So I was thinking of having the conflict between two of my characters revolve around a Noodle Incident. Basically, one character will have a grudge against the other for something that happened years ago. I'm not going to go into detail about what happened, only hint at it and that this character is still mad at this. The implication will be that the other character played a cruel prank on them. Is it a good idea to leave a character's backstory up to the readers imagination? On the one hand leaving things to the imagination can be effective and might be better that explaining exactly what happened. On the other hand, a character that doesn't have a properly explained motivation might come off as flat.
So I was thinking of having the conflict between two of my characters revolve around a Noodle Incident. Basically, one character will have a grudge against the other for something that happened years ago. I'm not going to go into detail about what happened, only hint at it and that this character is still mad at this. The implication will be that the other character played a cruel prank on them. Is it a good idea to leave a character's backstory up to the readers imagination? On the one hand leaving things to the imagination can be effective and might be better that explaining exactly what happened. On the other hand, a character that doesn't have a properly explained motivation might come off as flat.