashbacks or moments of backstory exposition can grind your plot momentum to a halt. You want readers to feel immersed and your revelations to feel organic.

Unless it’s a fundamental part of your plot, it’s also important to avoid your characters feeling like passive agents in their own story. Even if they’re active in the present, it can be easy to have backstory feel like a series of events that happened to them, rather than something they were present in. Even in backstory, your characters should be active participants, making choices even if they are limited or flawed.

The “so what” test

After you’ve come up with a character backstory, ask yourself: so what? This keeps you accountable to your plot, to make sure that what you’re writing is plot relevant, and not simply tragedy for the sake of tragedy. Things to keep in mind might be:

Does this backstory element directly influence my character’s choices in the present story?

If I remove this backstory element completely, does anything change?

Does my reader need to know this, or just me?

Let’s look at The Lord of the Rings trilogy as an example. A big part of Aragorn’s backstory is that he is the heir of Isildur. He was raised in hiding among the elves, knowing that he carries the bloodline of a king who failed to destroy the Ring, ultimately spending decades as a wandering ranger rather than claiming his throne. So what?

Aragorn’s entire reluctance in the story to take the mantle of leader stems directly from Isildur’s failure. Without this backstory, Aragorn becomes a generic reluctant hero with no ties to the story world. Isildur’s failure is introduced to readers before it is directly story-relevant, but becomes meaningful when Aragorn’s family history is revealed, making it an essential element for readers to know.