Into the Goldmine: Mining a Story for Additional Content

There is a tendency many new authors have of allowing a secondary character to steal the story. During our long history as storytellers, certain conventions have been established. These insist that a writer discern a "main character" and follow that character through the arc of a novel or perhaps even a series.

But while it is important to be cautious of story-stealers, a character who begs to be the subject of his own story might also be seen as a well-rounded character.

Consider: a character who exists solely for a role of the story being told is a flat character. A character who has dimensions, perhaps indications of a deep backstory, will be more meaningful to your audience. A flat character isn't always a bad thing. We need not know everything about a character's life to enjoy his part in the story. But, choosing to make your characters more meaningful will be more rewarding to your reader as she loses her fiction-sense and is drawn into the story.

If your audience loves the character as much as you, the writer, that is a very good thing. It will mean earning her trust in you as the storyteller and establishing a following. But if your reader follows you to learn more about her favorite character and your "main character" is another character in the story, well humble apologies dear reader, you can't dwell on this new interesting character you enjoy. The character fades quietly into the background, and a large part of that effort goes to waste. Is there a better approach?

Take a lesson from what Comic Book companies have been doing for years. These groups of storytellers introduce a collection of heroes, sidekicks, and villains; then they proceed to mix and match heroes, sidekicks, and villains however they like. If the story being told expands into different arcs, these characters may diverge, form another story arc, and introduce more exciting heroes, sidekicks and villains. And the process blooms from a bud to a blossoming flower to a tree full of flowers. Fans of comic books eat this up. They can't wait for Hero X and Villain Y to square off, even though Hero X and Villain Y may have completely different storylines right now. As long as the audience knows that the writers will get around to it sooner or later, they continue enjoying the ride.

Now, this is frequently referred to a universe and applies in many series. Marvel, for example, has a wide variety of universes running parallel. Each universe is based on what characters are unique to it so the storylines don't collide. It's a complicated process, and frankly it's mindboggling the further the universe expands. Star Wars also has a universe, and that universe has recently split into "Legends" and "Canon", again to determine which storylines are possible cinematically.

This is slightly to the side of the point, but it helps to visualize the goldmine of a universal approach to storytelling. As a storyteller, you control any characters within your universe. Whereas a common series contains one over-all arc, approaching storytelling from a universal mindset means allowing any number of characters to be the "main character" of his or her own storyline. Think of all the Superheroes which would not exist if DC chose to focus on Batman as the only "main character". This would mean that any character who never crossed paths with the caped crusader would cease to exist.

Telling a story from a universal approach is a very old method and does not just apply to speculative fiction. Mark Twain wrote a pleasant story of a kid named Tom Sawyer. Then he followed up the story with a less-pleasant story of Tom's best friend Huckleberry Finn. In so doing, Twain expanded on the universe established in Tom Sawyer, which was--by today's standards--a Historical Fiction.

Taking a less linear approach to story-telling is slightly more complicated, since there is more to keep track of, but in some ways it is actually easier. You don't need to start over with a brand new character. Continue with a pre-existing one, a character whom your audience is already familiar with and whom they might already like. And what is neat about this approach is not every expansion on your universe needs to be a novel-length project. You can use these additional bits to promote your website. You can release them as e-books. Or you can compile them and release an anthology related to your novel project. At the very least, you as the author have more than a snapshot of your "secondary" character so that if and when he recurs in your linear series, you know what he's been doing since his story diverged from the main arc.

I hope this bit of advice has been useful for you. When we, as authors, take the time to learn from one another, our stories become far better as a result.

Iffix Y Santaph is the author of the novella series Forgotten Princess, which he plans to expand with a universal approach in the years to come. Impulse is the first novella in the series and is available now from Amazon.com

Questions for discussion: Which other series have expanded using the universal approach? Have you tried using this approach for your own fiction? Tell us about it.