Louise Dean's Blog, page 4
August 20, 2022
Character Agency and Why It Matters
‘Character agency’ in fiction is used to describe the ability a character has to take action to affect the events of the story.
It’s often used in a negative sense. Rejection letters may refer to the ‘lack of agency’ of the main character as the reason a literary agent passes on a submission. It’s become quite a fashionable phrase to explain why a story’s just not working, so any writer aiming to get published will want to consider whether their main character is missing out on their full potential for ‘agency’.
Where does character agency go missing?
In an era concerned with power and abuse of power, having the capacity to make choices, affect events, and drive outcomes is a hot topic in the literary world. In the #MeToo era, and when women tend to read more than men, the issue of female agency matters. But sometimes, writers face the problem of a female main character who is denied agency.
In historical fiction, the female lead is often someone to whom things ‘happen’. Fantasy fiction faces a similar challenge. Due to the epic scale of the genre, characters of all genders often find themselves at the mercy of huge political and magical forces beyond any normal person’s control, and female characters seem to particularly suffer from being drowned under a wave of plot. Even in the ever-popular genres of psychological suspense and crime fiction, things happen to women more than women happen to things.
In an era concerned with power and abuse of power, having the capacity to make choices, affect events, and drive outcomes is a hot topic in the literary world.
The female lead – often described in the title as a ‘girl’ even when she is an adult – may be hapless or winsome, a victim who is disempowered whether through a sense of self-sacrifice and duty, romantic naivety, drink problems or memory loss. She’s often ‘The Girl Who’... looks out of windows, sits on trains, and narrates the exciting or gruesome events as they unfold without her involvement being very necessary.
Character agency in crime and suspense fiction
It’s arguable that regardless of gender, the lack of agency in the character who is the eyes of the reader, from whose point of view the story is told, is necessary to the mechanics of a suspense plot.
They act as our ‘avatar’. And fair enough! The problem of the lead character’s lack of agency in these genres is counterbalanced by the strong story driver of the whodunnit. That’s why the blending of historical fiction with the whodunnit is such a winning combination.
But it’s not just in these genres we see a lack of agency from our main character.
Character agency in Up Lit
It’s often the case with Up Lit that the story begins with the main character passive and unable to do much about the state they’re in.
We meet Ove in Fredrick Backman’s A Man Called Ove living a routine existence. He measures out his coffee the same way every day and is reduced to checking the door handle on his garage three times daily, after which he tours the guest parking area. Hardly an adventurous, proactive existence.
Similarly, in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, our heroine seems unable to change her life by her own means. The highlight of her working week is a meal deal on Friday.
It’s a hallmark of the genre that a single lonely soul is defeated and it takes a team to get them to be an active participant in their lifetime. The author of Up Lit counteracts the dead weight of this lack of character agency with a catalogue of idiosyncratic habits and irascible and eccentric tendencies. This allows us to see characters happening to things, albeit on a miniature scale. Eccentricity is, after all, the business of holding very different standards to others.
Their world is minor and their activity is reserved to the small world of things they can affect. Ove kicking inanimate objects is not, after all, nothing. When it comes to adding character agency, there’s a clue here for writers in every genre.
It’s a hallmark of the genre that a single lonely soul is defeated and it takes a team to get them to be an active participant in their lifetime.
What character agency is
Agency is the power or means or wherewithal to change things in your favour, or in the direction of your want. But not every story allows for it, and many good stories, tragedies and comedies don’t give character agency a leading role.
Think not just of female heroines, but men caught in difficult circumstances and rendered powerless: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Being There by Jerzy Kozinski, Less by Andrew Sean Greer.
What character agency is not
It’s not as simple as your main character ‘wanting something’. But it’s worth taking a moment to consider this.
Don’t dodge what your main character wants. Putting that in place from the start of your story will make your writing life so much easier.
When I teach our Advanced Writing Course group, we read out the briefest of storylines for our novels-in-progress. It’s arresting how those whose stories have a main character who actively wants something from the opening sentence have a self-propelled plot. It’s as if we storytelling animals hunger after the wants of our hero. Those stories simply roll off the tongue (and on to the page).
So don’t dodge what your main character wants. Putting that in place from the start of your story will make your writing life so much easier.
And of course, a main character can want something, but not have agency. Think of Elizabeth Bennet or Bridget Jones…
Character agency begins with want
Very often, the underdog is the main character of a story. The story begins with them powerless, apparently without agency. Many novels begin with a main character recognising they don’t have agency. (The current bestselling novel Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus begins with the main character Elizabeth Zott declaring her life is over…)
A story is articulated by two things: what the main character wants (first half) and what the main character needs (second half).
I’m going to give you an example, using one of the bestselling novels of all time with 12 million copies sold since 2018. This will show how you can add agency to characters who don’t appear to have any. Even if the character’s circumstances preclude it, even if their lack of agency is essential to the story (*spoiler alert*). I will show you why the story has been such a big hit, too.
In Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, our main character Kya is abandoned by her family one by one. The most painful loss is that of her mother, and it happens in the first chapter. A small child of five when the story begins, a poor ‘marsh dweller’, literally barefoot and hungry, and a girl child too, she is undeniably a main character without agency.
Every dog has its day when it’s a long story. At the outset, it’s not a question of power, either physical or social, but compulsion. Desire. Want.
A story is articulated by two things: what the main character wants (first half) and what the main character needs (second half).
The author supplies what they need rather than what they want as a way of resolving the problem of the story.
What they want is located in the old world; what they need can be found in the new world or secondary world to which we’re heading. Your main character either travels to a new world or changes their world to be one that meets their deeper needs.
Begin with what they want
Sometimes what a main character wants is to remedy or restore a loss or lack of something fundamental to human wellbeing. So in Where The Crawdads Sing, our story starts with Kya wanting her mother, then her father’s affection. By one-fifth (literally 20%) of the novel’s passing, the false hope of having a primary caregiver fails. (Writers on our creative writing courses will understand the significance of False Hope.)
With no one in her childhood to care for her, nor friends, by her teens she wants a boyfriend, husband or lover. If our hero can’t affect or change things, they need strong, successive, iterative wants.
One simple essential thing after another.
Think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs driving what characters want in the most classic form of storytelling, from folk and fairytale onwards through time. These fundamentals tell the reader our character is not greedy, but needy.
For drama on a grand scale, you may wish to underline the want – the yearning – by increasing its thrall or pall, making it loom larger and showing it as a longstanding want. You can show your readers how it’s essential to survival and shared by others, through the generations, or something that has been pledged or promised to the main character.
‘Want’ is the first commandment of storytelling
You shall want
You shall not receive
You will have a vision of what you want, you will see it before you, out of your grasp
You will dwell in a world that is lacking what you want
Your world of lack will get the better of you, again and again
You will move to get what you want
You will be in error
You will continue in error…
The devil of your want will be your master
Until you defeat the devil of your want to find what you need
Deprivation is the nursery of character agency
We are shown how challenging circumstances are mastered step by step with small acts of agency. In Where the Crawdads Sing, having nothing to eat, Kya learns to cook. Then she overcomes bullying at school, a nail through her foot, and her father’s violence, each time drawing strength from her small world, the marsh. Each obstacle is overcome.
Successive wants propel a story in which a character has no agency. As I show in the Advanced Writing Course, storytelling requires the magic trick of showing the main character and the reader the image of what they want, then taking it away, as frequently as possible. This makes a story page-turning.
Successive wants propel a story in which a character has no agency.
But wants can only take us so far (to the middle maybe, but possibly not beyond). Especially when lack of agency bites back…
We are shown that Kya does not possess a single thing which might endow her with the means to have friends or lovers; worse, she is ostracised and reviled as ‘the marsh girl’.
World-mastery on the small scale
However, as the story develops we are shown the antidote to lack of character agency in fiction: world-mastery. Kya is an expert on her world, the authority on a world in miniature.
World-mastery, being the keeper of the dolls’ house, knowing the smallest details of their setting, their cell or room (such as in Room by Emma Donoghue) confers agency on a disempowered or powerless ‘victim’. Inspired by the Fritzl tragedy, Room tells the story of Ma, who was abducted as a teenager and kept in a ‘room’ in a shed for 7 years. She’s become the ma of Jack, who’s now five years old and has experienced nothing but the room in which they’re kept.
In Where the Crawdads Sing, Kya’s mastery, knowledge, expertise and command of the world such as she has, though valueless to others, gives her the opportunity to affect the lives of others and reach a wider public. If a character cannot rule the big wide world, we are shown in fiction that agency begins in the crucible of the setting. Mastery of the crib.
Once skills have been acquired, some mastery or husbandry assumed by the main character, then they will have to face down their want. Often we see what they want turns on them in a surprising way. So it is that the man she wants turns on Kya from the midpoint and her romance with Chase undoes her. She becomes the quarry, hunted by the men of the area with only her mastery of her world, her deep knowledge of the marsh, keeping her free.
If a character cannot rule the big wide world, we are shown in fiction that agency begins in the crucible of the setting. Mastery of the crib.
Finally, we discover that what she needs is the world she mastered. In the end, her need to be in the world of nature that raised her and met her needs turns out to be more vital than what she wanted (the love and care of another human being).
The other way to character agency
But there’s another route to agency, setting aside ‘want’. It’s a jaw-droppingly scenic route, which begins with the cliffside view. Kick your story off with the main characters in one hell of a spot.
This is the reverse side of ‘want’. You’ve created a situation they want to get out of. It’s a fabulous way to get a story going, as it comes jam-packed with kinetic energy, motion and conflict. Our writing coach Jack Jordan wrote a blog on the use of the dilemma in fiction as a way to create tension.
Raymond Carver begins the story ‘Fever’, from his later collection Cathedral, with this opening:
Carlyle was in a spot.
—Raymond Carver, ‘Fever’
This is Raymond Carver, so we don’t get any hubris there with a stray adjective. A ‘spot’, a problem, a dilemma forces agency upon your protagonists and charges the story with tension.
I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it’s good for the circulation. There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion…
—Raymond Carver
When you kick off with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper. When you make things hard for your characters, you give them the gift of action and agency, regardless of whether they want to play or not.
Just add agency
So not all main characters have agency, and many of the all-time classics feature characters who don’t have agency at the outset; the drama turns on their growth or development to assume agency.
What contemporary publishers, literary agents and readers want is for character agency to be present within the novel over a sustained period. We may say that a tragedy is a story in which agency is present in the first half and lost in the second (from Macbeth to Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee). But for most fiction, from literary to adventure fiction and thrillers, we see the main character’s agency prevail during the second half.
To recap, what a main character wants can drive the story in the first half. If it’s historical fiction or a fantasy novel, or one in which your main character experiences circumstances which entirely preclude their agency, then you can consider the strategies we offer in the Advanced Writing Course:
Inner agency: a thrusting inner voice with wants and needs vocal in the internal narrative to which we’re privy (use very close third or first for narrative voice/perspective)
Borrowed agency: another character close by with a very driven agenda which sweeps them up (think Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice)
Supplied agency: give them a problem, raise the stakes and throw bigger rocks at them which means their very survival requires them to act, even if they’re passive before
Surrogate agency: the strategies of the disempowered, namely manipulating or affecting others, with words and the arts (even the dark arts!), to act for them
Cautionary notes
Please avoid melodrama, please I beg of you, you’re making me weep here, I am crying tears.
Melodrama is unmerited emotion. It cuts two ways, and applies both to your character and your reader. Our feeling for a character has to be earned and deserved. So you must allow us to feel they deserve our sympathy over time. That’s character-driven storytelling in a nutshell.
No, you may not have them crying on the first page. We just don’t care. The first principle of caring is knowing someone. Acquaint us, please, with who they are.
Our feeling for a character has to be earned and deserved. So you must allow us to feel they deserve our sympathy over time. That’s character-driven storytelling in a nutshell.
Next comes feeling they are deserving, by liking them. Sure, have them save the cat by all means. But showing them being reticent, modest, courageous, or hardworking are all good strategies that don’t require testing on animals.
Similarly, we will sympathise with what they want once we know and like them. Relax, writers. Let it grow.
Bluffer’s guide to storytelling and character agency
Show us what they want (now you see it, now you don’t). Or give them a problem.
Show us why they don’t have agency, or make the problem harder.
Show us what’s missing, what they want, or the problem again and again.
Send (more) adversity their way, and show us how they overcome adversity.
At the midpoint, swap one problem for another problem, or what they want for what they need.
If you do one thing today after reading this, check you know and we (your readers) know what your main character wants, or that there’s a problem in play that they have to resolve. Then as you write, consider the matter of your main character developing more agency. Now you’re telling a story.
Louise Dean
Founder at The Novelry
Louise Dean is the author of four novels and has been published by Penguin and Simon & Schuster among others.
Louise Dean has won the Betty Trask Prize and Le Prince Maurice Prize, been nominated for the Guardian First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award and the Booker Prize. Her books have been deemed the top books of their year by the Guardian, the Observer and Publishers Weekly. She was also a finalist for the Costa Coffee 2020 Short Story Award.
August 13, 2022
3 Character Development Exercises
So you’re writing a novel and you want to create compelling and believable characters. We’ve got just the thing! Here are three original and fun character development exercises created by The Novelry writing coach and expert story-weaver Mahsuda Snaith.
Mahsuda has written unforgettable characters in her novels The Things We Thought We Knew and How to Find Home, published by Penguin Random House, and she’s got plenty of experience in helping other writers forge their own.
The importance of believable characters
We’ve all been there. You love the sound of a novel’s premise, settle in for what you think will be a gripping read, but after a couple of chapters you put the book down with a feeling of… Meh. The novel is delivering on its epic/chilling/mystical promise and the writing is good. But there’s one thing you can’t get past: the characters are simply not believable.
Maybe they’re too passive, a watcher of events rather than an instigator. Maybe they’re so under-developed they feel more like cardboard cut-outs than fully dimensional people.
Having taught creative writing classes for 10 years (and a monthly creative writing class at The Novelry), I’ve come across many writers who struggle to create characters that pop off the page.
Here are 3 exercises I’ve used to help them get to know their characters and make them believable.
Character development exercises to observe characters in action
Years ago, when I was learning the craft of writing, I would sit in public spaces and people-watch. I needed to create characters who were distinct and different from each other, so I gave myself the task of seeing what was distinct and different about those around me.
I sat on park benches and in town hall squares, watching people walk past then noting down the most interesting details about them. I may have only seen a person for a few seconds, but I could always note down something distinctive – how quickly they were walking, how they dressed, their body language.
A person strolling by in a tailored suit and a briefcase with perfect posture told me something very different about their character than a person in the same tailored suit dashing by with a dozen papers in their hands, head down and shoulders hunched forward as they bumped clumsily into people along the way.
To help you see your characters with the same fresh eyes, as though they’d just walked by, try the following exercise.
A person strolling by in a tailored suit and a briefcase with perfect posture told me something very different about their character than a person in the same tailored suit dashing by with a dozen papers in their hands, head down and shoulders hunched forward as they bumped clumsily into people along the way.
Character development exercise 1: The Broken Glass
Imagine your character is standing at a bar. They accidentally knock a glass over so it tumbles to the ground and smashes into pieces. How do they react? Do they glance over their shoulder and get back to what they were doing? Do they hurriedly pick up the pieces, cutting their fingers in the process? Do they shout at someone for brushing past them, accusing them of making them break the glass?
Write down what happens as though it is a short scene, but only use observations. Initially, character development exercises can (and should!) deal with the surface level. When I people-watch, I rely solely on body language, physical appearance, actions and occasionally speech – so keep this in mind, making sure not to use any internal thoughts or feelings.
Initially, character development exercises can (and should!) deal with the surface level. When I people-watch, I rely solely on body language, physical appearance, actions and occasionally speech – so keep this in mind, making sure not to use any internal thoughts or feelings.
What have you learned about your character from their reaction? How would they react if what was at risk was bigger than a broken glass? Not only is this a good exercise in understanding your character better but, as a bonus, it’s also a great exercise in ‘show don’t tell’.
Character development exercises to get to know your characters
If you’ve been to a creative writing class that involves creating characters, you’ve probably been asked to write a list of biographical details about your protagonist. For example, their place of birth, number of siblings, hair colour. Once I was asked my character’s door number.
Now, this might seem like a good approach with solid, factual details about your character. But these kinds of exercises can leave a writer with a laundry list of facts that doesn’t help them get under the skin of their characters in the way a writer needs to.
Fortunately, I’ve found the following 10-minute exercise can save you from writing endless lists. It gets straight to the heart of who your characters are.
Character development exercise 2: The Bedroom Exercise
This one is fun, speedy and simple! Just put 10 minutes on a timer and write about the items in your protagonist’s bedroom, particularly focusing on the unusual.
This exercise gives an insight into the intimate life of your protagonist that they wouldn’t necessarily show to the rest of the world.
A desk in itself is not particularly telling, but a desk with a broken leg propped up by CDs gives away your character’s interests, personality and, in this case, perhaps even their age.
There may be moth holes in the curtains, cat posters on the wall or an immaculate display of dolls kept in their original boxes.
And if there’s little to nothing in your character’s room, this can tell us something too. An open suitcase with only a few items, a mattress on the floor with no bedframe, bare walls and windowsills, are all signs of what your character’s life is really like.
So you can see how this character exercise is so powerful: it gives an insight into the intimate life of your protagonist that they wouldn’t necessarily show to the rest of the world.
Once you’ve done this with your protagonist, try it out with other important characters. Seeing the differences between the main players’ bedrooms could be incredibly revealing and also highlight the conflicts and dynamics between characters in your novel.
Character development exercise 3: Interview your characters
You’ve observed your character from a distance and you’ve snooped in their bedrooms; now it’s time to get up close and personal.
There have been times when I’ve not been able to connect with a character. In those moments, I always find it helpful to ask them questions. Not about their hair colour or what their door number is, but the deep questions you would probably not even ask your closest friends. Questions you would probably not even ask yourself.
Character development questions
Put a timer on for 10 minutes and answer these questions for one of your characters. The timer is important because I don’t want you to ponder over the answers for too long but to write them intuitively. You may not think you know your characters very well, but it’s amazing what the subconscious reveals when you have the pressure of a timer.
Got your writing equipment ready? Let’s go.
Who is this? Keep it brief; name, age or whatever immediately comes to mind.
What do they carry?
Where do they go?
What are they afraid of?
What do they believe?
Who has hurt them?
What do they hope will happen?
What happens?
When you’ve finished answering these questions, let those answers sink in and think about how they might affect your novel. You might have new information about your characters that will shape their motivations and how they behave.
Out of all these questions, what your character fears can be the most revealing.
How does their fear stop them from getting what they want?
How can your character overcome their fear?
And if they can’t overcome it, how can their fear ruin everything they could possibly want?
The misconception
There’s often a misconception that you need likeable characters in a novel for your readers to invest in them. I’ve read many novels where the characters, including the main characters, are distinctly unlikeable and – in most cases – this is deliberate.
What is more important than likeability is believability. If you create a character that has nuance and layers, who is driven by their fears and obsessions, then readers will be far more invested in them than if they are picture-perfect cut-outs of what we think a hero looks like. For even more in-depth guidance on character development and creating complexity, have a look at our full guide.
So if you really want believable characters, observe, snoop and get deep into their psyche because, once you’ve connected with your characters, your readers will too.
Mahsuda leads a monthly ‘Let’s Play Writing Workshop’ at The Novelry with creative writing exercises covering a range of topics.
Mahsuda Snaith
Writing Coach at The Novelry
Mahsuda Snaith was an Observer New Face of Fiction in 2017. She has published two celebrated novels, The Things We Thought We Knew and How to Find Home, the second of which was a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book at Bedtime’. Mahsuda is especially interested in folklore and fairy tales, and representing voices from all backgrounds. If you’re writing contemporary upmarket women’s fiction, domestic fiction, or coming-of-age, you’ll love having Mahsuda as your writing coach. And if you’re excited about her guidance, join her monthly ‘Let’s Play Writing Workshop’ at The Novelry!
August 6, 2022
How to Write a Three-Dimensional Character Using Psychology with Dr Stephanie Carty
Nothing enlivens a story like a three-dimensional character, but creating one isn’t always easy. Dr Stephanie Carty, clinical psychologist and writer of fiction and non-fiction, joins us at The Novelry on August 22nd to talk to our members about the psychology of character and how to build a back story that feels real and authentic.
We asked Stephanie to share some insights into how to use psychology to create multi-layered, three-dimensional characters and really drill into a character’s inner workings.
So round up the heroes and villains from your work-in-progress and read on!
Writers share a lot with psychologists
Like psychologists, writers tend to be excellent observers of people. That is to say, not only do they notice how people act, but they are adept at guessing why.
When I first started teaching writers about the psychology of their characters, I found they intuitively made good guesses about how a particular character would behave. Their conjectures tended to be consistent with theory, even though they couldn’t quite describe how they’d come to this conclusion.
Like psychologists, writers tend to be excellent observers of people.
However, there would be certain elements of a character’s arc or behaviour that they were stuck with or knew didn’t fit, but they weren’t sure why. That’s why understanding psychological theory proved so valuable.
Why psychology is a great tool to write a three-dimensional character
The study of the human mind and behaviour is hugely useful for writers. It can provide those aha moments that move a stagnant plot, explain why two characters clash or connect, and make sense of self-defeating patterns.
Importantly, psychology also helps you to develop a realistic arc of change – a necessity for any three-dimensional character. It lets you dig into the hidden aspects of a character rather than remaining stuck at the surface level of behaviour they show to the world.
This allows you to write characters that are much more satisfying to read; real human complexity rings true and creates empathy or engagement, even when the reader is unaware that something has connected with them at an unconscious level.
The study of the human mind and behaviour is hugely useful for writers. It can provide those aha moments that move a stagnant plot, explain why two characters clash or connect, and make sense of self-defeating patterns.
Chances are you’re already interested in psychology. Now, let’s look at some specifics and how you can turn that understanding into actions for your writing.
Moving beyond straightforward cause and effect
One of the many challenges of the development of human nature is that you can’t equate an experience to an outcome.
It’s not as simple as asserting that a character’s lonely childhood will make them a loner in adulthood. It might, but it might also have the opposite effect. That character might cling to any sign of friendship, with a total disregard for boundaries.
To create a believable character, you need to dig deeper and uncover the patterns that were set up from those early experiences.
Attachment Theory and three-dimensional characters
A useful way to think about this comes from Attachment Theory. You can consider how your character’s early experiences formed their internal mental representations of themselves, others and the world. These carry into adulthood and colour how they act in your novel.
Early family experiences strongly influence the development of these internal beliefs:
‘I am…’
‘Other people are…’
‘The world is….’
Let’s take your lonely, isolated character and see how healthy and unhealthy components of an upbringing could affect their adult behaviours – and the trajectory of your novel.
Healthy view of the self, others and the world
She lived with loving parents on a remote island with no siblings. She’s given love, and she understands that although her parents are busy working, they always come home to her eventually. She’s even trusted to make small steps to independence, confident that her parents are nearby to help if needed.
What she learns is:
‘I am loved and capable’
‘Other people are doing their best’
‘The world is manageable even when things are tough’
So what does the grown-up version of this character do? She takes chances for growth, relates in a positive way with other characters, and tries new ways to solve things by trusting herself.
Unhealthy views of the self, others and the world
Now let’s change things. Your character’s parents on this remote island use substances to cope with the isolation. On good days, they scoop her up and play. The next day, they are semi-conscious and unavailable.
What she learns is:
‘I am not good enough’
‘Other people are unreliable’
‘The world is scary’
This character’s adult pattern is likely to be different. She probably tries to please other characters to keep their attention and prevent abandonment. She pushes down her own desires, feeling unworthy of them. She misses opportunities offered in the story as she’s too scared to take a chance.
And finally, what if this little girl was brought up by strict parents? They ignore normal childhood distress and show her how to ‘suck it up’. They expect her to look after herself while they work, sometimes leaving her alone for days while they are out fishing.
She learns:
‘I am fine by myself’
‘Other people are unnecessary’
‘The world is something I can control’
She grows up keeping her distance from others and tight control over what she does. Emotions don’t often rise to the surface, so others judge her to be cold and avoid her. She takes that as evidence that she doesn’t need them.
Mapping these patterns can make sense of the exasperating things some characters do that are not in their best interests!
The best part is you can work backwards. If you need your character to be clingy, you can create a background to fit. If you need them to be trusting when you start your story so that they get duped by your baddie, you can create that, and so on.
How a three-dimensional character handles adversity
Another useful pattern to consider if you want a three-dimensional character is what they do when facing adversity. Again, these patterns can start early in life.
Let’s stick with our girl isolated on the remote island. She has no siblings or friends.
What might she do to cope with that?
She may throw herself into her imagination, creating friends, stories, or bringing her toys to life. She can’t pack her bags and go to the mainland aged four, but she can escape in her own mind. (As an aside – this is common in writers’ histories, including my own!)
This can be a helpful way for children to cope with isolation, fear, boredom, health conditions and so on.
Different life stages, similar patterns
Now fast-forward to this character being nineteen and at university in Edinburgh with stressful exams and a relationship breakup.
What could the pattern of escaping into the mind look like at this age? It could take many forms, including:
Alcohol or marijuana
Reading and creative writing
Amateur dramatics
Inventing stories to tell her friends that give the impression she had a very different childhood
The point is, if you find a link between the type of behaviour exhibited under adversity, it can look very different in form, but it will feel coherent to the reader.
And now she’s forty, mother to two young children. What does she do? Now she’s eighty and in a care home, eyesight failing – what does she do?
All novels throw something difficult at the main character, so you always have a chance to think about what pattern you want to show, and then consider how to make it age-appropriate.
If you find a link between the type of behaviour exhibited under adversity, it can look very different in form, but it will feel coherent to the reader.
By the way, you don’t have to include anything about childhood in your novel. But if you know all this yourself, it will guide you to write believable, layered, three-dimensional characters.
Three-dimensional character arcs
This is perhaps the most important but most challenging area of applying psychology to characters – how to make your character’s arc of change authentic.
In short, we are resistant to change! Even when things are really awful, your character is likely to cling on to some degree to what is familiar.
If he is used to putting up armour against other people’s kindness in case they let him down, it feels scary to lower that armour and let someone in, no matter how lovely they are.
If he is used to using work success (or serial killing, or womanizing, or extreme sports, or being the person who helps everyone else) to feel good about himself, then no matter how much he may want to change his life for the better, there will be some internal resistance.
Change is threatening, so be careful with your arcs.
Character development is not so linear
The good news is that novels give plenty of room for back and forth. It’s far more believable to have your character make a small step in a new direction, then pull back, then try again, pull back, and so on. You can graph this out across your chapters to make sure that you have this pull-push dance.
One way to think of this is the pull between a yearning and a safety position:
‘I yearn for closeness, but it can lead to heartache.’
‘I yearn to be heard, but I might be mocked.’
‘I yearn for freedom, but I might end up alone.’
Want to add another layer? Go back to your ‘I am…’ statement in the first section:
‘I yearn for closeness, but I’m not good enough and other people are unreliable.’
‘I yearn to be heard, but others are unnecessary and I don’t need them.’
‘I yearn for freedom, but the world is a dangerous place.’
A three-dimensional character may not be aware of their complexity
My final point is that your character will often not be aware of all the above swirling around their head. If you’re writing in the first person, they are unlikely to think ‘she says she’s in love with me, but underneath I don’t feel good enough. It reminds me of Mum abandoning me. I’m going to push her away and move back to my remote island, thus punishing myself as an act of self-sabotage.’
Often, your characters tell themselves a different story: ‘I feel a stir of something towards her but the puffins on the island need my scientific knowledge right now. The ethical decision is to forfeit a relationship and go and live out there for three years.’
Work out the story that your character tells themselves in order to protect them from the thing they yearn for. Then show the reader what’s really going on underneath.
How? This one is a bit tricky.
Work out the story that your character tells themselves in order to protect them from the thing they yearn for. Then show the reader what’s really going on underneath.
How to show (not tell) your characters’ psychologies
Real emotions and yearnings have a way of leaking out. They come out in momentary physiological reactions (e.g. flushed face), slips of the tongue, making jokes, projecting the desire/emotion on to another character (‘my best friend is totally obsessed with her’).
As long as you find ways to show the push/pull we discussed earlier, trust the reader to get it. After all, they almost certainly share these patterns, and will recognise them (even if subconsciously).
Take your time building three-dimensional characters
I hope these ideas have set your mind whirring.
I’d recommend you work through them for just one character at first. You’ll soon find that it’s a good way to differentiate characters from one another.
And you’re in a very strong position: if something doesn’t add up, you get to change either the past history or the current behaviour pattern.
Be playful and enjoy it. I’m certain you can create more layers in your characters over time if you let the ideas seep into your plotting and editing.
Members of The Novelry will enjoy a live Q&A with Stephanie on the 22nd August.
Dr Stephanie Carty
Clinical Psychologist and Author
Dr Stephanie Carty is a published writer, as well as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and NHS Head of Psychology in the UK. Her fiction has been shortlisted for many competitions, and her writers’ craft book, Inside Fictional Minds: Tips from Psychology for Creating Characters, has been an invaluable source of inspiration and education, as have the creative writing courses she teaches.
July 30, 2022
Character Development in Novels
Character development is essential to any great novel. In any genre of fiction – from action studded with high-speed chases to philosophical contemplations of the human condition – characters and their goals, motivations and behaviours drive the story.
Character development can also be some of the most time-consuming work you’ll do in fiction writing. For many, it becomes as emotionally demanding as laborious. Do you really need to know their entire lifeline, with dates, events and bank account details to create well developed characters?
Fear not! We’re here to help with this comprehensive guide to character development in fiction. And if you’re serious about learning how to depict compelling characters, you’ll find plenty of further reading.
Contents
What is character development?
Why is character development important?
Getting to know your characters
Introducing characters to readers
Character development for villains
Growth and transformation
Top tips
Further reading
1. What is character development?
There are two aspects to character development:
The process by which you create characters you’ll write about
The way a character changes through the course of a novel
The first relates to the writer’s experience of the characters, and the second relates to the reader’s.
Developing your characters as their author
A well-developed character needs real and recognisable traits. You’ll want to know some stand-out details about their personalities, their mannerisms, their hopes and fears, their likes, dislikes, appearance and backstory. They’ll also need compelling goals and motivations (but more on that later!). Character development is the process by which you conjure up these things.
Some writers envision their fictional characters – including secondary characters – as real-life people before they start writing their novels in earnest.
But don’t worry if you can’t see yours completely clearly yet. Many writers find their characters come to life during their writing, across many drafts. We’re here to help you breathe life into them.
The character arc
For your overall character arc to be believable and engaging, the work you’ve done behind the scenes is crucial: just think of Hemingway’s iceberg principle.
The character’s past, as well as the character’s flaws and strengths, will determine every decision they make and the transformation that character undergoes.
Most importantly, what the character ‘wants’ drives the story and their character arc, and it’s essential you nail this before you put pen to paper or start to develop your story.
What the character ‘wants’ drives the story and their character arc, and it’s essential you nail this before you put pen to paper.
Think of the character arc as your character’s progress from what they want to what they need. The author’s job is like that of a judge, delivering justice in the storytelling. They take the main player on a journey, giving them what they need to live their life.
2. Why is character development important?
Identifying with characters, recognising people we know in them, feeling empathy or frustration or even disgust – these all make a book difficult to put down, and impossible to forget.
Reading – and writing – require use of our sympathy and compassion. Why? Well, one of the joys of both is the chance to live another life. So you need to locate us inside the body of a person not just for one moment in time, but over the course of the story. The process of character development, or change, helps us literally walk in their shoes and feel we’re an active participant. It’s a key element of the magic trickery of fiction. We lose ourselves, temporarily, to live this other life.
And remember: your genre needn’t preclude you from taking a heavily character-driven approach and incorporating plenty of character development.
Just look at some of our favourite films: not only dramas, but comedies, fantasies and even sci-fi often have complex characters and character arcs at their heart. So look at some of the best character-driven films for inspiration on how to develop characters!
Do we need to develop characters?
If you’re wondering if character development is really worthwhile, know that world-famous authors can’t do without it.
Take Paula Hawkins, who has written complex page-turning plots like that of The Girl on the Train – the New York Times bestseller which sold over 23 million copies. She maintains that characters are the crux of her works.
A cracking plot is important, particularly in a crime novel, but it is not what tends to make a novel addictive. For unputdownability, you’re better off considering structure and character.
—Paula Hawkins
At the end of the day, character and plot can’t be neatly separated. Isn’t a person – at least in part – a product of what happens to them? Don’t a character’s circumstances dictate many of their actions?
And unless readers understand your character’s history, values, fears, desires, strengths and weaknesses, the events of your plot risk feeling arbitrary.
Ultimately, these aspects of character development are what set the stakes of your novel. And no novel is readable (or even writable) without stakes.
Character development makes writing easier
That’s the key takeaway: understanding your characters will almost always make the writing process easier in some sense. You have ‘people’ to lead and guide you, and a set of traits to which you can stay true!
Bestselling author AJ Pearce told us the same thing when she shared her own tips on creating believable characters:
The better I know my characters, the more real they feel and the easier it is to write for them. Dialogue flows more naturally, their actions feel authentic and push the story forward, and if the storyline does get sticky I know it’s because I’m not writing something good enough for my characters to want to engage.
—AJ Pearce
3. Getting to know your main character and secondary characters
Now that we’ve settled how important fully-formed characters are, let’s think about how you can get up close and personal with yours.
Take your time here – for many authors, it’s one of the most enjoyable steps.
Writing characters and getting to know them is one of my favourite parts of working on a novel. It’s where I start, where I go back to if I get stuck, and where I know I can have fun.
—AJ Pearce
It might all sound abstract, much less tangible than a character development worksheet. But it’s indispensable, and usually very fun!
To ground your exploration and get you started, here are some tips and insights on getting acquainted.
Look to character archetypes
It might sound counterintuitive to the writer keen to create unique and memorable characters, but archetypes can spark inspiration.
Think about how a character does or doesn’t reflect different archetypes’ traits, and whether they serve similar functions. After all, these are the elemental building blocks of some of mankind’s most enduring stories!
Some archetypes you might consider include:
The ancients’ archetypes
Stock characters from commedia dell’arte
Literary archetypes
Television tropes
Psychoanalytic archetypes
We consider fictional archetypes and relationships between them more fully in this blog post on character mapping.
Spend time with your characters
How do you find out what matters to your characters? Well, just as with anyone else: by spending time with them.
Don’t forget your secondary characters either. Remember, they’re there to serve your story, and the character development of your main characters. Their role is to show the protagonist the pitfalls of the path they’re on, or the extremes of the sort of person they don’t really want to be. The secondary character is an agent provocateur.
To understand what makes characters tick, what they’re scared of, what they hope for, you’re going to have to take your time.
That doesn’t mean you spend hours at your desk having internal (or external!) conversations with your cast. Pearce recommends using your routine to your advantage. Doing the housework, commuting, walking your dog, taking a shower… Explore your characters in these loose moments.
You can even bring them with you for these tasks!
Imagine them in each situation. How do they behave at the supermarket? Did they bring a list? Did they stick to it? Do they opt for self-check-out or human interaction? How did they travel to the shop? Would they change their plan to get home if it started raining?
Think about what you’d notice about real people – their quirks and mannerisms. It can make a compelling character of a previously flat one. Keep it real, too. In real life, we having pressing concerns, debt and borrowing, health concerns, worries about members of our family. What’s on your character’s mind when they’re quiet?
Once you know them well, you can stir the plot, and introduce them to each other! How do they get on? What do they have in common? Where (and how) do they clash?
A top tip when creating minor characters is to think of their driving motivation, their obsessive wants and desires. It’s surprising – perhaps not in a good way – when you listen to people speak in real life, how often they’re pushing the same agenda! By showing the minor character’s hand in almost every interaction, you can bring them to life.
When readers ask me about my characters, I tend to reply as if they are real people. And when they softly chuckle and say, ‘you speak about them as if they’re real,’ I softly chuckle back and say, ‘that’s because they are’. And then we softly chuckle to each other until the chuckling becomes uncomfortable and we wander away in separate directions.
—Kendare Blake
Explore their backstories
To get a strong sense of a character’s thoughts, dreams, terrors and personality, you’ll need to know their personal history.
Again, take the pressure off and have fun. Bestselling author AJ Pearce doesn’t even write it down; it needn’t be formal or taxing. No character development worksheet in sight for her!
If you have a notion of what a character will do, think about things like:
Why they’re driven to do it
Why they’re capable of doing it (or think they are)
What they could give up to do it
Take, for example, Pearce’s heroine in Dear Mrs Bird, the first book in The Emmy Lake Chronicles. Pearce needed to know why she’s compelled to support women who send letters to her magazine. Crucially, Pearce also explored why she considered herself qualified to help.
Pearce dug into her character’s family history to find where she got her convictions and confidence. That way, not only did Pearce understand that character better, she also gained new ones! And the best part is, they all felt like real characters.
Start in the middle for intensive character development
If going back to the beginning hasn’t satisfied your desire to comprehend your character, take them to the middle of your story. Starting at the midpoint is a great way to see your character change, and how and why it happens.
Think of it as the point of no return. It’s time for crisis, followed (probably) by some kind of enlightenment. Your protagonist starts to understand the character growth necessary to reverse their misfortune or pursue their goal.
It’s probably also your main character’s lowest point, and therefore a way to see another, deeper side of them.
The midpoint is the point of no return. It’s time for crisis, followed by enlightenment. Your protagonist starts to understand the character growth necessary to reverse their misfortune or pursue their goal.
If you want to learn more about how the midpoint furthers your quest for character growth (and more), the idea is developed in John Yorke’s Into The Woods.
Researching your characters
While play and exploration are fundamental (and fun!), many writers also turn to more traditional research to better understand characters’ circumstances.
Don’t panic! If scrolling wordy websites or digging through dusty encyclopaedias isn’t your thing, there are lots of other avenues.
For example, Mike Gayle used all kinds of non-conventional resources from his own life when researching characters for All the Lonely People.
You could consult:
Friends and family
Activist groups or charities
YouTube
Online forums
Podcasts
Memoirs and diaries
Personal essays
Documentaries
The great thing about these more experientially-focused sources is that they can reveal intricacies that bring stories to life.
Readers are (generally) not too bothered about exact dates, statistics, and other facts and figures from textbooks. But if one character makes relevant pop culture references, if they buy a certain brand of beans, if they recognise a distinctive smell… These make your setting and characters sparkle. Take a look in their imaginary refrigerator. (Think of a friend's refrigerator. What does it say about them and their life?) How about your character's bathroom cabinet? Snoop around your character's hidden life.
A top tip from our founder is to look for old editorial photos of the homes of famous people and look at what they have in their living rooms in the photo features. You can do the same with TV documentaries. Locate your character in time and place then hang out through media in places that fit the bill.
Writing representatively
One thing to remember when researching experiences different from your own (particularly in areas like culture, ethnicity, race, religion, ability, mental health, sexuality and gender identity) is representation and appropriation – we recommend reading this blog post on the topic.
The publishing world is thankfully acknowledging the #ownvoices movement, and uplifting writing by authors from historically marginalised communities and identities. We’re all tired of our bookshelves being taken up by white, cis, straight, neurotypical and/or able-bodied authors who might accidentally perpetuate stereotypes in their writing.
More often than not, these writers don’t intend harm, and aren’t writing stories fuelled by prejudice or vindictiveness.
But intention doesn’t always determine impact. Inevitably, if you don’t understand a community or identity from the inside, you’re more likely to resort to stereotypes. If the only published stories about certain cultures, societies or identities are by writers from outside those identities, then those stories are more likely to be inaccurate, and in some instances, harmful.
Essentially, you can write with the best intentions, and still cause harm. That’s what we want to help you avoid!
How to avoid appropriation in writing
It’s important and worthwhile to reflect on whether the story you’re burning to write is yours to tell.
Granted, a novel is not an autobiography, and you’re not the main character, but prose fiction does allow you to use your experiences and add authenticity.
This isn’t to say we must only write from our own lived experiences. Creativity should be untethered and free. There are so many aspects of existence to explore, the opportunities are abundant.
But when it comes to writing from the perspectives, lived experiences, and history of marginalised communities and identities we need to ask ourselves some important questions:
Why do I want to tell this story?
Am I the right person to tell this story? Is this my story to tell?
What can I bring to this subject matter that no one else can?
What might the impact be of me writing this story? What could the potential impact be on the community I want to write about?
Is writing a story that isn’t part of my personal experience or history possibly going to take a marginalised author’s opportunity to share their perspective on their experience and history?
Could my lack of lived experience and knowledge in this subject cause potential harm, however good my intentions might be?
Do I have connections to this community or identity? Can I engage with that community to make sure my work is respectful and rings true?
If after asking yourself these questions you want to continue writing your story from a marginalised perspective distant from your own, you must acknowledge the responsibility you’ve taken on to tell your story right: with empathy, respect, sensitivity and oodles of research.
Writing about people who are not like you
Of course, there are also secondary characters to consider, even where you don’t take on somebody else’s perspective. In most novels, we don’t want all the characters to be rooted in identical cultural and social experiences.
When you do include characters whose identities are different from yours, whether they’re primary or secondary characters, keep these tips in mind:
Your characters’ experiences don’t need to be determined by or even focused on their gender, sexuality, religion, culture, or any other aspect of their identity. You can have a gay character whose sexuality does not affect the plot. You can show someone’s mental illness without making them tragic.
Hire a sensitivity reader (and we do mean hire: always pay your sensitivity readers!).
Writing about real people
Character research can be especially imperative when depicting people who do or have lived in the real world.
We offer in-depth advice on writing about real people, but essentially: don’t say anything defamatory, don’t make false claims, and treat people’s feelings, legacies and families with respect.
If in doubt, speak to your literary agent, your publisher or your writing coach or editor at The Novelry.
4. Introducing your characters
Now that you know your characters inside out, it’s time to think about how and when you’ll let your reader meet them.
Tell us their goal, hint at their motivation
What do they want? A story starts here. Great character development – indeed the plot of almost all novels – hinges on characters’ goals and motivations.
It’s important to remember the distinction. In simple terms, goals are external actions, while motivations are internal needs.
It’s often a good idea to treat them a little differently within your story.
Here’s one of many classic character development examples to illustrate the point:
Harry Potter’s goal is to vanquish Lord Voldemort
Harry’s motivation is arguably to maintain the ‘goodness’ he believes in; to preserve the wizarding world; to protect those he cares about; to honour or avenge his parents. Probably a combination of all these.
We’re told time and again that Harry’s goal is to vanquish Lord Voldemort. But are we ever expressly told why he’s so determined to do so? Or does J.K. Rowling allow readers to make their own assumptions and deductions?
Allowing us to ruminate on what drives characters often makes novels engaging and characters memorable.
Good character development needs careful disclosure of their strengths
Just like in the real world, fictional characters have strengths and weaknesses. How you depict them is critical. As with all aspects of fiction, you never want to spoon-feed your reader.
Be sparing with the strengths you grant each character. Of course, your protagonist will need a skill, ability or quality that allows them to vanquish whatever antagonist you’re throwing at them. Their triumph (or even their attempt) has to be believable.
And when it comes to letting us know about these strengths, go slow. Illustrate them through action, where your plot calls for it. Returning to our classic example, think of Harry Potter’s defiance and witty teasing of the Dursleys as a quiet precursor to the bravery and self-belief that will let him, ultimately, (spoiler alert!) beat Voldemort.
Characters’ weaknesses are integral to their development
As well as approaching them gently, counterbalance characters’ strengths with negative traits.
Some of these may even be born of the extremes of their strengths: every virtue has its equal and opposite failing. Meticulous planning sometimes becomes paralysing. Incredible valour could bring recklessness or thoughtlessness. Generosity in its extreme can lead to crippling martyrdom or destitution.
Aside from the shadow-side of their virtues, your characters will need some kind of lack, deficiency or failing. After all, your protagonist’s weaknesses are what create tension in your stories. Sure, they have characteristics that make them capable of battling through your plot, but they also have some that make them ill-equipped to triumph.
Plus, having failings, ineptitudes, foibles – this brings characters to life. This makes us feel for them, root for them, even identify with them. It’s also what lets them develop. Without some ineptitude to rectify, how can your plot make them grow?
Your protagonist’s weaknesses create tension in your stories. Sure, they have characteristics that make them capable of battling through your plot, but they also have some that make them ill-equipped to triumph.
Be as thoughtful in choosing their weaknesses as you are in choosing their strengths. It’s not enough to give your protagonist gangly limbs or an irritating laugh unless they impact their ability to achieve their goal. Make their weaknesses as relevant and consequential as their strengths!
For more detailed guidance on assigning and depicting characters’ flaws, be sure to read this blog post.
Character development requires predictability
If there’s one word most writers hope to avoid in reviews, it’s ‘predictable’. And yet it’s one of the ingredients for a memorable character. Routine – and second-guessing – helps us become familiar with the main player. The reader pre-empts, fills in the blanks, and enters the story. Remember, your job as an author is not to be clever, or be considered clever; it’s to make the reader feel clever.
We’re not suggesting you make the twists and turns of your plot predictable. Rather, it’s about allowing us to form expectations – which are, initially, met – of how your character will behave. Without this, you can’t create an impactful character arc.
In fact, this is one of the key pieces of advice Paula Hawkins shared in her blog post for The Novelry:
If you want your novel to be unputdownable, it helps to have an element of predictability about it. In the early chapters of TGOTT, Rachel’s morning and evening commute gave a definite rhythm to the novel which lured the reader in. They knew exactly where they were, they knew what to expect until – suddenly! – they didn’t.
—Paula Hawkins
She also gave the excellent example of films like Groundhog Day. Isn’t anticipating what will change in the midst of repetition what makes it a joy to watch?
5. Writing antagonists and villains
We’ve given some thought to creating compelling heroes, but what about villains?
Villains are the most memorable parts of many great stories. In fact, they’re having a bit of a moment; you need only look at Disney’s Maleficent and Cruella, or the Joker films, which explore what made baddies so very bad.
And if the temptation to create a one-dimensional character is powerful for heroes, it’s often almost irresistible with villains. But do you really want to depict pure, uncomplicated evil? (‘Yes’ isn’t a wrong answer! It’s just something to think about.) JM Barrie's Captain Hook in Peter Pan is a good example of a rather loveable nemesis. Everyone has their weakness!
Many of the villains we love to hate, those that stick with us and get under our skin, have very clear morality. It may not be our morality, or the one our society strives to uphold. But they’re not straightforwardly amoral, either.
What are their motivations? Why do they believe whatever wickedness they’re up to is necessary, justified, or even right? What in their personal history means this villainous character responds with malice?
Many of the villains we love to hate, those that stick with us and get under our skin, have very clear moralities and personal motivations.
If you want to avoid getting into the weeds of their backstory – especially if you fear it’s too dark for your novel/genre/age range – take a look at Polly Ho-Yen’s great advice on writing evil.
Choosing traits for your villains
To develop great characters that function as bad guys, you’ll also want to think about the traits that make them a seemingly insurmountable opponent for your main character.
Consider, even, whether mutual qualities exist. For example, Voldemort and Harry Potter are famously connected, and have a lot in common: troubled upbringings, a lack of parental support, obstinacy, self-righteousness, daring, cunning, determination…
Often, at the beginning of a novel the villain is more powerful than the hero. Thus, the hero is forced into action and growth – and character development ensues!
For more about the complexities of evil and how it can serve your plot, read our blog post on the conflict between good and evil.
6. The building block of character development: growth
Now we come to the heart of the matter, the thing that so often springs to mind when we think of a character’s development or character arc. How have your characters transformed? How can you show their growth in an interesting, believable and not eyeroll-inducing or Aesop-ish way?
But first, let’s think about whether you even want your characters to grow.
Does the protagonist have to change?
We often assume that a story is, essentially, the hero’s journey to triumph or resolution. Their growth from inept to capable. Their maturation or coming of age or enlightenment. A static character is not a well-developed one.
But a static character can be incredibly engaging. They don’t need a steep character arc to be fascinating.
In reality, most of your players will be static characters: unchanging. Your main character will likely develop and grow, but others remain reliably the same. This helps create the sense of a realistic backdrop to your main character’s life.
Other times, in a treatment we describe as Rumours of a Hero, our hero remains scintillatingly the same and out of reach. It’s the narrator who changes, usually as a result of knowing them. This is a treatment used in novels like The Great Gatsby or Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Static characters are some of the most beloved in literature. The most dynamic character isn’t even necessarily the most memorable in a given work.
Characters’ resistance to change can be their strength, their flaw, and even the driving force of your novel.
Think, for example, of some exalted detectives. How much does Sherlock Holmes change or grow? Nor (perhaps unfortunately) does James Bond undergo much evolution. The power and impact – even goodness – of Atticus Finch rest on the fact that he, too, remains resolute, a stoically static character.
A dynamic character is great to watch grow, but characters’ resistance to change can be their strength and provide a solid and credible bedrock for your story.
Creating fertile ground for growth
If your protagonist is going to be a dynamic character, you’ll need to create circumstances and other characters that force their transformation.
For many writers – particularly of disaster stories – this means throwing characters into challenges they’re not well-suited for. Think of Jaws or The Lord of the Rings: they task a police chief who’s deeply afraid of water with catching the shark, and a tiny hobbit who’s never left the Shire with trekking across the world.
Why do writers turn to such unlikely heroes time and again? Because they have a huge potential for change, and readers relish those metamorphoses! Plus, watching them fail and struggle not only creates tension, but builds sympathy and empathy. We love an underdog.
Conflict engenders character development
As well as giving your protagonist qualities that make them ill-equipped for navigating the perils of your plot, you’ll want to throw conflict their way.
Conflict could be an antagonist your protagonist fights (physically, verbally, passive-aggressively…). But it could also be created by their environment or other external elements, their society’s beliefs, the demands of their job, dystopian technology, supernatural forces... These are all what we’d usually consider external conflict.
Of course, internal conflict is also indispensable. Could your protagonist be metaphorically pulled asunder by opposing beliefs, desires or aspects of their personality? Are they juggling responsibilities? Are they facing their deepest fears? There are innumerable internal conflicts they might face.
Ideally, even the most active and physically-expressed external conflict will be mirrored by some internal conflict for maximum character development. Force your character to question themselves and their abilities, to be their own obstacle at times.
For more tips on internal conflict and moments of crisis, be sure to read this article on the moral dilemma, and this one on the crisis at the midpoint of a story.
Show character development through action
Perhaps the most dog-eared dictum in the world of writing is show don’t tell. But, as is often the case, it’s well-worn because it’s true (sometimes).
It’s no use telling us your main character has a life-altering realisation. Alter their reactions to obstacles and crises. Show us that they’re not quite the same person anymore.
It is the difference between witnessing something from a distance and being right there in the middle of it. It is the difference between readers understanding your story and genuinely feeling it. And we want the latter. We want them to laugh and cry, to be there on those pages with us.
—The Novelry, ‘Self-Editing for Fiction Writers’
Expressing characters’ emotions
A huge part of successful character development is showing how your characters feel, and how that might change through their individual character arc. Again, a thoughtful and individualised approach – and an intimate knowledge of your characters – is vital.
Think about how you express anger. Now think about how your best friend does – probably not in the same way, right? What about your significant other? Your parents?
Some people rage and shout. Others turn chillingly polite. There are people who cry, and people who feel so uncomfortable or guilty with this ‘negative’ feeling that they become sickeningly sweet. Some people treat others cruelly.
Think carefully about how each character responds in each situation if you want to create believable characters.
The same applies in a broader sense. How does each respond to trauma? Do they make frequent jokes? Try to learn everything about the topic? Maybe they refuse to talk about – or even acknowledge – what happened. And don’t be shy about looking into psychological theories or case studies for inspiration!
Remember, what drives our inner motivations is often the way we seek love. We learn techniques in childhood, and we carry them with us. Our founder Louise Dean describes how understanding how characters sought love drove the story for her first novel Becoming Strangers. Some play the martyr, some play the suffering patient, while yet other characters play the hero. We all have our strategies but we’re invariably blind to our own. Another reason you’ll want to ensure that main character is not you.
7. Top tips for character development
Here's our favourite advice and insights from our specialist team at The Novelry:
Think about who the main character is in your story; usually we get an indication of who our main character is because we see or hear from them first.
Your narrator need not be the centre of attention, but if they experience personal growth that drives the theme of your story, then they are the main character and you will want to begin by telling us something about them to reassure us (sometimes falsely) that their account is reliable!
Tackle simple character development questions to get to know your characters. How does each of them go about the business of getting love (or attention) in their life?
Decide who will be a static character and who will be a dynamic one and map the arc of the dynamic character, ensuring it services the theme of your story (or proves the moral of your tale).
Consider the antagonist as a key player; it’s their role to provoke growth and change in your dynamic main character.
To make your story easier to write and avoid the pitfalls of getting bored or despondent with your novel, do everything you can to ensure the main character does not resemble you. (As a bonus, you’ll find you're able to use aspects of your experience more freely.)
Develop your characters for the reader by showing us their associates (who they hang with or look up to), their appearance, their physical gestures and their activity levels. Consider giving them signature phrases or sayings, or recurrent concerns (this tags them for the reader). Show them in action more than you tell us what type of person they are. Ideally, no types in your finished novel. Real people caught on the page!
Create characters by combining aspects of people you know. Take traits of one and combine with the appearance of another, and ensure at the heart of your photofit person is a small part of your own personality. Ideally, a part of you that you have trouble understanding and want to explore. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, what we are most ashamed of usually makes for a good story.
Those least likeable are often the easiest to write and help you out on a slow writing day. Wheel them into a slow scene with something objectionable to share and mischief to spread!
Differentiate dialogue depending on age, geography, personality and more. You can tag your characters with speech mannerisms, phrasings, patterns and belief systems that recur lightly in their conversation.
Finally, remember everyone wants something. Not just in the grander scheme of things but also in every engagement and interaction. Know what’s eating your cast as individuals and in any scene between two characters or more, consider what each wants from the other and how they plan to get it.
Stay curious and open-minded as you develop characters. Character development questions can be a great tool to get you started as you develop characters, sketch character arcs and dig into their personalities.
But the joy of writing is that our characters surprise us and move the story in unexpected directions. The more your characters feel real, and stick to their own guns, the more lively your story will be. Don’t take them out of central casting and expect them to merely service your plot line. Let them live and breathe as real people. Ask not what your characters can do for your story, but what your story can do for them. Put them under stress and we’ll soon find out which has a heart of gold!
8. Further reading
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: 10 Tips
How to Introduce a Character and their Flaws in a Novel
How to Create Tension in a Story: The Moral Dilemma
Can You Write a Book About Yourself?
Writing Villains in Children’s Stories
Writing Conflict Between Good and Evil
AJ Pearce on Writing a Complex Character
Paula Hawkins on Writing the Unputdownable Book
Mike Gayle on Researching All The Lonely People
Hemingway and the iceberg theory
The ancients’ character archetypes
Stock characters from commedia dell’arte
July 23, 2022
Amanda Reynolds on First Publishing in Her Fifties
We’re delighted to welcome Amanda Reynolds to The Novelry as a writing coach specialising in psychological thrillers and suspense.
Amanda’s first novel, Close To Me, was a number one ebook bestseller and recently adapted into a major TV series starring Connie Nielsen and Christopher Eccleston for Channel 4 and Sundance AMC. Lying To You followed in 2018 and The Hidden Wife in 2019. Amanda’s psychological thrillers have all been sold internationally.
Writers on our Ninety Day Novel Course and The Book in a Year can enjoy coaching from Amanda Reynolds.
Here, Amanda discusses getting her first book deal in her fifties and how finding a writing community gave her the confidence to pursue her writing dreams.
‘What took you so long, Amanda?’
I stared out at the packed room, avoiding the question and the eyes watching me. To be talking about my books and a recent TV adaptation of my debut, at my first in-person event since the start of the pandemic, had been a complete joy. The interview was well-attended and the audience questions were abundant. But the query about my long route to publication had stopped me in my tracks.
‘What took you so long, Amanda?’
It was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. A well-intentioned jibe. I am in my fifties and had shared that already. So why had it taken me so long to become an author?
The seed of writing was always within me
My debut novel was published when I was fifty-one. I’d always wanted to be a writer, for as long as I could remember. Had I wasted all those years? And if so, why? What held me back? Was it me, or some outside constraint?
I’m an only child and much of my world existed in my imagination. One entire summer was indulged in the fantasy of Misty, an invented horse I dreamt of owning, but sadly never did. Another long school holiday was spent writing my first proper book (ten pages at most!); the computer printouts Dad brought home from work hazardously stapled together, fingers torn as I added the all-important illustrations.
But it took me another four decades from that first tome – the subject of which now eludes me – to hold a published copy of Close To Me in my hands.
So what took me so long?
My love of writing shaped my life
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I would suggest the same of a novel. It certainly took me many years to feel even remotely qualified to put pen to paper, or rather fingertips to keyboard. Years spent in entrepreneurial endeavour and employed in jobs I never really felt passionate about, whilst somewhere, protectively shielded within, lay that unfulfilled ambition.
That ambition had flared inside me as I visited the library as a child, and then went on to study English at the local college. Short story competitions fanned the flames whilst I attended a procession of uninspiring evening classes as a young mother. The days were a blur of nappies, and then school runs. But we’re all busy people, aren’t we? Was that just an excuse?
We writers are an odd mix of emotional rawness and steel-hearted tenacity. We need to be in order to write with empathy and clarity, whilst negotiating the hurdles which await. The inevitable rejections. Hopes raised and often dashed.
But that kernel of ambition was never completely abandoned. For four decades I nurtured the will to someday write a book.
Prosaically, I could suggest the time was right after my children were older and had left home. That I finally had the headspace. The free time. But that’s probably a justification rather than an explanation. Joanna Cannon wrote The Trouble With Goats and Sheep whilst training to be a doctor, scribbling in the hospital car park. I wasn’t that busy!
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I would suggest the same of a novel. It certainly took me many years to feel even remotely qualified to put pen to paper, or rather fingertips to keyboard.
Finding my writing community
I was very lucky in my mid-forties to stumble upon a brilliantly supportive writing group. Friday mornings filled with inspirational, talented and – crucially – ambitious writers who spurred me on and lifted me up. It was demonstrated to me first-hand that with purpose and perseverance, it could happen.
They weren’t celebrities in their twenties. They had worked hard, gone the slush pile route to find agents. They had tried, and succeeded; got publishing deals. I could too, couldn’t I?
In short, I committed.
But more than that, I finally knew what I wanted to write about. Women of my age and experience. Women who raised kids, had careers, had been wives, lovers, ignored and revered, and still have so much left to say and do and give. I was ready and I had all that lived experience to draw on. Nothing was wasted.
Prizes might glitter a little brighter for the young. They may have more time, more confidence perhaps? But the publishing world doesn’t care if you’re twenty, or fifty, or ninety-nine. It’s the story that matters.
I finally knew what I wanted to write about. Women of my age and experience. Women who raised kids, had careers, had been wives, lovers, ignored and revered, and still have so much left to say and do and give. I was ready and I had all that lived experience to draw on. Nothing was wasted.
Exploring universal themes
My first published book, Close To Me, is about the secrets in a marriage, filled with tension and dread. A woman in her fifties. Talented, capable, yet struck down by empty nest syndrome.
Yes, I placed my protagonist in a set of extraordinary circumstances, her situation exacerbated by a head injury which causes her to lose a year of memories and profoundly changes her personality, but the underlying themes are universal.
It was Jo’s duality which fascinated me, and how it would affect her response, change and warp it, make it dangerous and dark… Volatile. Jo isn’t me, far from it, but I could write with authenticity about her emotions.
And I wrote fast. The TV option had been secured off the back of a partial manuscript, demanding I did so. But it wasn’t just the impending deadline; that’s simply how I love to write.
I’m not a planner, I write with pace and listen carefully for voice and character. They guide me, but I wish I’d known then some of what I know now. I wish I’d had a hand to hold. Because you still have to do the work, show up, be there, every day. You need your village.
Revisiting stories I hadn’t been ready to tell
My next book, Lying To You, was an exercise in never letting anything go to waste. It’s an idea I’d worked on and abandoned, then resurrected and dusted off.
In the end, I didn’t actually use a page of that previous manuscript, but the idea was good. Before, I hadn’t fathomed how to execute it, but finally it came to me – as always, through voice and structure.
Jess, our protagonist, is forced to return to her childhood home following the death of her mother. There, she must face the teacher she accused of rape ten years before. The teacher’s wife, Karen, stands by him. But who is lying to you?
Taking inspiration from literature
My third book, The Hidden Wife, is my homage to my Hero books, with influences taken from Rebecca and The Great Gatsby. As they say, ‘Talent borrows; genius steals’ and while I’m most certainly not professing any genius, I think it’s a wonderful way to build your own unique story.
After all, if you loved and were changed by a book, then in the long-held tradition of passing on from one storyteller to another, why not return to those golden themes and wind them into something contemporary? The Hidden Wife is a tale of a seemingly perfect marriage, which has gone catastrophically, toxically, wrong, when Julia, wife to an older successful novelist, goes missing.
The joy of teaching creative writing
Aside from writing my books, which have now been published around the world – far exceeding my wildest dreams and ambitions – I have also spent most of the last decade teaching creative writing. This began with weekly classes, then festival workshops and one-to-one mentoring.
It’s such a rewarding symbiotic relationship, coach and writers fuelling one another. I never leave a class without having learnt something and feeling inspired; my writing improved and challenged. And of course seeing those I’ve worked with gaining literary agents and publishers, and winning competitions, is the ultimate thrill.
It’s such a rewarding symbiotic relationship, coach and writers fuelling one another. I never leave a class without having learnt something and feeling inspired; my writing improved and challenged.
That brings me full circle to say how happy I am to be starting another writing adventure here at The Novelry.
I’m excited to meet you all, my fellow writers, and begin together, hand-in-hand, a village of like-minded creatives. With shared fears and ambitions, we’re ready to surprise and delight, challenge and support one another.
Because in my experience, it is never too late to start the adventure. The blank page awaits.
Amanda Reynolds
Writing Coach at The Novelry
Amanda Reynolds is the bestselling author of three novels: Close To Me, Lying To You and The Hidden Wife, and the former has been adapted for a television show starring Connie Nielsen and Christopher Eccleston. Amanda taught creative writing for many years before becoming a published author, and members of the Ninety Day Novel Course, Book in a Year and Finished Novel Course can benefit from her inspiring coaching.
July 16, 2022
How to Start a Story
For many writers, the question of how to start a story is one of the most panic-inducing. Whether it’s because you know too much or too little about your characters, world and events, starting stories can feel like a high-pressure balancing act.
How can you start your story in a way that will hook readers – and publishing professionals – but leave them wanting more? How can you set up your world and its stakes without teetering into over-exposition?
This guide unpacks the conundrums that make up the all-important question of how to start a story. We share top tips from The Novelry’s team of writers and editors, as well as million-copy bestselling authors and publishing professionals who know exactly how to start a story.
Whether you’re brewing a great idea or are on your umpteenth draft and want to really nail the opening, you’ve come to the right place. And if you really want to be an expert on every aspect of starting a story, you’ll see plenty of further resources to explore along the way.
Contents
Why the start of your story is important
When to write the start of your story
Key questions to ask yourself
Components of cracking openings
How to start a story: the opening line
When to start your story
Should you start a story with a prologue?
How to know if your opening is ready
Common pitfalls when you start a story
Top tips for starting a story
Further reading
Why the start of your story is important
Before we dive into the details, it’s worth pausing to remember why such an in-depth guide is necessary for what might amount to a minuscule percentage of your novel. Does the first paragraph, the first page, or even the first chapter, really matter that much?
How you start your story could cost you readers
How you start your story will decide whether or not your reader sticks with you. It should tell them what to expect in terms of tone and plot, and leave them in no doubt as to why they should care about what happens next.
Your first chapter should also assure the reader that something is going to happen, and that your protagonist will be an interesting character to follow.
Your opening could make or break your publishing deal
Literary agents and publishing houses tend to request the first three chapters at the point of submission (but please always check their specific guidelines first, as this can vary). Often, they make a judgment on your book and your writing voice from the very first sentence.
Of course, the pitch or hook for your novel, and your cover letter, are also very important (and The Novelry can help with both!), but the novel’s opening is vital.
This is your chance to make your voice heard, and make a case for your story. As award-winning author Louise Doughty told us during her live session with The Novelry:
When it comes to sending your work to agents, publishers and so on, consciously or subconsciously, they will almost certainly make their mind up by the end of the first page – if not before… It really is ‘first impressions are everything’.
—Louise Doughty
When to write the start of your story
By the time you’re writing the start of your story for the last time, you’ll likely have finished the first draft. Writing a novel is not a linear, step by step process!
For those just starting out, this should relieve some of the pressure. Get yourself started and you can revisit your opening when you know the intricacies of your characters and plot, and the nooks and crannies where tension and fascination lurk.
It’s much easier to write the beginning (and maintain a strong narrative voice) when you know the ending.
So if you’re reading this and you’re just about to start the writing process, by all means read on! But be sure to revisit this page and all its linked resources when you come – as you probably will – to revising your opening.
Questions to ask yourself before you think about the opening lines
If you’re about to start writing your opening for the first time, you’ll need to be clear about the core elements of your novel.
And if you’ve finished your first draft and are looking to liven up the opening lines, check whether the answers to these questions are there – even if they’re simmering below the surface.
You can also see whether your initial answers to these questions are still satisfactory in light of how you’ve moved the story forward. Rethinking some of these might not only give you the compelling start you’re looking for, but actually revolutionise your entire story.
Who is telling the story? An outside observer? A first person narrator?
Who’s the main character? Whose actions will we be following?
Who/what is the antagonist?
Where and when are we?
What’s the situation/problem?
Why should the reader care?
What question does your novel answer (or ask!)?
Components commonly found in cracking openings
If you want to start your stories in a way that sticks with readers, this checklist is a good place to start.
Armed with some of these tools (and note these are not ‘rules’ – you won’t need every one of these for your opening!), you might whittle your opening into something even more spectacular.
A hook/question/mystery/omission
Interesting character(s)
What that character wants and/or needs – and what stops them from getting it
Stakes!
A strong setting
Clear tone and mood
A statement/thesis
The problem(s) of the first chapter…
Start your story with an engaging hook
By the time a reader finishes your first chapter, there should be some sort of question they’re yearning to answer. It could be something literal, but it needn’t be!
A fine balance between confusion, mystery and illumination… It’s a tightrope walk, that first chapter. You want the reader drawn in by mystery but not eaten by the grue of confusion, and so you illuminate a little bit as you go – a flashlight beam on the wall or along the ground, just enough to keep them walking forward and not impaling themselves on a stalagmite.
—Chuck Wendig
Whatever your core question, it must be something that we can only resolve by reading on – and which makes reading on irresistible.
That’s why having great story hooks is so important. They don’t just sharpen your first few lines, they guide your entire story!
Introduce an interesting character at the start of your story
It’s often a good idea to introduce your protagonist pretty early in your first chapter, rather than doing too much world-building. Your reader wants somebody to connect with, so if none of your main characters has a strong presence in the first chapter, it might be difficult to pique the reader’s interest.
Remember: it doesn’t have to mean introducing your protagonist/hero right away! Readers often love a compelling bad guy, so if you think introducing us to your antagonist first works better, why not try writing your opening that way?
Again, this is by no means a hard and fast rule. Starting with someone on the periphery could be powerful. But if you feel the opening is lagging, or not living up to the rest of the story, this could be an interesting component to play with.
It’s possible that your character doesn’t know what they need, or possibly even what they want. Or perhaps what they want isn’t what they need…
Whatever the case, there should be a compulsion or desire, or something they’re lacking, to guide their actions throughout the novel. It’s probably also the crux of their character development. Give us some insight into what that is, and other obstacles that stand in their way.
Set the stakes and the stage for character development
One thing’s for sure: when it comes to story writing, stakes are indispensable.
Stakes can mean different things for different stories in different genres. It doesn’t have to be a high-speed car chase or an axe-wielding murderer!
But any good story starts when something has just changed, or is about to. We tend to begin when a blip (or blast) in the character’s everyday life sets them on to a new path.
Place the reader in a strong setting
Setting the stage as you start your story can feel like a balancing act. You need to create a vivid, enveloping world, but you don’t want to test your reader’s patience.
Here again, being guided by a strong character helps. Instead of telling us everything about the setting in the opening scene, why not focus on what’s important to the character?
It’s also worth thinking about how the place itself might drive the action and plot. In fact, lots of writers (including many of the wonderful writing coaches at The Novelry!) find inspiration for their stories in a setting.
Start your story with a definitive tone and mood
Your opening is your introduction – a calling card of sorts. And like meeting new friends or going on a first date, you don’t want to give a false first impression or set unrealistic expectations.
Received wisdom says not to judge a book by its cover, but you wouldn’t want to use an image of a woman clutching a man’s bare and toned torso aboard a wind-tousled ship for a novel about a cosy 1930s murder mystery. That would be confusing!
Of course, you can surprise your reader. But in general – and especially for a debut novel – it can be wise to stick broadly to your chosen genre(s) and the tone you establish (ideally from the very first sentence) within your story.
It could be quite jarring for a reader if a gritty, bleak, social commentary becomes a quippy and upbeat jaunt across Europe, for example.
That being said, you don’t want to make your opening bland for fear you may stray from the path you’ve chosen. Having the opening sentence place the reader in a ‘dark and stormy night’ may have been effective once, but it’s pretty played out now.
All you need to do is establish your writing voice and create an overall tone and mood that fit your genre, theme and setting. You can even do this through action in the opening line; think of that clock striking thirteen, or the day that grandmother exploded.
Hint at the statement/thesis your novel probes
Once again, this can take innumerable forms, but it can be good to give your reader some clues as to what your novel might investigate, prove or debunk.
In The Novelry courses, we often think about this as ‘the lie’. What is the lie this book reveals?
Why not look at some great opening scenes from films and how they convey their overarching themes? Granted, films have a whole different set of tools available, but what can you learn from them? You might find some surprising inspiration!
Include the problem(s) of a first chapter as you start your story
The problem precipitating a story is usually with the state of rest that exists before the story begins. This is typically a pretty indispensable ingredient in a first chapter.
You might also want to give the reader an idea of why this state of rest has been/is about to be disrupted – disclose or hint at your inciting incident.
But remember that in some of the most compelling stories, the apparent or suggested problem is not the real problem that drives the narrative. Instead, there’s a hidden problem. The protagonist is typically blind to it, but your savvy readers will catch it. It could be an unspoken trauma or unrealised threat, for example, or even an obstacle to the thing the protagonist doesn’t know they want!
If you’re interested in these hidden problems, The Novelry’s Advanced Course explores them in more depth, along with shining examples to bring it all to life.
How to start a story: the opening line
If the first chapter can strike panic into a writer’s heart, the first sentence could be the brink of an existential crisis.
Fear not! The first sentence doesn’t have to be a work of genius. Your first words needn’t neatly sum up the truth of life, or even the meaning of your novel. They just need to start your story.
And that’s not only true for a casual reader. Super star literary agent Marilia Savvides feels just the same about the opening line:
First lines are certainly not everything. I’ve read hundreds of novels I’ve adored which began in very simple, straightforward ways. Even unmemorable beginnings can work well, and often they can be preferable to overly written beginnings that are trying too hard.
—Marilia Savvides
The most important thing is authenticity and confidence. Don’t use the voice of other writers when you begin. Instead, announce your presence on the page from the first sentence, and have confidence in your prose and in your story. Introduce your distinctive voice from the get-go.
There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line… To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar… There’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.
—Stephen King
And if you want some very practical, actionable advice on how to write the opening sentence, we can turn once again to Louise Doughty’s brilliant live session with us. She shared a simple nugget of wisdom: start your story with a specific and declarative sentence.
When to start your story
The question of when to start your story might seem to have an obvious answer: at the beginning. Hehe.
But take a moment to reflect on whether that really is the most compelling way to spin your tale.
Bestselling author Val McDermid offered some brilliant advice on structuring a story in her blog post for us, and it works just as well whether you’re writing a short story or a weighty tome. For the ins and outs, check out the full article, but it goes a little like this – we’ll borrow McDermid’s real-life example.
How would you start this story with a friend?
Stories, by their very nature, almost always have a beginning, a middle and an end. But we don’t necessarily tell them in that order.
Think back to anecdotes you’ve shared with your friends over a few drinks. Sometimes you begin at the beginning. In McDermid’s great example, you might begin: ‘John picked me up to go fishing this morning.’
But other times, you’ve probably decided to start your tale right in the middle – we know starting in media res can be powerful: ‘So there we were, out in the middle of the loch, when John suddenly realised he’d left the back door open.’
And you might even have begun stories at the end, making your friends desperate to learn how you got yourself into such a pickle: ‘You’re probably wondering why I’m sitting here in the pub all wet and covered in fish scales.’
McDermid’s advice is simple:
Imagine you’re having a drink with your best friend. Where would you start telling them your story in a way that makes sense?
—Val McDermid
When you’re stuck on how to start a story, pause and think about whether there’s a gripping midpoint you want to show the reader before taking them back to the beginning. Or is revealing your conclusion and then working backwards – á la murder mystery, for example – going to be more effective for you?
And if the answer is that beginning at the beginning makes the most sense, then that is, of course, how you should start your story! Ultimately, you must always do things your own way.
Should you start your story with a prologue?
One thing that often comes up when writers are pondering how to start a story is the prologue.
Of course, whether they’re right for you depends on the story you’re telling and how you want to tell it.
Generally speaking, though, people writing in crime, thriller, mystery or suspense genres might especially want to consider a punchy prologue.
And if you’re worried about getting published, rest assured that most readers, agents and publishers are open to prologues.
For example, Marilia Savvides told us:
There’s something about an author dropping us into the middle of the bad thing or the difficult thing, the thing that will come much later, showing you just enough of a peek to grip you, before yanking you away. When done well, and if it’s right for your book, a good prologue can be the answer you’re looking for.
—Marilia Savvides
If you are writing a prologue, remember that it’s not a first chapter. It’s generally more succinct, and rather than part of the ‘body proper’ of the book, it’s more of a supplement to the blurb.
If you want lots of tips on how to write a prologue, we’ve got you covered.
How to know if your opening is ready
Picture this. You’re thinking about submitting your first 1–3 chapters to publishers and agents. Are you tempted to cobble two of your chapters together so you can send them that little bit more, so they get to the really good bit?
Are you silently praying that they’ll skim through the first few pages and make it to that paragraph of genius halfway through chapter 3? To that part where they’ll really ‘get’ the novel?
If that sounds familiar, there’s a chance you haven’t started your story quite where or how you should.
Look at that section you hope they’ll read to. Could that be your opener?
Try cutting out the first paragraph. Try two paragraphs, even three. Are we spared unnecessary exposition and placed straight in the juicy bits?
Common pitfalls
Of course, not all of these approaches are necessarily bad writing, and there’s no one-size-fits-all process for how to start a story. These are just things to consider if you have a needling feeling that the start of your story is not quite right.
Over-exposition
Over-writing
Starting your story too early
Introducing your whole cast of characters
1. Did you start your story with heavy-handed exposition?
When you know a world and a character so well, it’s tempting to tell your reader all about them. But remember that well-worn adage, ? It’s well-worn for a reason!
Literary agent Marilia Savvides echoed this sentiment when thinking about how to start a story: ‘one of the most common mistakes I come across when reading submissions is stuffing that first chapter with too much information.
Too much exposition can kill the drama.
—Marilia Savvides
2. Could the start of your story be over-written?
Over-exposition may be the first and most common mistake Marilia mentioned, but a close second was over-writing.
Authors eager for agents to read their beautiful turns of phrase and literary skills in the first pages pick their ‘darling’ sentences – often those that feel profound or poetic – and use them to start a story.
The problem, according to Marilia, is that those beautiful moments are more impactful scattered throughout the book:
The story must take centre stage. It has to.
—Marilia Savvides
3. Have you given the game away or loaded in all the action?
The start of your story certainly needs to tell us what to expect in terms of tone, genre and even theme, but generally, it won’t give away the whole plot or be a single-dose serving of the action.
This is often another symptom of wanting to impress agents and publishers right away. But remember, they’ll have the synopsis to get a full sense of where your story is going. There’s no need to pack it all in when you start a story!
4. Have you started your story before it begins?
It can be helpful for you, the author, to know how your protagonist ended up in a sticky situation, or why they’re about to undergo drastic change. But readers can get a sense of this throughout the book – you don’t need to info-dump in your story beginnings.
There’s a special pleasure for the reader in piecing it all together. Don’t take it away!
5. Have you introduced all your characters?
An endless conveyor belt of characters might not be the best way to start your story. Generally, we can’t keep track of who’s who if there are a dozen people dancing on the first page!
You might also test your readers’ capacities for attention, investment and empathy, so start your introductions slowly, lest readers immediately lose track (or interest).
Top tips for starting a story
Here are a few tips that have worked for writers who’ve passed through The Novelry’s proverbial doors – whether as writing coaches, guest authors or members.
If you’re keen to learn about how to start a story, try these steps:
Get to know your characters
Get to know your story’s setting
Write your opening after finishing the first draft
Revisit and revise your opening often
Let go of the pressure to dazzle with your first line/page/chapter
Write in your voice
Let the character(s) and their actions take centre stage
Get to the heart of the conflict/tension early
Further reading
If you’re hungry for more great resources on how to start a story – and so much more – check out some of these!
Literary Agent Marilia Savvides on Writing a Great First Chapter
How to Start a Novel – The First Sentence
How to Write a Prologue for a Novel
How to Introduce Characters in Your Novel
AJ Pearce: How to Write Believable Characters
How to Write a Hook for Your Novel
10 Amazing Opening Scenes & What Screenwriters Can Learn from Them
The Top 20 TV Show Opening Scenes
‘Hamlet’: What Does the Opening Scene Disclose?
6 Rules of Great Storytelling (As Told by Pixar)
Lessons from ancient Greece – Aristotle on Storytelling
Ready to get serious about your writing? Check out The Novelry’s online creative writing courses – you’re bound to find the one that’s right for you.
July 9, 2022
How to Write a Love Story: 5 Top Tips (For Every Genre!)
Given both love and storytelling are as old as time, it’s no wonder the question of how to write a love story has so absorbed us.
And it’s possible that this question is only becoming more complex – and exciting. Romance is a booming and beloved genre, and it now has dozens of subgenres. From contemporary to fantasy to historical to alien space opera, love can spring up anywhere.
While romance novels put a love story with a happy ending front and centre, love stories in other genres can enjoy a little more freedom.
Tasha Suri has written love stories in two very different genres: epic fantasy and historical YA. Here she tells us how to break your readers’ hearts.
Writing a love story outside the romance genre
How do you write a love story that moves us if you’re not writing a romance novel? What if your love story is tragic, or brief, or more a subplot than the beating heart of a story?
Perhaps you’re like Taylor Jenkins Reid in The Seven Husband of Evelyn Hugo, and writing the story of a glamorous, aging actress and her multiple marriages. Or perhaps you’re aiming to do what Sally Rooney does in Normal People, and explore the nuanced and complex – but not always perfectly romantic – relationship between two people.
Perhaps you’re like me: a writer working in another genre, who adores love stories, and wants to thread a compelling romance subplot through your work. All my books contain romance – but they’re not exactly romance novels.
My new novel, published this week, is a gothic remix of Wuthering Heights. What Souls Are Made Of explores familial trauma, the history of South Asians in the UK, and the 18th century. Meanwhile my book The Oleander Sword, which publishes in August, is an epic fantasy with a fair bit of stabbing. Both contain strong romance subplots, full of yearning and drama that will – I hope – bring my readers a lot of joy and heartbreak.
How to write a love story: my tips
Through these experiences, I’ve uncovered a few tools that help me write compelling and sincere love stories. If you’re wondering how to write a love story within your novel, try these five tips to make your romance subplots sing.
Write a love story that weaves into your plot’s conflict
Build your love story’s tension slowly
Use tropes for inspiration
Don’t define your protagonists by their love story
Before you write, get to know your characters
1. Write a love story that weaves into your plot’s conflict
Whether you’re writing a mystery, a thriller, a horror novel or a big epic fantasy, you’re likely to have a book stuffed with plot-based conflict. This can be one of the key ingredients in resolving the question of how to write a love story that fits into – and even uplifts – your book.
Don’t forget to weave your love story into your tangled web! Place your two love interests on opposite sides of a battle. Give them reasons to distrust one another. Make one keep secrets from the other. Throw them together to solve a crime, even though they hate each other’s guts.
These are external conflicts, and they’re key to propelling your love story. They give your characters reasons to interact and get to know each other, and they give your readers a way to get to know your characters in turn.
The importance of internal conflict
But external conflict alone is not enough. You’ll need internal conflict, too – the emotional conflict between characters, or between one character’s opposing wants, needs and duties.
In an ideal world, internal and external conflict come hand in hand. For example, in The Oleander Sword, one of my heroines has to face the external conflict of being compelled to provide military support to an empress from an oppressive imperial power, in order to gain independence and safety for her own country. Her internal conflict is between her desire to love the empress, and her need to keep her distance and protect her country’s interests. Every battle forces her to choose between love and duty.
Layering conflicts like this makes a love story richer and more real.
Remember, too, that conflict does not have to be antagonistic! Characters can like each other and laugh with each other, and still have opposing views or aims or hidden vulnerabilities to work through before they can be together.
Remember that conflict does not have to be antagonistic. Characters can like each other and laugh with each other, and still have opposing views or aims or hidden vulnerabilities to work through before they can be together.
2. Build your love story’s tension slowly
I may be biased, but I love a slow-burn romance.
In a slow burn, the emotional and physical connection between characters builds over the novel. The tension ramps up steadily and intensely, until it finally breaks – with a confession, a kiss, an emotional catharsis.
When I try and describe the ideal slow burn I always find myself turning to the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. There’s a swoon-worthy moment when Darcy helps Elizabeth into her carriage. Their hands touch. Their eyes meet. Then he turns away… and flexes his hand. Iconic tension. Iconic slow burn. Iconic yearning. I’m not alone in thinking this.
How can you write that kind of tension and yearning?
The key to a slow burn is to figure out explicitly what events and revelations need to happen for your characters to fall in love, and then give each moment weight and importance in the text. Make every moment of eye contact (or hand flex) really matter. Your readers will be holding their breath waiting for the next one.
3. Use tropes for inspiration as you write your love story
Tropes are themes or plot points so common that we have a shorthand for them. We recognise a trope when we see one. If I say ‘star-crossed lovers’ you’re likely to think of Romeo and Juliet – a classic example of two people in love who cannot be together without tragedy ensuing. Look across genres, and you’ll find star-crossed lovers everywhere, from a tale of teen cancer patients in the USA to gangsters in 1920s Shanghai.
Because tropes are so pervasive, you can reduce almost any piece of media down to them. Search for a film or series you love on the website TV Tropes, and you’re bound to find it there, distilled down to the motifs that run through it: the cogs and wheels that make the story engine run.
As a writer building a tale from the ground up, tropes can help answer the conundrum of how to write a love story with a strong hook, rich in conflict and tension. Does the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope appeal to you? Maybe a ‘fake dating’ subplot will make the chemistry in this draft really sparkle?
Sometimes readers and writers groan about tropes. ‘We’re tired of them!’ they exclaim. But tropes are not the heart of a story! Tropes are just one tool in our writing toolbox.
If you’re struggling to build internal and external conflict, and you don’t quite know how to shape the unfolding tension of your love story, it may be wise to grasp one of these time-honoured building blocks. See if it can help give your story a strong foundation to build on.
If you’re unfamiliar with tropes, try approaching it this way: ask yourself what you most enjoyed about your favourite love stories. Unpick your favourite romances to find the plot beats and character dynamics that inspire you. Then take that knowledge, and use it to write something wholly you.
4. Don’t define your protagonists by their love story
One technique I’ve found helps me write engaging and believable love stories is to make sure my protagonists are bigger than their relationship. They want each other. But what do they want beyond each other?
Courtney Milan’s The Suffragette Scandal gives us a woman who wants equality for women and the right to vote, and fights for her dream. She would desire this even if our male love interest never arrived on the page, and fight for it without him too.
Characters with big goals and ambitions and hungers are, on the whole, more compelling. They’re also more likely to land themselves in the kind of conflict-driven plots that readers love.
If you’re writing a romance subplot in a different genre, this is doubly important.
No matter how much your reader invests in your love story, you have to meet the expectations of your chosen genre. That could mean infusing your novel with more action, or more humour; more politics, or a really intense car chase. Don’t make romance your protagonist’s world; make it part of their world.
No matter how much your reader invests in your love story, you have to meet the expectations of your chosen genre. That could mean infusing your novel with more action, or more humour; more politics, or a really intense car chase. Don’t make romance your protagonist’s world; make it part of their world.
5. Before you write a love story, get to know your characters
To use any of these tips, you really need to know your characters: their dreams, their hopes and their bone-deep motivations. A love story is nothing without compelling characters. The best love stories are about characters who are even more compelling together than they are alone.
A love story is nothing without compelling characters. The best love stories are about characters who are even more compelling together than they are alone.
The only way to know your characters, of course, is to meet them in the first place. Thinking about them often isn’t enough. Bring them to life in the only way you can: write them down. Word by word, sentence by sentence. Get that first draft done.
Tasha Suri's Wuthering Heights remix, What Souls Are Made Of, is published this week and available to buy now. The Oleander Sword, the sequel to the epic fantasy The Jasmine Throne, is published on August 18th.
Tasha Suri
Writing Coach at The Novelry
Tasha Suri is the award-winning author of The Books of Ambha duology (Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash) and the epic fantasy trilogy The Burning Kingdoms which starts with The Jasmine Throne. She won the Best Newcomer Award from the British Fantasy Society in 2019 and was nominated for the Locus Award for Best First Novel.
June 26, 2022
Patrick Gale on Researching Historical Fiction
Research and historical fiction tend to go hand in hand. Before the writer puts pen to paper, they must become familiar with the facts of the period.
But how much research is too much research?
Here, bestselling author Patrick Gale discusses how he gets the details right…
What qualifies as historical fiction?
It was a bit of a surprise when my novel A Place Called Winter was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, as I don’t think of myself as an historical novelist. In my head, I’m just a novelist who occasionally sets his novels in the past.
I write a lot about memory, about the legacies of things that happen in characters’ childhoods, or the long reach of things they once witnessed. As a result, even my novels broadly set in the present have extended passages set sufficiently in the past to count as historical.
With technology developing so fast, and our attendant behaviours with it, even a story dipping back to the pre-digital 1990s now acquires some of the quaintness of a costume drama.
In my head, though, these are not historical novels because my primary task remains that of bringing characters and their stories to life with exactly the same immediacy, and using the same techniques, that I would in a novel set in 2022.
Is researching historical fiction what makes it feel ‘true’?
A kind of necessary myopia sets in when I’m writing. I like to lose my sense of self and project myself entirely inside the characters so that it doesn’t feel as though I’m making anything up as I write, but merely being as accurate as I can in recording a sort of film I can endlessly rewind and rewatch in my head. The characters’ present is what matters, not its distance from our own. They won’t be thinking antique chair, steam train, period costume but simply chair, train and clothes.
A kind of necessary myopia sets in when I’m writing. I like to lose my sense of self and project myself entirely inside the characters so that it doesn’t feel as though I’m making anything up as I write, but merely being as accurate as I can in recording a sort of film I can endlessly rewind and rewatch in my head.
—Patrick Gale
Similarly the narrative is what matters to me. Is the dialogue natural? Does the motivation ring true? Will the reader care enough to stay up reading past their bedtime?
What does researching fiction look like?
And yet, even when I’m not writing historical fiction, research is a necessity for me.
For a start, because I’ve only ever been a writer, I usually have to research the jobs the characters do. I once paid a venereologist friend to come and stay to talk me through the lurid details and mundane routine of working in an STI clinic. Another time, I worked my way through a course on drawing for the artistically incapable to better understand a character who was an artist. I attended numerous Quaker meetings before writing a novel about a Quaker family.
Why is researching historical fiction so important?
To write any novel set in the distant past, however, needs numerous facts checking, from train services to etiquette, from vocabulary to household appliances. That’s why researching historical fiction is crucial.
For A Place Called Winter, set between 1900 and 1919, I had to read up on all kinds of things, including:
The settlement of the Canadian prairies
Edwardian thoughts on masculinity
The after-effects of the Wilde trials
The class minutiae of transatlantic crossings in the 1900s
How to clear a field of boulders and tree stumps with only a cart-horse and something called a stone boat
How to plough with an ox
Why a popular treatment in psychiatric hospitals at the time involved wrapping patients tightly in rubber blankets
As you can see, researching historical fiction can be pretty intensive – and immersive. I even spent an increasingly farcical day or two trying to convince the curators of the Victoria and Albert’s clothing collection that I had a genuine, and not perverse, need to see Edwardian gents’ undergarments.
Researching real lives
My most recent novel, Mother’s Boy, draws on the early life of the Cornish poet Charles Causley and the largely overlooked life of his laundress mother, Laura, from the spring of 1914 through to the early 1950s. I was so fearful of giving offence to the living relatives of characters with real-life counterparts. As a result, my historical fiction research went into such detail that I might as well have been preparing to write a critical biography instead of a novel.
And, quite apart from the hours spent ruining what’s left of my eyesight poring over Charles’s minutely pencilled secret diaries, reading his manuscripts and deciphering long-hoarded postcards and letters, my historical research also delved into the minutiae of doing laundry without machinery, caring for a TB patient before penicillin and how the Navy trained people to be coders.
The potential perils of researching historical fiction
There’s no question that researching historical fiction can take one over, and not just because much of it is fascinating.
I find an insecurity sets in, in which I become convinced I can’t possibly start writing until I know everything my characters would have known. Weeks can rapidly turn to months spent in libraries and archives. It’s very easy to fixate on some elusive detail and become convinced you cannot proceed without it.
—Patrick Gale
I find an insecurity sets in, in which I become convinced I can’t possibly start writing until I know everything my characters would have known. Weeks can rapidly turn to months spent in libraries and archives. It’s very easy to fixate on some elusive detail and become convinced you cannot proceed without it.
With Winter, this was finding out precisely which kind of wheat my hero would have sown. With Mother’s Boy it was not only laying eyes on one of the Navy’s few undestroyed Codex machines, but finding some aged veteran still able to explain to me how they worked. (I failed in either case, and it really didn’t matter.)
The joy of researching historical fiction
The late Helen Dunmore, who evoked Leningrad under siege and Rome under Augustus, once told me that the trick with researching historical fiction was to write your novel first, and only start digging for facts once it was absolutely clear from the gaps in your emotionally satisfactory story what you needed to find out.
If I’d done that, however, I would never have stumbled on the random details that so enriched my eventual stories, actually adding turns to their plots: before and after photographs of a two spirits Cree shaman stripped of their dignity and forced into ill-fitting western clothes, and a little blue bottle with a silver lid supplied to TB patients for use as a portable spittoon.
Exploring the setting for your story
Another element of researching historical fiction that I find absolutely crucial, regardless of when a novel is set, is the setting.
Sometimes this is relatively easily conjured, when I’ve set novels on my Cornish doorstep or in thinly disguised versions of Winchester, the city where I grew up.
But when I don’t already know a place intimately and the historical facts demand that I set part of a narrative there, looking at photographs on Google never suffices. I like places in my books to feel as completely realised as the characterisations. For that, I need to go to the place myself, walk the streets, smell the smells, listen to its soundscape and try to see the views my characters would have seen.
Sometimes, of course, this tax-deductible part of researching historical fiction can be very enjoyable – a trip across Canada by train to experience the exact route my pioneering characters took, a week walking the ancient, war-haunted streets of Valletta, a weekend visiting the Governor of Gibraltar so as to see the ballroom where Causley briefly coded and the tunnels in the Rock where his Wren colleagues worked.
Sometimes it can be markedly less so. I’m thinking particularly of visits to Butlin’s in Skegness or to the armour-walled confines of a radioactive iodine hospital suite. Perhaps it’s ludicrously literal of me, but I feel that unless I walk through these settings in person, I’ve no hope of ensuring my reader will reliably walk through them in their head.
Fallibility, facts and fiction
One hard lesson I have learned is that however thoroughly you think you’ve checked your details, however eagle-eyed your copy editor, however many experts you dragoon in to read early drafts, there will be things which slip through the editorial net.
And readers like nothing better than writing to point out one’s mistakes. In A Place Called Winter I had my hero catching a train to Liverpool from King’s Cross instead of Euston. In Mother’s Boy I had junior ratings saluting Charles and calling him Sir, when as a mere petty officer he would have merited no such distinction. I even had him buying a woman friend a bitter lemon six years before Schweppes first launched the drink.
And you know what? It’s absolutely fine.
One of the beauties of ebooks is that your novel’s electronic version, at least, can be swiftly corrected (and presumably magically corrects itself on anyone’s e-reader when they connect to the internet). I have grown used to thinking of the eventual paperback edition as being the true final draft.
The underrated benefits of researching historical fiction
I have also come to realise that the research stage of each novel puts a necessary creative brake on any impulse to begin writing right away.
It’s good, I think, to let the ideas for a novel compost gently in the back of your brain or in the pages of a notebook. It’s good not to start the actual writing until the story and, yes, any historical details, are so clear in your mind’s eye that what you are doing when you write your opening sentences is not making things up but striving for understated accuracy.
Patrick Gale joins us at The Novelry for a Live Q&A with our members on Monday, July 25th at 6pm UTC.
Patrick Gale
Bestselling author
Patrick Gale is the author of novels including The Whole Day Through, the Richard and Judy bestsellers Notes From An Exhibition and A Perfectly Good Man, the Costa nominated A Place Called Winter and his fourth Sunday Times bestseller, Take Nothing With You, as well as the Emmy award-winning BBC drama, Man in an Orange Shirt. Patrick’s latest novel, Mother’s Boy, is out now.
June 18, 2022
Outlining a Novel: Is it Really Necessary? By Tess Gerritsen
The idea of outlining a novel is one that may strike dread, panic or even tedium in a writer’s heart. Are we really expected to have our entire novel outlined before we put pen to paper?
Years ago, I learned that a certain Very Successful (and Famous) Author would say so. Seemingly, he doesn’t start writing his novels until he has completed a detailed 50+ page outline. He knows in advance every twist and turn of his plot and every crisis, large and small, that his characters will face.
What a brilliant strategy, I thought. It seemed far better than the disorganized way I was writing my novels, with no clue where my story was going.
The Ideal Vision of Outlining a Novel
You don’t build a house unless you have a blueprint, right? What I clearly needed was a blueprint. Instead, I’d been the crazy builder who shows up with wood and nails and just starts hammering away. I’d build a room, decide I didn’t like the looks of it, and start building another room facing a different direction.
I’d end up with a shambolic Winchester Mystery House (Americans will be familiar with this reference) where doors lead nowhere and hallways sprout off in senseless directions. Then I’d have to tear apart the mess and rebuild the whole thing so it would make sense. If I was the architect for your house, you would fire me.
I decided that things would be different with my next novel. I was going to follow the example of the Very Successful Author. I was going to go through the process of outlining the entire novel beforehand. That way, I would save myself the agony of wandering into blind plot alleys and ripping up pages and pages of unusable prose.
I was going to do it the logical way. I was going to become a Planner.
The Reality of Outlining a Novel
So I set about outlining my novel.
I then faced the new question of how to outline a novel. In the end, my version differed from the 50-page highly detailed battle plan that the Very Successful Author writes. I wrote only eleven single-spaced pages with scene-by-scene descriptions of my story.
My outline had a really detailed beginning and middle, and just a semblance of an end; by the time I’d written those eleven pages, I wanted to plunge in and just start writing (which is the curse we plungers must deal with. We’re impatient people and we want to just get on with it).
With the outline of my novel in hand, I was ready to write. This time, I wouldn’t suffer my usual sleepless nights agonizing over the plot and my characters’ motivations. This time, the writing would be a breeze. This time, I knew exactly what was going to happen.
And it worked. For about three chapters.
Then the story took off in a different direction. I don’t remember if I was just bored because I already knew what was going to happen, or if some new plot twist popped up unexpectedly on the page. In any case, suddenly the characters weren’t doing what they were supposed to do. It’s as if they stopped and glared at me and said, ‘You really expect us to follow this stupid outline?’
The more I wrote, the more the story deviated from the plan I’d created while outlining my novel. Once I started down that different highway, my original route fell further and further behind me until it was just a distant puff of dust. I was writing an entirely different book, and I was doing it in my usual disorganised way, with sleepless nights and plot agonies.
I’d reverted to my bad habits. I was a failed planner.
Does outlining a novel make or break it?
But you know what? That book turned out just fine.
In fact, it turned out a lot more exciting than the story I’d originally outlined. It had twists I never expected and character revelations that occurred to me only as I was writing the scene.
Yes, I struggled as usual to make all the moving parts work together. Yes, I had to rewrite that manuscript seven times (as I always do) and I threw out about a hundred pages that didn’t fit into the final plot, but that’s the way I’d always done it. It’s the way I now believe I’m meant to do it.
Respect Your Process
Every writer has his or her own quirks. Maybe you can’t start your workday without drinking three cups of coffee, or lighting a scented candle, or turning on the theme music to Braveheart. I heard about a writer who would put on a chef’s hat when her children were young, as a signal that they were not to bother Mommy while she was working. Years later, after her kids were grown and out of the house, she still puts on that now-tattered chef’s hat to write because it’s become part of her process, and she can’t write without it.
I too have quirks I can’t shake:
I still write my first drafts with pen and paper. The paper must be unlined blank typing paper, because seeing lines on the page inhibits my creativity. I’ve tried typing my first drafts on the computer, but seeing words on the screen turns on the editor in my brain. It makes me stop to edit and re-edit the chapter, and keeps me from getting on with the rest of the story.
Only after I’ve handwritten the entire first draft do I type the words into my computer. I have to type it myself, because no one else can read my handwriting.
I never stop to re-write when I’m on my first draft because it stops my forward motion in the story. This means my first drafts have lots of mid-plot corrections, as well as characters whose motives, names and even genders may change by the end. When those changes happen on the fly, I just slap a sticky note to the page reminding myself to fix this detail later, and I keep writing.
Finding sense in the chaos
When I hit a plot wall and don’t know what happens next, I take a break from the book. Because of my chaotic method of plotting – in other words, decidedly not outlining the novel – this invariably happens, so it no longer freaks me out.
I know that somehow, I’ll be able to figure my way out of the mess. I have a few strategies to deal with it: long walks, staring at the ceiling, maybe a long drive or mindless travel. It may take a few weeks of not writing, but I always manage to figure out what happens next, and why.
Is this an efficient way to write a book? Absolutely not. It’s stressful, it’s unpredictable, and it means I often take longer to finish a manuscript. But it’s the only way I know to do it. After writing thirty books, I’m too entrenched in my process to change it.
That’s the message I hope you’ll all take to heart: There’s no wrong way to write a book. Outlining a novel isn’t the key to its success – or the guarantee of its failure.
If your process works for you, no matter how crazy it may seem, just accept it. Embrace it.
And keep writing.
Tess Gerritsen
Internationally bestselling author
Globally renowned author Tess Gerritsen is no stranger to straying from the beaten path and doing away with the plan. Before she started writing fiction in 1987, Tess graduating from Stanford and heading to medical school at the University of California. In 1987, her first novel was published, Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, followed by eight more romantic suspense novels before she turned her hand to medical thrillers with Harvest in 1996 marking her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. She has been prolific and phenomenally successful as a novelist, famous for the Rizzoli/Isles series, with top-3 bestsellers in the United States and number one bestsellers around the world, winning the Rita Award and the Nero Award. Publishers Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.
June 13, 2022
Character Mapping and Relationships In Novel Writing
Each and every character in a story has a single purpose for the storyteller - and that is their role or agency vis a vis the moral development of the protagonist, hero or heroine, the subject of your novel. They either assist or hinder.
Who are the key players?
There are filler characters, the door holders, and bag carriers, the petrol pump attendants, and these too may have something to add, but you need to concern yourself with the players on your team first and foremost. Some 3-15 players.
What's the nexus?
Wherever you are in your novel, you should be looking at the crucible - the hell Sartre might have dubbed it or heaven - that is the nexus of relationships. What people want from your main player and what he or she wants from them. The relationships - the push and pull of their reciprocal wants and needs - will range from highly negative and reversing (antagonist) to assistance, affection, love and self-sacrifice (the friend or lover).
What does each player want from the other?
So you'll be playing these out in your story through conflict and clarification - questions posed by the other characters for your main player to answer - and assaults on their values or beliefs along with reassurance.
Find the conflict.
Conflict contains the most energy to propel your main character through change faster. This is the secret to storytelling.
"Certain characteristics of the protagonist and antagonist are revealed often only through relationships with each other or with circumstances (either external or internal) and events played out in action and reaction. Under the pressure of situations, conflicts, clashes of will or story tension, the ideas that lie behind a story’s themes cease to be merely abstract and become people actually doing things to each other or reacting to the action. As has been already explained, film dialogue is best when it has an immediate purpose and produces visible reactions in others. This is the essence of drama. Because character is not a static quality that belongs to a specific figure, rather than thinking of individual characters in the world it is far more useful for the writer to consider the notion of character-in-action-and-reaction. A story’s energy comes from the degree to which its characters are warring elements, complementary aspects that illuminate each other by contrast and conflict. The only practical reason for a particular character’s existence, in fact, is to interact with other characters." Alexander Mackendrick, On Film Making.
Necessary Exceptions:
The Culprit.
Particularly useful if you're writing a whodunnit to consider the 'mute' character who is present but seems to offer neither conflict nor assistance. This passive beast, appearing quite often in the story, without apparent agency, can be your secret agent, your ticking bomb. Because they're there, but don't seem to be doing anything in terms of your story, your reader won't be able to do the usual mathematics of story in which they've been trained since a child, and 2 + 2 won't' be coming up with 4, so you've created a blind spot, a little piece of magic taking their eye off the ball. Nice one!
Once you've got your story up and running, you'll be able to flesh out the network of relationships and lean on that for refining your storytelling in each and every scene by remembering what each character wants. So that in any conversation or activity, they're after their own fulfilment, acting with the same wholeness people do in life. This is tricky at the beginning of a first draft when you're writing a little bit to work these things out, but the sooner you start to sketch it out, the more integrity your story will have.
The Comic Element.
In comedies, the joker of the pack has an absurd lack of requirements of others, think 'Being There' by Kozinski, or Forrest Gump, or Baldrick in Blackadder, they have a one-way relationship to others, which is lacking in complex wants and needs.
The Network of Relationships
Alexander Mackendrick's wonderful book On Film-making gives an example of Graham Greene at work on turning his short story into the movie The Third Man. (The article is attached as a download in the lesson pack for Character Mapping in our novel writing course. In that lesson, you will also find my own example of a network of active relationships and how to prepare your own.)
Here's the character map Mackendrick prepared for The Third Man.
Graham Greene's descriptions of the cast as individuals was wholly concerned with their relationships - what they want from each other - and not interested in physical descriptions whatsoever.
Interestingly, in my favourite Greene novels, the sentimental End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter, God is a character with which Catherine and Scobie have very real relationships depicted by what they want from Him and He wants from them!
I rarely offer physical descriptions of my main players, it's too trivialising and inimical to the purpose of this wonderful medium in which souls are almost unembodied offering us an immersive experience of entertainment. Instead, many good authors suggest from the responses of others to their characters what effect their physical appearance causes. This is beautifully and knowingly handled by Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, where Jay Gatsby means different things to different people, but Daisy we know is beautiful because of the reactions she elicits and Daisy offers a masterclass in 'being beautiful' when she works hard to cause reaction by lowering her 'low' and 'thrilling' voice to make people come closer to hear her.
Start writing a novel today at The Novelry and enjoy the lesson pack on Day 5 to find out how to create your character network.
