STARS, FEATURED PLAYERS, AND FURNITURE, a Look at The Characters in Your Novel

The following is from Write Great Fiction – Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress (2005-03-03).  I have used this book as the source for most, if not all, of the character development in my novels.

Not all your characters will matter equally to the story. One is the star— your protagonist. (There may be more in a long novel.) This is the person whom the story is mostly about: Anna Karenina in her eponymous novel, Stephanie Plum in Janet Evanovich’s mysteries, Harry Potter in J.K. Rowling’s fantasies. Your star gets the most attention from both the reader and writer, the most word count expended on him or her, and the climactic scene.

Other characters are necessary to the story and interesting in their own right; these are the featured players of your cast. The rest have bit parts. They aren’t well developed and are, essentially, slightly animated furniture in your setting. Who should be which?

One aspect of this selection process is to look at each character to decide if she would be better as a changer or a stayer. The distinction is critical to both characterization and plot.  Changers are characters who alter in significant ways as a result of the events of your story. They learn something or grow into better or worse people, but by the end of the story they are not the same personalities they were in the beginning. Their change, in its various stages, is called the story’s emotional arc.

So, to choose your stars, ask yourself:

Am I genuinely interested in this character? Do I find myself thinking about him in odd moments, imagining his previous life, inventing bits of dialogue? If not, you won’t write him very well.

Is this character or situation fresh and interesting in some new way? We’ve seen a lot of NYPD cops with murders to solve and drinking problems. Maybe the orphaned nephew will be enough of a new twist. Do you care about the cop? The nephew? Is the murder significant in some way?

Can I maintain enough objectivity about this character, combined with enough identification, to practice the triple mind-set— becoming author, character, and reader as I write?

Kress, Nancy (2005-03-03). Write Great Fiction – Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint (p. 11). F+W Media, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In the Ryce Dalton series, almost all of the characters are stayers (they don’t change much), although some of the mid-level or minor characters change.  I have done this to retain the characters throughout a series.  The best thing about Travis McGee, John D. MacDonald’s character, was that he changed very little from book one to book twenty-one.  A reader can almost stop in the middle of book seven and restart in the middle of book twelve without missing a beat.  That is the lofty goal I strive for in my serials.

Because I knew there would be only one God Project, recently published on CreateSpace, I have tried to make all of the protagonists into changers.  (If you’d like to review The God Project, please send me an email (rclintpeters@gmail.com))

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