THE IMPORTANCE OF BACKSTORY TO WRITING
Peter Taylor, Guest Author
22 September 2025
"The Importance of Backstory to Writing"
Guest Post from Author PETE TAYLOR
Some trail names are given to hikers by their fellow hikers. Trail names generally reflect a personal aspect of a hiker such as hair color, appearance, profession, and a myriad of other aspects of a person.
We always laugh about a guy we met with a trail name of “Ass Trumpet.” At one of the first town-stops along the trail he overdid the salad and fruit bar one night and for the rest of his time on the trail he was called “Ass Trumpet” after keeping his fellow hikers up all night with his ‘explosions.’
A trail name sticks with you. It sometimes pops up years after the end of a hike. For example, I was in a small outfitters shop in Luray, Virginia looking for a specific piece of hiking gear for my son’s Christmas present. A guy tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Hardcharger”?
I turned and sure enough it was “Red Dawn,” a young man I had hiked with back in Tennessee many years before. To this day I doubt if either of us remembers their real name, but we recognized each other and chatted for a while catching up on our hiking experiences. In another incident, in a shelter in Connecticut, I ran into a young woman who told us her trail name. I had seen that name in a trail log in one of the shelters in Virginia. She was a member of a group of young women who referred to themselves as the “Pack Divas.” I asked her what had happened to her group, and we had a wonderful time talking around the campfire.
Hiking serves as the backstory, the backbone so to speak, using the hike as an extension to support the central theme of my books Province Senior Intelligence Advisor and The Tuscarora Trail, part of my four-book series set during the Vietnam War. This backstory also serves as a metaphor for facing the challenges of life, overcoming obstacles, and learning to move on from adversity.
Besides the retelling of my Vietnam experiences, I added nuance to the events by relying on my own trail journals that I’ve kept for all of my hikes. Each night I’d sit and jot down notes about the day. When I got home, I’d get out maps and expand on the works by recording the daily mileages, proper geographical names, names of people and places we had encountered, and include photos that I had taken. I’d type them up into a web file and store them away.
Hardcharger & Johnny B on the Appalachian Trail
“Johnny B” and I have been hiking together for thirty years, and we’ve lived a number of adventures. My journals from those hikes make for great ‘backstory’ for my books.
The ‘backstory’ gave me a great opportunity to have a ‘vehicle’ to tell the various war stories as if I am talking to an audience rather than just relating the stories in machinegun fashion. In the final book of the series, The Tuscarora Trail, I was able to use the hiking backstory to finish the series as well as to weave a degree of closure into the stories. My intent was to have a ‘backstory’ that people could relate to.
So how does a writer convey those feelings; fear, loneliness, frustration, quick-learning, and still tell the story? Part of the ‘success’ is the backstory. Be it the Appalachian or Tuscarora Trails, or an innocent romance, backstory is important to my writing. It provides an additional vehicle to tell other parts of the events and to develop or maintain interest in the major theme of my books. The story-in-the-story is helpful because the ‘hero’ can show additional character dimensions that wouldn’t necessarily be observable in the standard telling of the tale; love in wartime, coming-of-age, adventurous hikes, feelings of grief and loss, and a myriad of other emotions that can be explored by the reader and the author alike all through backstory.
Have a good one,
~Pete
AUTHOR BIO PETE TAYLOR
Peter Taylor is an American author and Military Historian who served three combat tours in Vietnam 1969-1971 and 1972-1973. His works include a Civil War History of Harrison County, West Virginia, a novel that developed from that book The Most Hated Man in Clarksburg, and The Advisor Series, four novels about the military Advisory efforts in Vietnam.
*Thanks for your wisdom and your service, Pete. ~JEH
DISCLAIMER
This article may contain affiliate links which may result in the author receiving a commission when readers purchase items through the links.
You are receiving this message because you previously signed up for notifications or participated in a program/course with Joy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Leave a comment below.
ADVERTISEMENT
