I've been thinking a lot lately, and I've been worried about a few things. As I've said before, my story will have a focus on a team of ten people (neglect the fact that the size will increase). I have one issue with this: origin. I pretty much have two questions.
Are flashbacks instead of giving the full background of each character initially a bad idea?
[hide]Each of my characters basically have a past that drive them to their actions and personality. Each of them, of course, have their own story, but some of them share situations.
For example: Askari and Victoria, two team members, both are married to each other. Their general tragedies are:
Askari (age 30): Helplessly watched his little brother (age 25) be killed.
Victoria (age 29): Forced to kill her parents. Also helplessly watched Askari's little brother die, whom she considered her best friend. Blames herself for all of it.
These will just be used as examples.
Now, at the start, I was considering writing each of the character's background story. For example: Askari and Victoria would be in the same background story considering that for 80% of each of their backstory, they are both present and together.
The backstories would pretty much work out like this:
-2 characters being stuck in the horrors of a war. (Askari and Victoria)
-3 characters working together to survive a post-disaster set city.
-2 characters facing the extinction of their species.
-1 character losing his love and his own life, but gaining amazing power.
The remaining two have secret backstories that are meant to actually be told in the plot of the major series in a series of flashbacks.
However, I've been thinking that maybe the series should start off with the characters being introduced as a newly formed team, and each character would have random flashbacks dealing with the past.
For example: Askari, when working alongside a young and naive member of the team, is reminded of his younger brother, hence a short flashback of Askari, Victoria, and Askari's brother together. Eventually, we'd learn of the brother's death.
Is this a bad idea? Would it be bad to have very brief flashbacks throughout the series in which we learn a little bit about each character and their past?
I know this sounds silly, but I've consistently been hearing that a story should always start with the origin of the character(s). On one side, I feel like four backstories might be too much of an origin to start the series, but on the other, I feel like I'm throwing these characters at people and saying, "Hey, relate to them by their bizarre personalities, and you'll get their motives sooner or later."
I'd have no problem writing the backstory at anytime. If my series were to become successful and people wanted me to write an actual detailed book of far more specific events of each character's past, I'd definately do it. But I just feel like starting the series off like that would be very awkward.
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Team Origin versus Team Introduction
[hide]I feel a bit stupid for asking this one, but I'm not to sure which of these options would be better to introduce the team.
A) The first time the team meets -> One character meets all nine other characters on a mission to study an ancient, lost tomb, which holds a treasure: a tome giving the one character ownage of the souls of all nine other characters. The nine characters, each possessing bizarre powers that scare modern society, are greeted with unrelenting fear, in which the owner of all nine souls chooses to protect them all.
B) The first real tight situation the team deals with after officially agreeing to become agents of the government -> One character does a press conference to ease the world's fear of these nine strange beings that have step foot on this Earth (giving a brief introduction to each character who is outside the press conference), but the conference is cut short by an attack. The team works together to take down a demonic chimera and his tamers. This is pretty much (A), only AFTER the leader has gotten much of the world to not fear the nine others.
I know it sounds weird. You dont' have to read the explanation, but again, I'm just worried about the concept of 'starting with the origin'. If I start from concept (b) and give a brief explanation of how the lead character found the other nine, would that piss people off? If I started with concept (a) and then trickled down through how the characters were treated, feared, but then formed into a team, would that be too boring?
A part of me says, "OBVIOUSLY (A)", but if I start off with that, would it be too boring for actual readers?
But if I go (B), I'd feel like I'd be writing one of those bullshit "WE'RE A TEAM FOR NO APPARENT REASON" comic books that you'd find in the Rob Liefeld pile.
Am I just being stupid?[/hide]