Quotes About Backstory

#1. Think about how backstory fits the tale you're trying to tell... p.195

Jeff VanderMeer

#2. Treat backstory like a pungent spice. I say this to encourage you to picture a jalapeno pepper that can set your mouth on fire, every time you even think about adding backstory into your book.

What you need is subtlety.

Sandy Vaile

#3. There is no backstory in dream. Time slips all its handcuffs. So:

Gregory Maguire

#4. We see in the backstory of Acts 16 the beautiful reconciliation that the gospel achieves, not just of unholy individuals to a holy God but superficially incompatible people to each other! Jesus takes strangers and makes them a family.

Matt Chandler

#5. I have to assume that everybody interprets a piece of art they're exposed to as if it's already perfect in its wholeness, without knowing any backstory.

Damian Loeb

#6. With none of Vader's backstory available at the time, and having just invented the Noghri species for this story, I came up with the idea that Vader might have designed his mask to look like a stylized version of a Noghri face, the better to facilitate his command of the death commando squads.

Timothy Zahn

#7. I keep my backstory pretty private and personal.

Eva Mendes

#8. Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let's have no more back story!

Colm Toibin

#9. Usually when you're playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory.

Billy Bob Thornton

#10. I hope to land roles where my presence is carried on throughout the film. I'm looking forward to taking on a role with a complicated backstory and yet someone who refuses to lose sight of hope. I know that it will happen someday.

Nadine Velazquez

#11. I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.

Regina King

#12. My backstory is so tedious.

Ray Lamontagne

#13. Maybe your past isn't perfect. Maybe it was brutal. Maybe you were brutal. Maybe you've got more scars than you thought one skin could hold. You can't linger on those thoughts. You will drown in them. After all, it's only an interesting backstory if you can get past it.

Jessica Hagy

#14. As an actor, you can have your own backstory and prepare all the details that you need to know for your character.

Dwayne Johnson

#15. Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.

David Mamet

#16. When I develop a character, I usually start by creating a backstory with whatever information I have access to.

Daniella Alonso

#17. I'll go home and write my own backstory. It will be easier to remember.

Kasie West

#18. Horror movies in a sense are about the things that you cannot control, cannot define and the things that you are afraid of, and that is what the boogey man is. The boogey man doesn't have a backstory, he is just the thing you fear and I think it is important to celebrate that aspect of horror.

Larry Fessenden

#19. Hot dogs are like strippers, really. Nobody wants to know the backstory. We don't want to think about how they came to be in their present form of employment. "Well, when I was twelve, my stepfather.." "Not interested! Put some mustard on that.

Jim Gaffigan

#20. A little story is supported by a lot of untold backstory. What they get is more than what they see.

Karen Lord

#21. I just saw dialogue, in the audition, and had no backstory. I was like, "I'm just going to be myself because I have no idea who this is or where he's coming from." The typical questions that actors have to ask themselves were very hard. I had to imagine, a little bit, and just made it work.

Giles Matthey

#22. I love making the backstory for myself. I think it's important. Every part I play, I work on the backstory. If it's fully written out in the script, or there are intimations of it in the script, fine. If not, fine, no problem. I'll fill it in, or I'll create what it is.

Jeffrey DeMunn

#23. The beauty of 'The Walking Dead' and the beauty of being on a television show for a while, is that, it's your backstory, it's part of what you are, it's what you carry with you every day.

Laurie Holden

#24. Acting is kind of difficult to intellectualize - it's a far more visceral experience. It's really hard to be able to think about and then employ these kind of esoteric notions of this person's backstory and try to weave it in somehow. It's just kind of impossible.

Jesse Eisenberg

#25. I knew how to act and had studied acting and enjoyed it, but I'd never pushed myself to really perform as an actor, and create a role, and have the whole character's backstory.

Eli Roth

#26. You know you've spent a lot of time writing fiction when you meet a new person and instead of asking them about what they do, or where they're from, you ask "what's your backstory?

David Filmore

#27. For actors, you've gotta sometimes fill in your backstory.

Anna Gunn

#28. I find that a lot of my best character stuff and ideas come unwittingly from novels. In scripts, it's a lot about the outward signs of whatever's happening - you have the end result. Whereas in a novel you get a buildup of the whys and wherefores, and you're let into the backstory.

Alison Pill

#29. You wanna do a lot of backstory for your character - as an actor, you wanna research that. But on the show, it's fun to remain in that naive place as you go along, and be able to continue to discover things about your character as the writers come up with them.

Alison Brie

#30. trapped in his past, refusing to move forward. Unless this is a specific part of the character's arc, a character caught under this mountain of backstory can be painful to

Jordan McCollum

#31. I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

Sarah Gadon

#32. When you're a regular on a TV show, they give you more of a backstory, so with these recurring gigs, you have to make up your own backstory.

Alan Dale

#33. Choosing beauty over content (or choosing beauty as content) is always an act of sedition. If we accept the cant of official culture, we must believe that the beauty we steal from any man-made thing is stolen from its more virtuous and metaphysical backstory, wherein "real" beauty is said to reside.

Dave Hickey

#34. I want people to be more open and tolerant. I want them to know that behind every stranger is a backstory that is the common denominator - for we all share in the human experience: pain, sadness, grief, lack of love, and then, with hope and help, step by step achievements.

Oprah Winfrey

#35. I knew everything about her backstory. I skimmed through all the books and read through everything that happened between Sam (Chaske Spencer), Emily and Leah (Julia Jones), so by the time we started filming, I knew everything that had to do with my storyline.

Tinsel Korey

#36. It's really interesting working in television as opposed to the theater, where you know the arc of the character and you are able to create this whole backstory.

Yael Stone

#37. It's always so much fun to create backstory. Even if there are more clues in the script, you still always have to invent a lot for yourself. I think that comes naturally.

Jane Levy

#38. And this is the end of Elaine Stainless, it seems. I thought I was helping those I'd harmed before, somehow - that I was making amends. I still think that now, if I'm honest. It's not like there's anything else I can do. Your backstory always gets you in the end.

Jason Heller

#39. For me, as an actor, the most challenging thing is creating the character in the beginning because you have to write their backstory. The easy part about doing a sequel is that you've done the film, so you already know their backstory.

Thomas Ian Nicholas

#40. Show enough backstory to allow the reader to glean and make assumptions about what remains behind the curtain of time, yet continues to influence the character's worldview, attitudes, decisions, and actions.

Larry Brooks

#41. There's too much emphasis on backstory and personal stuff in music now - it's not going to make the music better if I hear that you did karate for the six months leading up to it.

Alex Scally

#42. And the Three Bears: No one ever questions why the Papa Bear and Mama Bear slept in separate beds. What was going on in that marriage? More backstory needed.

Jim Gaffigan

#43. I think the biggest mistake you can make in creator owned work is having info-dumps like, "Here's how this world works!" It's just like someone playing dungeon master and boring me with the backstory of their f***ing world. Just bring me into you story and get it cooking.

Rick Remender

#44. Backstory is like a flavour you can't quite pick, lurking in the layers of a curry. You know it's there and it enhances the flavour, but it's intangible and fleeting. Use it sparingly!

Sandy Vaile

#45. Other people's lives come at us without a backstory most of the time. The present is like that.

Tom Stoppard

#46. I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.

Steve Martin

#47. I tossed off a mention of the pirates early on. And they became integral to the backstory. Sometimes now I imagine them in the woods. They scare me. All men. Dirty and wearing red.

Edan Lepucki

#48. It's amazing how flexible the human mind is in terms of jumping into a backstory or an aside. Vonnegut is a great example - it's not a linear story by any means, but somehow your brain is keeping it moving in one direction even though the story is taking you in all these different directions.

Noah Hawley

#49. In books, often the bad guys have a story too, and sometimes it is just as tragic as the hero's.

Jennifer Megan Varnadore

#50. It's said that there's three sides to a story: yours, mine, and the truth. Check out God in Wingtip Shoes and The Prison Plumb Line to explore all three.

Yvonne J. Medley