[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4279
By J Seery
Many screenwriters resort to the backstory for inspiration. We want you to sketch in the backstory of a literary or screen figure with a possibly mysterious past (such as the Man With No Name, Robin Hood) to take him/her up to the moment when readers or viewers first encounter them.
Max 150 words by 13 June comp@newstatesman.co.uk

[Brian Allgar]

Many competition-setters resort to boring ideas for inspiration.

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by Brian Allgar

Many competition-setters resort to boring ideas for inspiration.

The idea doesn't seem intrinsically boring, but it hasn't stirred me yet.
All the characters I've thought of and know well enough seem to have a backstory already established.
I wonder if writing to reveal the alternative 'true' backstory to some supposedly well-known character would be accepted, and liven things up for us?

[Rob Stuart]

I've done Mr Punch, but don't think it good enough to share. James Bond? Vladimir and Estragon? Maybe even Godot himself, come to think of it...

[Peter Goulding]

Ah, come on. I know you could all write entertainingly about the inside of a ping pong ball if asked to do so.

When you have a professor who is as mad as a bag of badgers for a father, it is difficult to avoid his eccentricities rubbing off on you, and young Mary certainly was her father’s daughter. As a teenager, she would spend hours in her father’s laboratory bringing cartoon characters to life and trying various substances to help medicine descend more smoothly. His early death – plummeting from a London rooftop carrying only a black umbrella - inspired the young Mary to perfect the parasol-o-copter, though its commercial success was limited due to the variability of wind direction in these islands. She is also credited with discovering portals to other dimensions in pavement drawings and perfecting the art of levitation through telling bad jokes. However, a raunchy love affair with a fake Cockney caused her to give up her pursuit of science and become a nanny.

[Graham King]

‘I recall Mother’s tender care: my infancy alongside, suckling peacefully; weaned gradually to our family’s seafood diet (I adore calamari!)- supplemented rarely by an odd leg of other flesh. My schooling… long past!... was crucially formative– teaching me the ways and means, goods and ills, of this life. I have been a voyager since my youth, a wandering, solitary soul- though not through choice; my mother’s passing was bloodily traumatic. Our scattered kin have been persecuted for centuries by ruthless invaders of these realms. Bereft of gentling influence, scarred visibly and psychically, I may have become tougher, angrier, than nature intended. I go marked too by accident of birth: a peculiarity of pigmentation- not shameful to me!- but rendering me conspicuous. One foe particularly seeks my doom: regarding him, I neither expect nor intend mercy. Since our first tumultuous encounter, already he walks painfully the poorer for my wrath.’

[Moby Dick]

[Rob Stuart]

Very nice, Graham. Gives me an idea for one of the other comps...

[Douglas G. Brown]

I was always a big kid for my age, and I grew up to be the meanest, toughest sonofabitch in the whole town of Plumtree. I could whup twice my weight in bobcats, swaller a gallon of corn likker, and swim ‘cross the Mississippi River - all before breakfast.

Plus, I was some handy with a pick and shovel; so when I heard tell of this Yukon Gold Rush, there’d be no keeping me down here in Tennessee. I mean to say, if some sissy Scottish bank clerk could hack it up there, it would be a cakewalk for me.

Sure, it hardly ever gets below freezing hereabouts, and I’ve never seen snow deeper than my ankles; but, just what the Hell could ever go wrong?

(Sam McGee)