Beneath the Edits

A truly haunting backstory isn’t just filler—it’s the invisible architecture of your story. It shapes your characters’ fears, regrets, and the choices they don’t even realise they’re making. When handled right, it turns ordinary scenes into ones steeped in tension, subtext, and emotional weight.

This week’s focus in our 100-Week Writers’ Workshop is “Haunted Backstories: Writing the Past That Shapes the Present.”

📄 The full 9-page PDF workshop—including deep-dive prompts, examples, and pro tips—is exclusive to Dark Descent subscribers via the ShadowSphere workshop space. 👉 https://www.darkholmepublishing.uk/group/writing-workshop/discussion

But everyone can join in the creative challenge:

🔹 Choose one way history clings to your character—an old secret, a vanished heirloom, a past injustice.

🔹 Write a 3–4 sentence snippet showing how that past bleeds into a current moment.

🔹 Let us know what you'd like feedback on: emotional resonance, sensory detail, or that eerie unresolved mystery.

📍Post your snippet below

Let’s sharpen each other’s shadows—and build stories that never quite let go. 🕯️