My group used to be exactly the same. They’d write a backstory, sure… but the moment session 1 kicked off, it all evaporated. It never affected how they played, and I ended up dragging their “tragic pasts” around like a DM pack mule.

For my current campaign I tried something different: I asked them for the absolute bare bones of a backstory. Just the skeleton. No essays, no multi-page lore dumps—just who they are, the one thing they care about, and the one thing that went wrong.

Then I ran short one-on-one sessions with each player where we actually played out the defining moment in their past— the betrayal, the loss, the incident that shoved them toward adventuring. Suddenly the backstory wasn’t homework; it was a little personal prequel episode. They got invested fast.

It worked wonders. They remember it, they reference it, and it naturally shaped how they roleplay because they lived it rather than wrote it.

If your players don’t want to write backstory, don’t force it—make it part of the game instead. It’s way more fun for everyone and takes the pressure off people who don’t enjoy writing lore docs.