What is a Character, Anyway?

I was startled at my reaction recently when an early reader of Hedesa said something like, “I wasn’t that interested in most of Tarashana characters.”

Here was my instant reaction: Of course not! There aren’t any Tarashana characters in Hedesa.

Then I thought, Hmm, that’s an interesting reaction.

Saying “There aren’t any Tarashana characters in Hedesa” is misleading. Hedesaveriel is in fact a character, though a minor one. Ijesele might be a character, though a very minor one. The other Tarashana characters certainly aren’t characters: they are part of the setting and part of the plot.

But why do I say that? What makes me feel that way? They aren’t all just part of a crowd of unnamed characters (though in fact that does describe MOST of the Tarashana we see). We have three named Tarashana who appear repeatedly and get lines of dialogue: Jesarian, Ledaleuthial, and Inhetariel. I’m sure you notice that this isn’t very many considering that we are in the starlit lands for 350 pages (or so) and see a whopping lot of Tarashana people at a distance.

If you think back to Tasmakat, that worked the same way. The back third of the book — about 350 pages, give or take — featured lots and lots of Lakasha and a scattering of Ro-Antelet. How many of them were part of the setting and plot? A lot. How many of the named Lakasha or Ro-Antelet characters were really characters? A handful. Important characters? A tiny handful: Tasmakat herself and arguably Bakharot, the Ro with the feet, and offhand I would say that’s it. A few others got a handful of lines and were minor characters. The Ro child was so cute that to me she seems like a real character, but very minor, of course. She’s so minor she could be described as part of the scenery. (A cute part.)

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It is impossible to find characters who are truly scenery as interesting as characters who are really characters. What makes the difference?

Relationships.

If and only if the secondary character is in a relationship with the protagonist, the character becomes a real character. That’s what I think, and this would be an interesting thing to discuss at a convention because I can imagine different authors and readers taking other positions. But to me, it looks like this:

Nameless people in a crowd — pure scenery.

Person who barely opens his mouth but plays a pivotal role in the plot — element of the plot.

Person who conveys information — element of the plot.

People whom the protagonist notices exist, but doesn’t really notice as people — scenery or elements of the plot.

People with whom the protagonist has a minor, unimportant relationship — minor characters.

People with whom the protagonist has an emotionally important relationship — now you’re talking. These are real secondary characters. These are the characters the protagonist cares about as people, and therefore the characters the author and readers also care about at people. There are a lot of characters in Hedesa. In order of their importance to Tano, they are:

Raga … … … Tokowa … … … Gedes, Kelleos, Parra … … … … the pony, Hedesaveriel, Nagaro, Barano, Varorda … … … … … everyone else back here somewhere.

The pony is possibly up a bit closer to the front. Regardless, the reader is not likely to care all that much about characters that are lost in the clutter at the back, although if I did it right, the reader ought to care enough to notice various events involving some of those characters. But almost everr reader is probably going to care a lot more about characters closer to the front. It’s closeness to or importance to Tano that moves the character from the back to the front, and I would argue that this is always, always, always what makes the character important to the reader as well. I mean emotionally important, which is totally different from important to the plot because the character does something.

And there aren’t any Tarashana characters who are important to Tano except Hedesaveriel, who isn’t THAT important.

The NEXT book will be different, because I’m going to ditch most of the characters, THANK GOD — this is probably going to take longer than I hope and making it happen will probably therefore add length and I will be rolling my eyes about that, but eventually, I hope fairly near the beginning, an event or two will occur that will make this happen. [No mass death, just putting that out there; a lot of characters will move offstage, not die.]

[I bet it really happens at about the 50% mark — ed.]

No matter when that happens, at that point, for the rest of the book, the characters who will be on stage will be more important to Tano, or else scenery, those two basic categories. If a Tarashana (or Saa’arii) character is on stage at that point, they will be a real character and I trust you will find them engaging as well as interesting. They will also enable us to learn a whole lot more about their people(s).

I do know exactly (relatively speaking) how some of this will work. But I’m not sure how much I want to say about where the story is going, because spoilers.

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