Tragic Romantic Backstories
Writing can be difficult, and one of the biggest challenges is establishing a backstory for your characters that gives a clear view of who they are and why they see the world the way they do. The trick is that you want this backstory to be emotionally compelling and understandable, but at the same time not too lengthy. After all, though most of us are messed up due to a series of small occurrences throughout the course of our lives, this doesn’t necessarily translate well into literature. As I get older I have even more of an appreciation of how difficult developing a backstory can be, but this still needs to be said – there are about 8 billion other ways to hurt someone in a relationship besides cheating on them. So even when your main character needs to have a past, one that makes a clear villain and explains hesitance in a relationship, there are other answers besides cheating.
I once posted a list of tragic romantic backstories for your main character, other than cheating, to my old tumblr. Until the day that I deleted my tubmlr it was in competition to be my most famous post. At the time, I wrote it specifically to address an overused plot point that I kept encountering in fanfiction. Now, I am bringing it back as a short, fun, piece of advice for you!
Here is a list of some possibilities that my 19-year-old-self created for you:
An ex-partner who constantly belittled your main character’s dreams
A ex-partner who made your main character feel like their romantic attention was either way too much (as in”you’re smothering me”“you’re so sappy it’s gross”) or not enough (“I care more about you” or “I never come first”)
A partner who flirted openly with others or – more broadly – actively did things to make your character insecure about the relationship
A partner who waited way too long to admit that their feelings were gone/weren’t real until your character was in too deep –> this can destroy someone’s ability to trust for years
A partner who lied about something very substantial about their relationship and did not own up until it was too late
If your main character has kids – a partner who claimed to be okay with children then met the child/children and realized it was a dealbreaker
If your main character has kids – an ex-partner who is taking advantage of your main character in some way because of the child
If your character’s new intended partner has kids – an ex-partner with a child who used/uses the child as emotional blackmail for your character (this happens way too often in real life and it can ruin people and cause serious issues)
Actually the above even if nobody in your new/central relationship has kids, if either main character has a bond still with an ex’s child and is unable to see that they are being manipulated by the child’s parent, whether the child is theirs or not
An ex-partner who manipulated your character all the time, enough to make your main character lastingly insecure or distrustful
An ex-partner who led your character on for a long time, breaking up with your main character and getting back together, not fixing issues in their relationship, and promising to change but not until your character finally got dumped (also works even if your main character did the dumping)
An ex-partner who disagreed with your main character over a big contentious issue such as religion or politics, and eventually decided the relationship could not survive (this is a valid reason to break up but can still be devastating if handled wrong and could still create a villain)
If your character has something they can’t change, across the board from not being able to have kids to herpes to dick/breast size to a mental or physical handicap that an ex-partner told your main character was a non-issue then cited as a reason for the breakup
Having a character get left at the altar and they have no reason why. Their former partner never gave your main character any closure and left your main character to sort out the resorting fallout by themselves. This also works even just for a broken off engagement. There doesn’t need to be cheating involved for this to be devastating.
Here are a few I’ve thought of after even more time to observe adult relationships:
An ex-partner who was close to your main character’s family and used that relationship to manipulate your main character
An ex-partner who literally robbed your main character
Never having had another partner at all, at an age where that is deemed to be societally strange (won’t necessarily create a villain, but can create tension)
Observing any of the above relationships play out between your main character’s parents (again might not create a villain but can create a strong backstory)
Even with my revised list included, I’m sure there are countless more examples. Still, here is a strong place to start and I hope this is genuinely helpful. When I first wrote this it’s because I was getting so tired of reading a great fic and then finding out a character had a past awful romantic history that boiled down to them getting cheated on. Being cheated on is horrible, and could completely change someone’s life. But it has also become a cliche, and as writers I know we’re better than that.
If you have any other examples/ideas, feel free to share them in the comments, or on my facebook or instagram!
