Backstory and frontstory

 In the novel I'm rewriting one of my major tasks is to flesh out my main characters.  Back in 2009 when I wrote the original I knew nothing about their backgrounds.

My male main character didn't have any family background at all, so when I set out to create one I began with a blank canvas.  I decided that his older brother had wanted to be an artist, but their scientist parents didn't consider that to be a suitable career for their eldest son.  It's a common enough scenario in the present day, and I'm pretty sure that prejudice will extend into the future for some people.

What I didn't expect was my subconscious telling me that his brother became a drug addict because of the disapproval of his artist's abilities.  I also didn't expect to learn that the brother had eventually committed suicide.  I did have an original scene in the 2009 draft where my main character goes into a temple and is offered a drug to drink.  He doesn't like the idea, and refuses to drink it, but I had no rationale for why.

 Now, with the added backstory, this makes perfect sense.  I can have him being afraid of going into the temple and being drugged because of what happened to his brother.  The writing muses have seamlessly linked these things of which I had no knowledge together.

Then, in my female main character's timeline, a leader suicides when her competence is challenged.  She is accused of being unfit to rule, and takes her own life.  This also was in the original draft, and made perfect sense because of the trauma her daughter suffered, which the leader has never recovered from.  She did try to kill my main character, so her accusations about this woman are valid, but the outcome is totally unexpected.  This then feeds back into my male main character's backstory and gives him something else to deal with.

The way these different characters' backstories have suddenly become connected to their front stories has surprised me.  It was certainly not planned, and it was only when I sat down to write the individual scenes that I saw the connections between their past and present.

Sometimes, creativity moves in mysterious ways.