Does This Novel Seem Crowded? A Rerun

[Author note: If you’re a pantser, sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm hoping to show that some pre-writing activity can save you work later without killing creativity. Honest!]

Character, characters everywhere! But do they have a job to do? That’s a good question to ask. Just like you’re created with a purpose in mind, your characters should be, too.

It’s so easy to overpopulate a story. That’s how I’ve collected so many dynamite deleted scenes. But creating a cache of deleted scenes is not my objective. I need to look at my characters as part of an organic whole, not as detached individuals. Each character should help define the others.

According to John Truby in The Anatomy of Story, we learn the most about our protagonist when we can compare her to the other characters on four different levels: by story function, archetype, theme, and opposition. 

Today, I’m going to talk about the story function of your characters, because this helped me the most with crowd control—and revolutionized the way I think about developing characters.

This is my gift to you after being so snarky about Maass’s chapter, “Standout Characters.” Deepest apologies again, Mr. Maass, sir.

Every novel starts with a premise. The premise is what your story is about in one sentence. For instance, the premise of The Hunger Games (HG) is: In post-apocalyptic America, a teen-aged huntress takes her sister’s place in a last-man-standing battle against representatives of the eleven other districts of Panem.  

Once you know your premise, you create characters. Start with your protagonist or hero. She’s the one with the central problem. (Katniss must take care of her sister.) She’s the one who drives the action in an attempt to solve her problem. (Katniss volunteers to take Prim’s place in the hunger games.) The protagonist drives the action, but she isn't without her weaknesses and needs. (Katniss is a loner, but she must partner with other contestants to survive, knowing she will later need to kill them in order to solve her problem.)

This is where things get interesting. All other characters in your novel will represent an opposition, an alliance with the protagonist, or a combination of the two. Every character has a job to do to tell your story according to the premise.

Antagonist: The antagonist should want the same thing as the protagonist, which will bring them in direct conflict. This doesn't mean they hate each other, necessarily. Think of them as opposition, a less brick-wall kind of word. (Katniss has one big antagonist, the government, plus twenty-three contestants that want to live to take care of their families, so they must kill her.)

Ally: An ally helps the protagonist solve her problem. They listen to the protagonist, giving the reader a chance to hear in the protagonist's own words what she values and wants. Again, their goals are usually the same, but sometimes the ally has her own goal. (In HG, Katniss has an ally in Gale, her hunting partner in District 12. Also, Cinna, her stylist uses his cunning and skill to make Katniss a favorite in the games.)

Fake-Ally Opponent: This is where things get really interesting. This character seems to be on the protagonist’s side, but is really an opponent. This is how twists and turns are added to a story, as well as tension. (Effie Trinket plays this role for Katniss. She’s very proper and gathers a team to help Katniss, but she represents the government, the source of all Katniss’s problems. As the government’s representative, she facilitates the death of at least one, if not both of her charges, Katniss and Peeta.)

Fake-Opponent Ally: These are fun characters to write but not as common in storytelling as the Fake-Ally Opponent, but HG is full of them. This opponent appears to be fighting the protagonist but is actually a friend. (Peeta, of course, is the first of Katniss’s opponents to come to mind, but don’t forget about Rue. The most powerful Fake-Opponent Ally is Haymitch, Katniss’s supposed mentor. He is drunk and useless most of the time, but he sees something in Katniss that makes him believe she is finally the one who can survive. He recruits sponsors and sends supplies at just the right moment.)

Subplot Character: Their role is to give another opportunity to define the protagonist through comparison (they want the same thing or have the same problem but go after the solution differently) and to advance the plot. In HG, Katniss’s mother is a subplot character. She wants the same thing, to take care of Katniss and Prim, but her grief has paralyzed her. In this way we see the heroic side of Katniss. The mother moves the plot along by her passivity. Katniss is all Prim has in her broken world.

HG might not have been the best example because there are lots of characters, but they fit very nicely into their roles. Let’s look at a “smaller” story world to see how this works.  Feel free to disagree with me.

In The Language of Flowers, the premise is that a young woman uses flowers to say the things she cannot say on her quest for love. 

Victoria is our protagonist. Her central problem is that she wants to love and be loved but can’t do either. As a product of the foster system, Victoria has never properly bonded with a caregiver, so she probably suffers from reactive attachment disorder (RAD). She uses the language of flowers she learns from her foster mother to try to make connections. 

Her antagonist is RAD, I think. She sabotages herself in all of her attempts to make meaningful connections. 

The author brilliantly gives Victoria two strong allies, Renata the florist and Grant the flower grower. Renata gives Victoria a job to rescue her from homelessness and allows her room to be ellusive, and Grant is the most patient man in the world, and he loves her, literally and figuratively challenging her flower language. 

Victoria’s false-opponent ally, and this is up for debate, is her caseworker. Name? She comes off as making hurtful decisions for Victoria, but she introduces her to the only mother she will ever know because she understands what Victoria needs. 

The false-ally opponent is her foster mother, Elizabeth. She needs the same thing as Victoria, love, and she gives it freely until what she loves more than Victoria is destroyed. She ends up wounding Victoria worst of all. 

The subplot character is Victoria’s assistant whom she brings in from her old group home. Again, name? She’s there to compare how two foster system kids react to emancipation.

So, there you have it, a purpose-driven approach to populating your novels. Personally, this information has helped me develop a wider variety of characters with greater capacity for conflict and helped me to focus the story on the premise by not adding characters who aren't needed. (This is how adorable yet menacing Fred got booted from Goodness & Mercy.)

I would love to hear what you think of Truby’s story structure approach to populating your stories. Have you tried this approach? What benefits or hindrances did you experience? How do you keep from over-populating your stories? Have you ever asked yourself while reading a novel, "What is this character doing here?" 

TMI

Have you ever met someone who immediately felt the need to tell you their life story? Yeah, me too. I don’t know about you, but my first reaction, once my eyes quit glazing over, is to run far and fast. Well, too much backstory in the beginning of your novel can and probably will have the same effect on your reader.

Backstory, amply defined by The Editor’s Blog, is simply “the story before the story.”

Wikipedia goes into a bit more detail: “Backstory is a set of events invented for a plot, presented as preceding — and leading up to that plot ... Generally, it is the history of characters or other elements that underlie the situation existing at the main narrative’s start ... As a literary device, backstory is often employed to lend depth or believability to the main story.”

Jessica Page Morrell, in Between the Lines, warns that "backstory, if used incorrectly, can stall a story," because a novel should always be moving forward. Backstory "must be cleverly inserted so that it's unobtrusive and allows the front story to press ahead." She adds, "Perhaps the biggest problem with weaving in backstory revolves around this simple fact: The reader doesn't need to know as much as the writer does." As writers, we often go to great lengths to create detailed biographies of our characters and a story world that is three-dimensional. We can often see our characters in our heads, as well as the places they inhabit. But not everything that goes into the creation of our creation needs to be shared with the reader. We need to give them just enough to fill in the blanks, and then let their own imaginations take over.

But backstory has another task besides filling in gaps, and it's an important one. When used to its full advantage, backstory provides character motivation for what takes place in the novel. To again quote Ms. Morrell, "A protagonist is a person with a burning desire, and backstory reveals where this desire stems from." She lists some backstory factors to consider when creating your character:

• Who or what were his or her childhood influences and major events?
• Who was the most significant person in his or her young life?
• What past relationships have shaped your character?
• What event from the past will affect the plot?
• What regrets does your character have?
• What is his or her worst fear? Darkest secret?

The answers to these questions will be important for you to know as the writer, and they'll be important to your novel but, if handled correctly, the forward-moving story can reveal many of those answers to your reader without you having to spell them out through too much backstory.

So, when and how is it appropriate to bring in backstory?  There are varying opinions about when—and when NOT—to bring in backstory. Some say none at all in the first fifty pages, which, if true, is a rule I’ve sadly violated all too often. So I put the question to a group of authors I highly respect, and here’s what a few of them advise:

James Scott Bell, author of a number of terrific suspense novels, as well as the very popular Writer’s Digest Books including: Plot & Structure, Dialogue, Conflict & Suspense (all of which I recommend.) says, regarding backstory: “Act first, explain later.” He believes you should begin your novel with action, “which doesn’t mean, necessarily, car chases or gun fights.” Instead, your opening should “show a character in motion” and “manifest disturbance to their ordinary world.” He goes on to say, “Readers will wait a long time for the explanations when there’s a character in motion, facing a disturbance.”

As a reader, I completely  agree. Yes, I want to know about the character whose story I’m delving into. I want to care about him or her. If I don’t care, I won’t continue to read. But plop me down in the midst of the action or situation, and then, when I’m catching my breath, tell me something about the character and the story world. Jim calls this: “bonding your character with the reader.”

One of my personal favorite examples of bonding character with reader comes from The Hunger Games, the first book in the wildly popular triolgy. (BTW, I can’t wait for Catching Fire to be released November 22!) Chapter 1 gripped me from the beginning, but when, in Chapter 2, Katniss says, “I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!” in place of her young sister, Prim, I knew I wasn’t leaving Katniss’ side till the story was over. And, oh, what a story.

So give just enough backstory to make your reader sympathetic to your protagonist, and then, weave it in throughout the rest of the story. Veronica Heley, author of more than 70 novels (!) says: “Drip feeding the backstory is best for all concerned.” Drip feeding. What a visual. I love it.

 Christy-award winning author Kristen Heitzmann  says: “Backstory can and should be done in any way that serves the story.” There are various ways to bring it in:

• Through small bits of exposition.
• Through character reflection — (but be careful to keep it truly introspective, rather than it sounding like the character is sending information telepathically to the reader).
• Through dialogue (But, again, be careful. Noah Lukeman, in The First Five Pages, says,  “Dialogue should not be used to state things both characters already know” for the sake of the reader (pg. 94). Example: “Hi, Janet. This is Sharon, your older sister, who lives an hour south of you. Your niece Mindy, who is my older daughter, has moved to Washington, and man am I bummed about it.” Janet, being my sister, already knows all that, so it's a ridiculous use of dialogue.
• Through flashback  (This is a device I used throughout Lying on Sunday to show the character---or lack thereof---of the protagonist’s deceased husband.)
• Occasionally, through use of a prologue. (Prologues should be used rarely and should draw the reader right into the story world. This is not the place for a backstory information dump.)

This is not a comprehensive list of how to work in backstory, but gives you an idea of how it can be integrated into the novel.

DiAnn Mills, author of numerous romantic suspense novels, as well as the writing-craft book The Dance of Character and Plot, teaches that, before each scene, a writer ask the following questions:

• What is the POV character’s goal or problem?
• What does the POV character learn that he/she didn’t know before? 
• What backstory is revealed? (I encourage no horrible protagonist’s traits. This doesn’t mean a teasing phrase here and there but no significant backstory.) 
• How are the stakes raised?

Author Stephanie Whitson asks some good questions regarding backstory:

• If I don’t put this in the story, will the reader miss something essential? 
• Will they misunderstand my character? 
• Will they be confused by a plot point?

If not, leave it out.

If backstory is something to be treated with kid gloves, incorporated in bits and dribbles, is it really important for you to create backstory for your characters and story world? Well, let me ask you this: Do you find it easy relating events of someone’s life if you don’t know them well? I don’t. Likewise, the better I know my characters, the better I’ll be able to tell their story. That doesn’t mean the reader will learn everything I know about my protagonist. They may, in fact, learn only a fraction of what I know. But that fraction better be really pertinent to the story. It better help bond the reader to the character, and answer just enough at any one time to keep the reader wanting to know more.

What is your position regarding backstory? Do you have/stick by a hard and fast rule? How/when do you choose to incorporate it? Have you ever found backstory to distract you from a novel you were reading?

It's (gasp!) 47 days to Christmas. Leave a comment and I'll enter your name in a drawing for my whimsical A Heavenly Christmas in Hometown.

Does This Novel Seem Crowded to You?

[Author note: If you’re a pantser, sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm hoping to show that some pre-writing activity can save you work later without killing creativity. Honest!]

Character, characters everywhere! But do they have a job to do? That’s a good question to ask. Just like you’re created with a purpose in mind, your characters should be, too.

It’s so easy to overpopulate a story. That’s how I’ve collected so many dynamite deleted scenes. But creating a cache of deleted scenes is not my objective. I need to look at my characters as part of an organic whole, not as detached individuals. Each character should help define the others.

According to John Truby in The Anatomy of Story, we learn the most about our protagonist when we can compare her to the other characters on four different levels: by story function, archetype, theme, and opposition. 

Today, I’m going to talk about the story function of your characters, because this helped me the most with crowd control—and revolutionized the way I think about developing characters.

This is my gift to you after being so snarky about Maass’s chapter, “Standout Characters.” Deepest apologies again, Mr. Maass, sir.

Every novel starts with a premise. The premise is what your story is about in one sentence. For instance, the premise of The Hunger Games (HG) is: In post-apocalyptic America, a teen-aged huntress takes her sister’s place in a last-man-standing battle against representatives of the eleven other districts of Panem.  

Once you know your premise, you create characters. Start with your protagonist or hero. She’s the one with the central problem. (Katniss must take care of her sister.) She’s the one who drives the action in an attempt to solve her problem. (Katniss volunteers to take Prim’s place in the hunger games.) The protagonist drives the action, but she isn't without her weaknesses and needs. (Katniss is a loner, but she must partner with other contestants to survive, knowing she will later need to kill them in order to solve her problem.)

This is where things get interesting. All other characters in your novel will represent an opposition, an alliance with the protagonist, or a combination of the two. Every character has a job to do to tell your story according to the premise.

Antagonist: The antagonist should want the same thing as the protagonist, which will bring them in direct conflict. This doesn't mean they hate each other, necessarily. Think of them as opposition, a less brick-wall kind of word. (Katniss has one big antagonist, the government, plus twenty-three contestants that want to live to take care of their families, so they must kill her.)

Ally: An ally helps the protagonist solve her problem. They listen to the protagonist, giving the reader a chance to hear in the protagonist's own words what she values and wants. Again, their goals are usually the same, but sometimes the ally has her own goal. (In HG, Katniss has an ally in Gale, her hunting partner in District 12. Also, Cinna, her stylist uses his cunning and skill to make Katniss a favorite in the games.)

Fake-Ally Opponent: This is where things get really interesting. This character seems to be on the protagonist’s side, but is really an opponent. This is how twists and turns are added to a story, as well as tension. (Effie Trinket plays this role for Katniss. She’s very proper and gathers a team to help Katniss, but she represents the government, the source of all Katniss’s problems. As the government’s representative, she facilitates the death of at least one, if not both of her charges, Katniss and Peeta.)

Fake-Opponent Ally: These are fun characters to write but not as common in storytelling as the Fake-Ally Opponent, but HG is full of them. This opponent appears to be fighting the protagonist but is actually a friend. (Peeta, of course, is the first of Katniss’s opponents to come to mind, but don’t forget about Rue. The most powerful Fake-Opponent Ally is Haymitch, Katniss’s supposed mentor. He is drunk and useless most of the time, but he sees something in Katniss that makes him believe she is finally the one who can survive. He recruits sponsors and sends supplies at just the right moment.)

Subplot Character: Their role is to give another opportunity to define the protagonist through comparison (they want the same thing or have the same problem but go after the solution differently) and to advance the plot. In HG, Katniss’s mother is a subplot character. She wants the same thing, to take care of Katniss and Prim, but her grief has paralyzed her. In this way we see the heroic side of Katniss. The mother moves the plot along by her passivity. Katniss is all Prim has in her broken world.

HG might not have been the best example because there are lots of characters, but they fit very nicely into their roles. Let’s look at a “smaller” story world to see how this works.  Feel free to disagree with me.

In The Language of Flowers, the premise is that a young woman uses flowers to say the things she cannot say on her quest for love. 

Victoria is our protagonist. Her central problem is that she wants to love and be loved but can’t do either. As a product of the foster system, Victoria has never properly bonded with a caregiver, so she probably suffers from reactive attachment disorder (RAD). She uses the language of flowers she learns from her foster mother to try to make connections. 

Her antagonist is RAD, I think. She sabotages herself in all of her attempts to make meaningful connections. 

The author brilliantly gives Victoria two strong allies, Renata the florist and Grant the flower grower. Renata gives Victoria a job to rescue her from homelessness and allows her room to be ellusive, and Grant is the most patient man in the world, and he loves her, literally and figuratively challenging her flower language. 

Victoria’s false-opponent ally, and this is up for debate, is her caseworker. Name? She comes off as making hurtful decisions for Victoria, but she introduces her to the only mother she will ever know because she understands what Victoria needs. 

The false-ally opponent is her foster mother, Elizabeth. She needs the same thing as Victoria, love, and she gives it freely until what she loves more than Victoria is destroyed. She ends up wounding Victoria worst of all. 

The subplot character is Victoria’s assistant whom she brings in from her old group home. Again, name? She’s there to compare how two foster system kids react to emancipation.

So, there you have it, a purpose-driven approach to populating your novels. Personally, this information has helped me develop a wider variety of characters with greater capacity for conflict and helped me to focus the story on the premise by not adding characters who aren't needed. (This is how adorable yet menacing Fred got booted from Goodness & Mercy.)

I would love to hear what you think of Truby’s story structure approach to populating your stories. Have you tried this approach? What benefits or hindrances did you experience? How do you keep from over-populating your stories? Have you ever asked yourself while reading a novel, "What is this character doing here?"