Stealth Characters

Every writer has had this happen. You’re going along with your characters and plot, developing everything, and suddenly a new character emerges. It isn’t that they’re demanding to be a POV. You just know that they have an arc and will be important to the over all story.

So far, I’ve had two of these stealth characters show up in The Tale of the Drakanox. There’s always a temptation to push them aside. They aren’t part of the plan, and I already have four POVs as it is. However, I always try to listen to my muse . The story is always richer and more complex when I work new ideas in. So don’t take this as a complaint!

What I’m finding useful is that both these characters are not having a POV. Thus they will remain inscrutable for a lot of the story. Even though we writers go to great lengths to create engaging main characters and make sure the plot events are clear to the reader, sometimes it’s good to keep things mysterious.

We hope readers will be engaged with characters when they can “see” their needs and goals, but it can be equally intriguing when they don’t know what’s going on with a character. This brings an element of unpredictability to the tale. In both cases, the stealth characters seem to be allies, but because they aren’t POV characters, we don’t know for sure.

So who are these stealth characters? Check back on Wednesday and I’ll introduce them!

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