Writing an Origin Story

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."


I like to think I'm good at writing character intros, backgrounds and fluff pieces. Honestly, one of the things I've had to put serious work into was writing character-relevant things that anyone can read. I'd often have a problem of being pretty proud of something but then being totally unable to show people without explaining context.

But I slowly started to realize other people have a more basic problem with this. I mean, nobody has to write an origin story or character intro. I do it because I like it. But I started to find that a lot of people want to but don't know how. They don't know how to start or what to write down, and putting down a dry account of someone's life or background doesn't always appeal. So today I'm going to outline the methods I use, why I use them, and offer plenty of examples. Those examples are going to be pastebin links to things I've written, so I apologize if this week's offering is way more reading than some.


The absolute first thing you need to do is to decide the relevant portions of the character's background. Just put them down in bullet points, step by step life events. Don't be fancy or lump things together. Grew up in military household. Went to Boot Camp. Drummed out for bad attitude. Put together what made this person who they are when the game begins. Some characters don't have many of these...or even any. You see that a lot in low level Dungeons and Dragons characters. That's okay. We're going to handle that later. With this basic info, we're going to decide the structure of what you're going to write.

There's two main ways to express a character. We can do a typical timeline-style background, or we can write prose, a fluff piece. I'll explain fluff in detail later. In general, it's an extremely useful tool to get people to understand what your character is like when their background isn't long enough for a timeline. Or, even if you don't want to write a timeline.

Look at your bullet points. We're judging them on two things: The number of them you have, and how exciting they are. Please note I'm not asking you to write exciting backgrounds. It's not necessary. We're just judging the background on how likely it is someone will want to read it. It's fine to play a farmboy(or girl) who picked up a sword to defend their homestead from goblins. It's a great background, but that's a one-line description. Try as you might, you won't expand that into a traditional timeline style story. If you have a ton of little bullet points, and some wild, interesting events in their lives, however...a timeline might even be for the best. Here, let's look at an example of a typical, "describe the life" background.


Shivani Sedana, Shadowrun 3rd Edition


Before we start, you'll notice the description section. This is just something I find goes hand in hand with timeline style stories. Prose sometimes needs them, but often not. Including this is quite important if your character has a strange or exotic look, but even someone who looks far more normal than Shivani has plenty of details to write down. Strongly consider doing a written description, someone's appearance or style of dress can say a lot about them.

A lot of shit happened in Shivani's life. That's obvious. It's also a lot of stuff that shapes who she is, I wouldn't feel right not expressing all the details. I could have written a story surrounding her feelings of cyberpsychosis and loss of identity. Something set in her time at the mental hospital. I could still do that, but it would be long. Including everything I feel is important would take up a lot of length in the story, in flashbacks or dialogue. It might feel shoehorned in to put in every detail I think is important. Her basic timeline is pretty interesting by itself, though, due to how many interesting things happen to her.

The notes on her mental state section is simply the fastest way to get the details of her mental state across. What I should do there is expand that into some sort of prose piece that explains how it feels better. That's what they're good at: expressing feeling.


You also see this style a lot in genres where the events in someone's life are far more important to the character, like a superhero game or Vampire: The Masquerade. Hell, most World of Darkness games. It's okay to write these. It's not lazy, and it's not a failure. You should write everything you want to write, even doing huge stories with your character if you want. However, if your primary concern is introducing your character like I said today, you should probably stick to a certain length. I wish I had something to tell you here about how long it should be, but it's also a question of pacing that's impossible to answer. Generally, everyone playing with you will want to read it. They'll get discouraged if it's very long. Remember, they're probably reading everyone's origin stories.

So I asked you to look at your plot points earlier. Say you don't really have any, or better: You have one really exciting one and a few boring ones. You can always express your character through a story. You can invent a situation that could have happened in their background and write it out like a story. Come up with friends, enemies or other people to bounce ideas and concepts off. A little encapsulated story can tell someone a lot about how someone is, maybe even more than just writing their background out. Here's our second example.


Natalie Cable, Shadowrun


So it's probably not a surprise that the main character is actually the driver in this story, Nat Cable. I have a few "boring" plot points I work into the story: She's the daughter of a famous, stunt driving Shadowrunner. She's a physad, and not a typical rigger. I also worked a ton of her personality into this post: She drives a hearse. She likes retro style. She likes Halloween iconography. She's casual, deadpan and calm. She likes insane stunts and making wild plans like the coffin. You learn a lot about Cable by reading this. This is all without Cable really having a single bullet point: Her background is completely uninteresting, so I invented a small story to convey her personality and other traits to the reader.

Rollo, Davis and Nova are just Shadowrunners I invented for this story. Basic Payday 2 style bank robbers. A story doesn't always need more people than just your character, but it can really help. It gives someone to have a reaction(like Rollo does when he sees the Hearse) to lampshade that something about your character isn't supposed to be taken very seriously. Or even when it's the opposite and something is meant to be very serious. It gives you someone to have dialogue with, either about your character or with them. Both are very useful tools, because you're looking for ways to include information or feeling in your story without repeating yourself a lot, using the same method over and over. A conversation about your character, for example, can be a really useful tool. However: the longer it goes, the more tired a reader is going to feel.

There's also the idea that a GM might actually really appreciate having NPCs they can call on and use in the game. They're characterized a bit in the story, to make them feel like real people, but that also means they're ready-made for a GM to use if he wants. If your GM would never in a million years do that? Then they're very ignore-able. Silver lining.


It doesn't have to be a story, though. What we're trying to do is convey who your character is, and the supposed medium of that can even be a trait in of itself. You can write up a police report, a corporate work profile, diary pages, anything that sounds like it's thematic to your character will help get that theme across. Our final example.


Icke, Pathfinder


The idea here is that Icke is a goblin who used some doomed explorer's journals to teach himself how to read. This is mostly meant to be amusing to get across that he's not a very serious character, but even with this silly little thing you learn a lot: He's pragmatic, he's interested in knowledge, he's not one for agonizing over what he feels are useless details. It also gets across the extremely thin background concept of Icke: He left home in search of adventure. An incredibly common background.

Also, remember what I said about NPCs? Lord Schtolteheim Reinbach the Third did, in fact, show up in the game. He made it home in one piece after all.


A final note would be to think about the feeling you want to convey. A timeline generally conveys far less emotion than a story does, and this is something you can use to your benefit. Shivani's had a shitty life, but I don't want people feeling sorry for her. Writing her story out as a timeline can really help with that. If I were to write a story, you'd see her suffering and empathize. Of course, that could always be what you wanted in the first place.

I hope this helped someone. You should write for your characters for two reasons. The first is that it can really help you get into their headspace, and even make the other players feel like they're ready for this person. The other is that the only way to get better at writing is to do it. If it's bad...well, it's just a character origin. There will be others!