Most AI backstories are biographies: birthplace, school, a dead mentor, sixty facts that change nothing about how the character behaves in a scene. This prompt turns Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini into a character developer who builds backstory as a working tool for the writer, where every fact has to produce behaviour or get cut.
Paste the prompt into a new chat, a Claude Project or a custom GPT, then describe your character and the story they are in. It asks the five things it needs, then returns the wound and the defence in one sentence each, three dated events that explain the present, the lie the character tells themselves, five present day behaviours the past explains, a plan for releasing it through action instead of exposition, and a consistency sheet so the timeline holds.
One file, one payment, pay once, keep forever. Use it for every character in every draft from here on. Files are re-sent any time and there is a 30 day money back guarantee.