Thoughts on Writing – Combining Characters Part 1

One of the writing tips I’ve heard for making stories stronger is to combine characters. Theoretically, combining characters cuts down the number of supporting characters (thus making the cast easier to remember) and makes for a stronger single character (by bringing in conflicting, but often interesting behaviors).

When I was working on Distant Horizon, a YA science fiction novel I’m co-authoring with my husband, Isaac, a suggestion we got from one of our beta-readers was to combine two char...