All About The Characters

I recently read Sue Miller’s new novel, Monogamy. (A good book. It haunted me for several days, as a compelling novel does.) In the foreword she says the book took six years to write. She thanks the many people who supported her and helped her through that time period. Then she thanks her characters for being interesting enough to keep her going for so many years.

I completely understood. I’m sure there are plenty of writers who depend more on plot, but for me, my characters are everything. From my first book, when a few chapters in, my hero and heroine—shockingly, amazingly—came to life and began acting of their own volition, I’ve depended on my characters to help me write fiction. They tell me their story and lead me through the book. Much of the plot comes from them. As their motivations and personalities form, things naturally seem to happen and plot points flow from there.

Once in a while, the characters I create refuse to come alive. They stay flat and boring and nothing happens in the story. Those manuscripts remain unfinished. They will languish until the day, if it ever happens, the characters stop being cardboard cut-outs, take action and tell me their story. (Or maybe I can take Kurt Schumacher’s suggestion in a recent RMFW blog and interview them and see if I can bring them to life that way.) 

Relying on your characters for your plot has its downfalls. Sometimes they lead you badly astray. Move the story in directions that don’t follow the natural story arc. Take you down rabbit holes from which there is no good fictional escape. I’ve had to throw away many, many pages and rewrite many chapters because of unruly characters.

But over the years, I’ve gotten better at reining them in. I’ve learned to tell them: I know you want to go there and for that to happen, but doing that doesn’t move the story forward, or fit with the rest of the plot, so… just, no, you can’t. If I nudge them gently and encourage them in a different direction, they will usually follow my guidance. I haven’t had to re-write the whole middle of a book for several years now. Knock on wood.

But my characters do demand things from me. They want me to keep them in my head. To think of them several times a day. They need that connection with me to remain alive and vital. If I ignore them for too long, they often refuse to do anything. I can sit there at the computer and try to write and they remain stay frozen, locked in the last scene I wrote. I have to go back and read the previous chapters and re-enter their world. I have to connect with them again and breathe life into them. It’s a lot of work to reanimate characters. Best not to neglect them in the first place.

Of course, I write romance which, like literary fiction, depends a lot on the internal emotional reality of the characters as much as what is happening in the world around them. I wonder if it’s different for writers whose books are more action-oriented and focused on events outside the characters’ heads. Perhaps my dependence on my characters for the story is the reason I can’t write mysteries (although I love to read them). Because the intricacies of a mystery plot most likely have to be set up in advance, and the characters have to follow more specific plot rules.

How about you? How important are characters to your story? Do they come before your plot idea, or do they gradually form afterwards, as you’re writing the story? Do your characters only surprise you occasionally? Or do they constantly take over the book?

Every writer is different, but for me, there is no story unless the characters are willing to tell me theirs.