People will tell you that including a lot of backstory in your fiction is a bad idea (and yes, sometimes I’m one of those people). But the truth is, backstory is only a bad idea if it’s boring. If it’s juicy, no one cares that its events aren’t happening right now, in the present tense of the story.
Probably you’ve already got a fair amount of backstory for your main character(s), some of which is on the page and some of which is in your background-notes/research/random-thoughts file, whatever that might look like.
Today, write a piece of exciting, moving, strange, or otherwise powerful backstory for one or two of your secondary characters.
This may never make it into the finished draft of your novel or story. But see how it informs how you think about these characters as you move forward with your fiction.
Quote of the Day:
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
― John Steinbeck
Someone’s doing a really good job of handling this rabbit