So I have been writing a story where a some terrible events happen to the citizens of Ponyville.

What happens is later the character that is slightly responsible for what happened appears and I want the audience to feel sad that the revelation of this characters past.

Any suggestions?

Well, it depends on how sad you want the audience to feel. Are we just talking about feeling sorry for them, or are we talking about crying our hearts out?

There are some cliches that can manipulate the heartstrings, but I don't know if you want to rely on them to get people to cry.

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The best way to make an audience feel sad for a character is to explore what it is that makes their story sad. This can be done any number of ways, but the importance is to make it tie into the story somehow and not just be an infodump.

Also, unless it's immediately relevant to the start of a story, avoid the reveal at the beginning. The importance is in the timing and the context and making sure that it's dumping the information. If possible, make it personal. Have the characters go through it with interaction between two characters. Or a journal. Don't go at it through narrative unless it's couched in terms of the character's perception, and even then, the best way to convey emotion is through interaction. The contrast and interplay between two characters seeing the events in two different ways gives depth to the emotion and makes it more likely that your audience will understand and connect with one, if not both or all of the characters involved.

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Regardless of what you're writing, your main focus should be making the audience care about the characters. Whether it's individual characters or an entire community, show what they are about-- who they are, what they like, what they do, and what they live for. Establish this before you have the incident happen. Do everything in your power to make the incident appear significant. Show how it really impacts the affected characters. With the strong character establishment behind it, you will be well on your way to getting the intended emotional response.

3821192 Well, a common tip is that you have to make the reader feel connected emotionally to the character, and then when you have them loving your character, you kill them off.

3821619 Well, I kind of do that. What happens is the character dies and then one of the other characters comes across the 1st character's "journal" which reveals more about that character.

3821192 I may not be an expert when it comes to Sad things (Actually, most of my fics have Sad themes ), but I can help out.

If you want to hit the audience with a sad environment or feeling, you have to figure out how much of sadness you want to provoke. Either it is apologetic sadness, or emotionally scarred sadness. Or one of those. Meh.

Anyways, not getting off track, the next thing should be searching for the kinds of events and situations that causes the required sadness to be set on motion (or activated in other words). Otherwise, you are just aiming randomly to God-knows-where.

However, this would mean that you should stick to the most realistic and plausible turn-events; trying to hit the reader's attention with situations they would probably feel if they were the protagonists (NO, SCREW THE SECOND PERSON THEORY ON THIS ONE).

And last, but not least, try to develop the character(s) in the most symphatic way possible, avoiding unrealistic events or personalities.

To resume the comment short, try to make the story as realistic as possible. Also, strike the reader's attention with placing situations that they can feel related to.

So, that would be my advice. Any more questions?

3821192 Coincidentally, I also have a story with a terrible event taking place in Ponyville in the writing. The explosion kills many citizens and the character is fully responsible for it.

I didn't give the character a sad past, which makes the event even more sad. Great prospects—anihilated.

If you present the character's past with a jurnal, you're disconnecting the reader from the character. You will have a harder time to make a reader sad by having them read a story about a story. I'd suggest against it, and just have a chronological order to the story. It will also make the ending easier and more fulfilling.

3821192 It depends...If you want them to cry their eyes out have the character tell them that he was abused,beat up,no one ever loved him,so he got his revenge so yeah..........

You're not giving us a lot to go on. When this character first appears, are they presented as a villain or just a secondary character who screwed up? You say "slightly responsible", so it's hard to tell. Are we meant to know that this character is responsible from the moment we meet them? How you deal with these questions is going to have a big effect on how sympathy plays out before the death.

A couple of general points for feelsy backstories, regardless:

First
Don't just throw misery at a character. Dead parents, dead friends, saw orphanage burn down, got survivor guilt, befriends dog that later dies, has clinical depression, ad nauseam. It's more effective to demonstrate the sort of character the person is is, show how they react to important events in their life (A couple of which can be sad, but certainly not all.) Make them an active participant in their life, not a passive receptacle for tragedy.

When I'm writing, I like to: One, have a character demonstrate compassion or honour in some degree, especially if they're otherwise portrayed as nasty; Two, have a character who is strong, has a sense of self-respect, fights for what they believe in, and can justify their actions.

Second
Don't tell your readers how to feel. If you present a sad situation, don't have everyone listening to it cry their eyes out. (Generally, having someone put on a brave face, for themselves or others, is much more effective.) Let the emotion spring from the situation from itself.

3822445 Sorry part of the reason I can't give away too many details is because doing so would spoil a far portion of the plot. All I can say is that there is a character who dies in an attempt to save some people but up until his "journal" (if you can call it that) is read nobody knows this. Nor do they know his past which is somewhat tragic itself.

So I guess I will address your points:

When I'm writing, I like to: One, have a character demonstrate compassion or honour in some degree, especially if they're otherwise portrayed as nasty; Two, have a character who is strong, has a sense of self-respect, fights for what they believe in, and can justify their actions.

Well, the character is kind of portrayed as being nasty (again I can't reveal this to you guys because it would spoil my story).

Don't tell your readers how to feel. If you present a sad situation, don't have everyone listening to it cry their eyes out. (Generally, having someone put on a brave face, for themselves or others, is much more effective.) Let the emotion spring from the situation from itself.

Yeah, I can agree with that.

Thanks you feedback has helped out a lot (so has everybody else feedback so please don't feel left out guys).

3822429 Well, it isn't quite like that. The presence of his group in Ponyville has a large impact on Equestria (in a bad way) but he had no intentions of causing that hardship and he steps up to the plate to set things right (which results in his death).