30 Days of Writing and Publishing Tips – Day 8 Don’t let your character run the show
Some writers start off with developing a character before they work on the plot. I don’t do this- I have a basic idea of a type of person I want to write about, but I don’t come up with a complete character until I have an almost complete plot worked out.
I do this because in my stories, plot comes first. I want page-turners, and characters have to serve the plot.
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That is not to say the characters are unimportant-they are vitally important, but they have to be adapted to make the plot work, and that means their specific strengths and weaknesses are chosen as to how well they fit in the story. I’m not one of those writers who claim their characters steer the story, as if they’ve come to life and taken over the writer’s typing fingers.
In the post where I talked about outlining, I suggested people list at least four obstacles the character will have to overcome along the way to trying to obtain the ultimate goal of the story.
If I’m outlining my own stories, I consider those obstacles and then I consider what specific personality traits my main might have that would make it difficult to overcome those obstacles.
It’s all too common for beginning writers to write Mary Sue characters, those characters that may be wish fulfillment in the author, someone who can do all the things they can’t or who are so perfect you want to gag. Think Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind. Those characters are boring to read, as are characters who never struggle. (Except in certain adult thrillers. There are certainly tough guy characters some people love to read about, who can be like Tom Cruise and never break out in a sweat while dangling from a skyscraper.)
Even Katniss Everdeen, tough girl of the Hunger Games series had her flaws. She couldn’t be charming and attract allies before the game started, which was a vital part of surviving the games.
So what kinds of flaws am I talking about? They could be specific fears – fear of heights and the character has to walk along a narrow path on the side of a mountain. Fear of water and what’s in it. (I have an irrational fear of giant squid so if I was a character in a story, I’d make me go down into the depths of the ocean in a tiny submarine to retrieve my true love who was trapped in another tiny submarine and I’d run into a GIANT SQUID!
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It could be your character is shy and has trouble talking to people, and the plot demands that they talk to lots of people to find out clues or find their way. This may not seem like a major obstacle until you start writing it, but then every single conversation becomes an ordeal, and the reader has to root for the character to succeed.
I’ve had characters who were unsure they could be the ones to lead, characters who judged their companions too quickly and didn’t trust them enough to band together, characters who were too impulsive, characters who were so focused on something that they didn’t realize the rest of the world was falling apart around them, and characters who were too stubborn to admit they made the wrong choice.
So the main point of this post is don’t stay welded to a character until you are sure that character fits in with the story you are trying to tell. There are always other stories where a character might fit better. It’s not like you are going to write only one story, though I know before a writer is published it often seems this way, but trust me, once you finish one story, others will call to you.
If you are interested in other writing and publishing tips, the Day 1 post is here. And I started writing these posts because book three of my YA sci fi trilogy is out now. Here they are:
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