Turning Points: Put Your Characters In Reverse

I blame my wife for getting me hooked on This Is Us. It’s a show I didn’t want to like. But when I sat down one evening and watched it with her, it didn’t take long for me to become ensnared in the teary-eyed, non-linear saga of the Pearson family.

Like most dramas, the show has had many solid episodes, and some that bordered on formulaic or even weak. However, a recent installment that focused on the late Jack Pearson’s service in Vietnam—along with the backstory involving his abusive, alcoholic father and his brother, Nicky—may have been one of the finest hours of network television I’ve seen in quite some time.

And it included a line of dialog which writers everywhere should ponder when developing backstories for their characters.

It came in a scene where Nicky said to Jack,

“I wonder if everything would make more sense if you looked at things in reverse. Like if you started at the end and moved backward and tried to figure out how you got there.”

Of course, this is This Is Us’s primary conceit; something happens to a primary character and we learn in reverse why it happened and whether or how it’s related to Jack’s life and/or death and the lives of the “big three” siblings.

But I digress. After hearing Nicky’s statement, I turned to my wife and said, “Have you ever thought of that? About turning points in your life and how you might be different had things not happened when and how they did?”

She said no, admitting she thinks of her life as a straight line. Me? I look at life as having more curves than a winding mountain road. See, I have often pondered how my piddling life would have turned out thus far if I’d followed a different path, or made different choices, or if the stars had aligned differently. To wit:

• My mother died when I was 6 and I went to live with my grandmother and uncle.
• I didn’t go to college after high school; instead, I joined the Navy a year-and-a-half after I graduated.
• After completing my Navy Journalist school, I was assigned to a ship in Virginia…which was later decommissioned.
• I was then reassigned to a ship based in San Diego. There, I met the woman who would become my wife.
• I transferred to shore duty and almost stayed in the service, but decided it was time to get out and make my way in the real world. So, after leaving the Navy, I stayed in San Diego.
• I landed a job at a local newspaper and earned my bachelor’s degree.
• My wife and I moved to Las Vegas and I got a job at a PR agency.
• After four years, we moved to San Antonio when I was offered a position there.
• After three years, we returned to Las Vegas and I earned a master’s degree.

So, how different would this narrative have been if my mother not died? Well, chances are I’d have stayed in south-central Pennsylvania. Thus, I would not have met my wife, or the many friends and acquaintances I have now and had along the way, nor held the jobs I’ve had over the years. The snowball grows when I think about the opportunities I’ve had for travel in that time, the pets that have owned me, the school’s I’ve attended, ad infinitum.

Now, think about your own life and how you got to be where you are now. And then apply the reverse chronology principle to your main characters, or even secondary characters. Take time to flesh out their lives; what led them to pursue certain actions as children, or in high school, or in college, or in the military? What inspired them to make friends with some people but not others, to fall in love with a certain person, to move to a certain locale, or to take a particular job? Now, what is the cumulative effect on their present-day lives and interactions with others, and how might it influence their future?

Using reverse-chronology is a no brainer. Yet it’s also fun and a bit challenging, as it encourages you to keep your timelines straight (unlike This Is Us) so your narrative stays on its intended path. And it could even lend insight to your own life and the decisions you’ve made. Like why you became a writer in the first place.

But once you’ve done it, things will make more sense. And your characters will thank you.