Got a character to rewrite their backstory 3 times and it killed the story dead

Honestly, I thought letting a character's past be flexible would add depth, but after the third revision they felt like a totally different person. The first version had them growing up on a fishing boat in Alaska, by the end they were a city kid from Phoenix. Anyone else found that sticking to the first idea actually works better?

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webb.stella9d ago

Start with the Alaska version next time and just let your character freeze to death before they can move to Phoenix. Three rewrites is basically admitting the original idea had enough plot holes to sink a fishing boat anyway. Honestly, sometimes the first spark works because your brain hasn't had time to overthink it into a tangled mess of contradictions.