Storytellersunplugged

Life Goes On

Okay, so you’ve got everything you need to write a novel, right? You’ve got pen and paper, or if you’re like me, you’ve got a PC that is mostly reliable and a printer hooked up to it. You’ve got a plot that, while maybe not completely original is new enough to catch the attention of the publishers. You’ve taken the time to come up with your main characters and even to work out their favorite flavors of ice cream what they’re likely to wear and why, exactly, they are about to have their lives completely changed by the earth-shattering crisis that is the motivational force behind your no doubt amazingly inventive story.

Now it’s time to sit down and start writing, right? Okay then. What do you do first?
Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? It’s all good and well knowing what your characters like on their pizza, but what about the rest of it?

“But Jim, what do you mean ‘The rest of it?’”

Simply this: Life goes on, unless you’re dead. Where do characters start? Where do they end? Why is it important?

Characters start the same way we all start: They’re born in your mind and they grow up. Most of them have lives beyond the crisis you’ve decided to inject. Some of that material is absolutely useless, but not nearly as much as a lot of people seem to think. Characters, just like the people you meet in the real world away from books and the writing implements of your choice, EVOLVE. They change almost constantly. If they don’t, they are stagnating. Now, if your story is taking place in the course of one day, you might be able to get away without much detail on how the characters’ lives are changing. If the story’s going to take a few days or a week, you might even get away with brief mentions, but if they’re around for the long haul and the novel takes more than a week or so, they need to have lives beyond the primary story arc.
Yes, you guessed it; I’m once again harping on my favorite subject: bringing the characters to life. This time, I’m actually talking about subplots. Those are the annoying little stories that involve your characters lives’ and don’t necessarily involve the actual novel.

A point of clarification: not every subplot should be completely removed from the main story. Often times, they have a direct relationship to the story itself, but at least a few, in my humble opinion, should have something to do with life as a whole for the characters. I don’t mean whether or not Our Hero, John’s secretary is considering bobbing her hair. I mean the things that can alter how Betty, the Wonder-Secretary, is involved in the story. John, Our Hero, is a busy man. He depends on Betty to take care of the mundane nonsense that keeps his bills paid. Sure, he’s one of the best defense lawyers in the country, but if he’s going to hunt down and kill the wererabbits that that killed his girlfriend Susie and wreak his vengeful justice on the evils of the underworld, he’s likely going to need to find out everything he can about wererabbits and that’s going to take a lot of time from his legal efforts and that, in turn, is going to cost him money unless Betty continues to be Wonder-Secretary. If Betty can’t handle the load with her normal Herculean efforts and make it look easy, John is going to have to stop his quest for justice and get back to work before his entire legal empire collapses and some loser from the local bank repossesses his house and car. John, being a sensible lawyer, will probably figure out beforehand that hunting down and killing the evil men who want to take his possessions for non-payment of his bills will get him thrown in jail for the rest of his life.

There are ways around this problem. A lot of writers use them. Hey, when in doubt, you can always have John inherit a fortune, or just for kicks, move him into a new house that his Uncle Wilbur left to him in the will (provided that he A: Not sell the house B: Can’t afford to live anywhere else or C: Has been wanting to write a novel about Uncle Wilber’s house for a long time. Man, that’s convenient and eliminates half the need for subplots. It’s also been done so many times that a lot of readers will cringe as soon as they see it.

Subplots are another step to breathing life into a character. They are also an excellent way of moving the story along when you’re feeling the need to slow down and let the readers have a breather or two.

Let’s look back to John for a moment, shall we? We already know that John kicks ass as a lawyer. Why, he started his own firm and he’s one of the biggest and best in the business. But how John reacts to the wererabbits (with a chain gun, of course) is only part of making John a real person. Okay, John’s wife was murdered by the bunnies from Hell, and his children were taken away to live in the bunny warren, where, later, they will come back as new wererabbits to increase his angst when he has to either kill them or cure them using his amazing deductive reasoning—and perhaps a radioactive carrot.

Fine, but what else do we know about John? When he’s hunting for the rabbit that killed his one true love, how is he paying the bills and how is he reacting to the people around him. What about close friends and family? What are they doing while he’s going on his Great Wererabbit Hunt?

If his secretary isn’t holding down the fort for him, then what is she doing? Has her marriage fallen to the wayside? Is she secretly pining away for Our Hero? Did her little son get kidnapped and is he even now being held for ransom?

I suspect by now you see my point. No one character makes a book work. No single even should define the entire story, at least not if you’re dealing with a novel length work.

Call it a tapestry, call it a web, call it details in the grander scheme; if you want characters who give the proper illusion of being alive, then you have to give them lives outside of the main story. There are exceptions, there are always exceptions to the rules, but unless you’re managing a novel with a cast of one or two, something aside from the main even is likely to interfere. John’s less successful brother Joe is sorry to hear about John’s losses, but he also needs to get a fix for his heroin addiction and manage to keep his job and his fiancée without anyone finding out about his problems. His partner is being as understanding as possible, but he can’t take on all of John’s cases and the lawyers working for their firm would like to be paid. That cure girl that John likes to flirt with at the grocery store(Not so much since his wife died, but still) hasn’t been around for several days and he was looking forward to seeing her smile. Instead, she’s dealing with the fact that her mother was just diagnosed with cancer. John will be dealing with all of the people. Make sure that he isn’t the only person in the story who’s been flesh out.

Death has been playing mean games with John, but all around him life will still be going on, and the odds are good the people he deals with will be affected by events outside of his narrow view of the world. Not all of them are newsworthy, but those events are still happening and still changing the people around him. Don’t believe me? Go read a good book and see if I’m wrong.

James A. Moore