Dealing with Side Characters

You know, Squiders, main characters are bad enough. They don’t do what you want them to do, or they forget the plot in a moment of passion, or you turn your back for a moment and they’ve decided being a bad guy sounds like a pretty good gig. But at least you know they’re important. When a scene goes the wrong way, at least they’re still in the center of it.

Side characters, however, are tougher. They walk a fine line between being important and being in the background. These are your sidekicks, your lackey bad guys, your friends and relations. They’re important to the characters somehow. They contribute to the plot…somehow. But they can’t do too much, or they become main characters. And they can’t do too little, or your reader wonders why they’re there.

It’s a hard line to tread. Each story, each plot, has different character needs. And very few novels can get away with no side characters at all. People, unfortunately, do not exist in a vacuum. And each side character provides their own issues. It might be your character’s mother, whom they obsess about constantly, but, in the end, provides little of use to either plot or characterization. It might be your character’s best friend, who is always around, providing witty banter, but isn’t there when your character needs her most so your reader wonders why you bothered to build her up so much. It might be the professor your character fights with the whole first half of the novel, only to disappear for the second half.

Unfortunately, there’s only one thing to do. You look at a side character, decide what they need to contribute to the plot, and then you either build them up so they fit their goal, or you dial them back (or, sometimes, get rid of them completely).

I’m having to do this right now. I’ve got a side character named Thor (yes, that Thor) that at the moment, sits on the cusp. I’m not quite sure which way he’s going to have to go to fit the story.

(Hopefully I will by the end of the day, though.)

Anything you’ve found helps with side characters, Squiders? Any you’re having issues with at the moment?

What is a Subplot?

We all know what a plot is, don’t we, Squiders? The plot is what happens. It’s the series of events that takes us from the beginning to the end.

So, what’s a subplot?

A subplot is a series events that enhances the main plot.

So, what does that mean?

It means that a subplot gives the plot or the characters more depth. They can show why characters other than the main character are doing what they’re doing, what makes the main character the person to do the job, or create additional obstacles for the characters to overcome.

But it is important to note that subplots are directly related to the main plot. They must connect to it somehow.

In other words, they don’t stand alone. They don’t make sense without the main plot. If a “subplot” does, it’s not a subplot. It’s a stand alone plot, and it’s very difficult to pull off multiple plots in the same work. Mostly it just confuses people. In fact, if you have a “subplot” that doesn’t relate at all to your main plot, people are going to wonder why it’s there at all.

Like a plot, subplots need to make sense. They need to have a beginning, a progression, and an end. If you don’t have an end, you’re going to have dangling plot strings, and people will wonder what the point was.

Subplots also need to have less importance than the main plot. If they don’t, well, maybe your plot is in the wrong place.

Any thoughts on subplots, Squiders? Tips?

Doing a Story Justice

On a somewhat related note to Monday, here’s another author fear that I sometimes worry about myself – doing a story justice.

You know how it goes: somehow, a story worms its way into your head, as stories are wont to do. It’s brilliant. It’s amazing. If done correctly, maybe it’s your chance to finally get a story into that literary journal you’ve always dreamed of seeing your name in, or maybe that Top 25 market that’s always been just a tiny bit out of reach will finally say yes.

All you have to do is sit down and write it, and maybe your dreams will come true.

And that’s where the doubt strikes. Sure, some tiny, obnoxious part of your brain says, if done correctly, this story could be extraordinary. But all it’s got is you, and what have you done lately that can prove you’ve got the chops to pull this off?

So you sit there, and you say, well, perhaps my brain is right. Maybe I’m not ready for this story yet. Maybe I should hold off until I have a few more publications under my belt. Maybe I should hold off until I’m sure I can do this.

Except you know what happens to stories that you wait on. They wither and they die. Right now, that story is clear in your mind. You can see scenes and characters and dialogue. Even if you write a detailed outline, when – if ever – you go back to that story, it’s going to be different. You’re going to have lost something, something that drove you to want to write it, and you’re going to be hard-pressed to remember what it was.

So I say, why not write it now? Part of writing is the journey, the growth you experience with each story. Sure, maybe you won’t do this particular story justice. But you won’t know if you don’t try.

And you may be pleasantly surprised with what you come up with.

Write Your Query First

So, generally people look at novel writing as a linear process: Step 1, write the novel. Step 2, edit the novel. Step 3, submit the novel. So you write the book, make it pretty, and then worry about how you’re going to sell it. For those who have never thought about selling a novel, the query is the pretty letter you send an agent or editor telling them what your book is about in an attempt to grab their interest so they sign you and you get lots of money.

(I’m lying about the money.)

But, it turns out that writing your query BEFORE you write your novel can actually be helpful.

Don’t look at me like that. I’m not crazy.

Here’s the thing. Queries force you to take your plot and smoosh it down into a few paragraphs. It forces you to pull out what’s most interesting about your story and what your main themes are.

These are important things to know. And if you know them before you get 50,000 words into a novel and realize you have no idea where you’re going or why, you’re going to be able to write a more cohesive book that makes sure to focus on what you feel is important.

But Kit, I hear you saying, I’m a pantser. I don’t know where my book is going before I start it. How can I possibly write a query first?

Well, it’s a little harder for you, but not impossible. After all, there’s something that pulled you to start writing that particular story. Can you put what that is into words? Aside from helping you realize what’s important to the story, it might help you hold on to whatever it was that got the juices flowing.

Just something to think about, Squiders. Have a good weekend.

Play/Musical Logic

My husband and I are rather avid theater-goers. We have a season subscription at the local major theater complex for the big musicals that come through, and we supplement that by going to various local theaters’ (and occasionally high schools’) productions when they’re putting on something that looks interesting.

We’re going to three shows this weekend. Last night we saw George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House (very good, and very funny in parts), tomorrow is Fahrenheit 451 (how could we resist, right?), and Sunday is I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, which is part of the subscription. (We get a couple of random non-musicals in with our musicals. Not sure why.)

After the play last night, my husband and I were discussing things, and while it’s not particularly true of Heartbreak House, which is one of those plays where people mostly sit around and talk and are amazingly witty (like Lion in Winter, say) and nothing much of note happens, I’ve noticed that a lot of plays – especially musicals – have a very strange sense of logic that prevails.

I suspect it’s because they have such a short time to tell their story, and so they have to make weird leaps in order to get through the plot in the time allotted (usually denoted by how long an audience is willing to sit still).

In some ways, it’s a form of Fridge Logic (warning: TVTropes link). Fridge Logic is where, while something is happening, it seems perfectly reasonable, but when you think about it later, you realize that it doesn’t actually make any sense.

Some examples: Maria forgiving Tony immediately for killing her brother in West Side Story, the entirety of the plot of Phantom of the Opera, the ending of every farce every written. (And oh, how I love farces.)

People fall in love at the drop of the hat, with nothing in common and without even knowing each other. Villains, previously unstoppable, are brought down by something relatively simple and sometimes contrived. A single song can change a character’s entire way of thinking.

Yes, on some level I think it is necessary. You can’t put the necessary background in that you could in a novel or a TV series. And you can be distracted a lot by clever staging, a fun dance number, or beautiful costumes.

Still, next time you go to see something in the theater – look at the plot afterwards. I bet you’d find at least one place where, when you think about it, something just doesn’t flow right.

Premise vs. Plot

People seem to get these two confused, so let’s clear the waters, shall we?

Premise: the basic idea of the story

Plot: what happens in a story

They are not the same, though they are related.  I’ve seen it said that the premise is your initial idea, what drew you to a story, what made you want to write it.  My premises tend to be things like “girl saves friend from evil dimension by use of their shared locker” or “pirate will sacrifice everything to raise her lover from the dead.”  The premise gives you an idea, but it, by itself, is not enough to support a story.

The plot is the events that happen in a story.  So the plot of the above pirate story, summarized very succinctly, would be something like, “Pirate gathers crew for an ocean voyage to find a lost artifact capable of bringing the dead back to life, knowing they may perish in the attempt.  Along the way, the crew bonds over shared stories and dangerous encounters.  When they reach their destination, pirate realizes she has grown and no longer needs said artifact.”

See the difference?

Now, of course, the plot is every event in a story that contributes to the main storyline (events that contribute to less important storylines are part of the subplot).

So. Premise = idea, Plot = series of events.

Any questions?

Rabbits and Snakes

So, now that Spring has sprung (or so I assume – it’s hard to tell around the rain) I am getting a better idea of how my yard works.

We have a ridiculous amount of wildlife.  Foxes, coyotes, raccoons, birds (and spiders and centipedes and the largest earthworm I have ever seen, all of which I hope the birds are eating), but what I have the most of are rabbits and snakes.

Every morning, when I go out to get the newspaper, there’s a rabbit in my front yard eating some part of my foliage.  “Fred,” I say, because there are multiple rabbits but I have named them all Fred, “you’d better not be eating my grass seed.”  (And then, if I suspect he is, in fact, eating my grass seed, I will go and deal with it.  Grass seed is a precious commodity.)

I have seen four snakes since Saturday.  (Or two snakes twice.  Anyway.)  So far they have all been garter snakes which is good news, because I never notice them until I’m practically on top of them and they have to slither away for their own safety.

Kit, you ask, what does this have to do with writing?  Well, Squiders, I will tell you.

Rabbits are like story premises.  They’re cute, they’re everywhere, they will invariably eat everything in your garden, but they’re kind of useless.  A story premise looks nice, but it won’t get you very far.

Snakes are like plot.  They’re there, but sometimes you don’t know it until you almost step on them.  Plot burrows through the entire story, intricately twisted around all the other elements.

I could go on all day (characters are like birds – nice to look at but chirp incessantly) but I will spare you.

(There is a baby Fred that lives under the back deck.  He is the most adorable thing ever but I suspect he’s the one eating my spinach.)

When is a Story Truly Dead?

I hear it in interviews, from my writer friends, at book signings – the novel that went into a drawer, never to come out again.  Their first or third or eighth novel that was so bad it didn’t deserve to see the light of day.  The novel that, for all intents and purposes, was dead.

But do stories ever truly die?

I admit I can be somewhat unfocused.  For every finished story I have there lies four more abandoned, forgotten, lost to time and space.  They’re dead, right?  If I haven’t thought about them in a decade, then obviously they’ve kicked the bucket, shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible, right?

Wrong.  So very very wrong.

It seems that any story I put real thought into, where I spent any time at all thinking about plot and/or characters, whether I got two pages or ten chapters, never dies.

Recently my muse blessed me with a plot for a story that I considered so dead I had already stolen two of the main characters for another story.  The scifi series I worked on as a teenager continues to give me scenebunnies.

Perhaps most telling of all, the dragon story I wrote when I was twelve (starring my and my cousins’ extremely thinly veiled counterparts) occasionally rears its head, bringing promises of intrigue and betrayal.

What do you do when old stories won’t die?  Maybe it’s not worth it to kill them, but I feel bad when I’ve got a story idea that’s been sitting there for a decade and I haven’t gotten around to it.

Do you have stories that are really, truly, dead?  What was it that killed them – plot, characters, marauding alpaca? What’s the longest you’ve gone from putting a story away for “good” and when they reared their head again?  (It’s 16 years for me on the dragon story.)