Degrees of Separation Between the Author and the Characters

The Fatal Flaw

For years I struggled to write multifaceted characters. Being a speculative fiction writer, I’m often more interested in the fantastical aspects of the tale than the characters. I always love adventure stories, too, especially ones overflowing with action. My characters suffered for these predilections, and my writing did too.

I was warned about the deficiencies in my writing. I can’t tell you how often my critique group lamented my writing for the lack of interior monologue, decried my characters for unemotional responses, and claimed my protagonist was either too analytical or wishy-washy. When I started querying agents and editors, rejections inundated my inbox. Still, I soldiered on, writing and querying without much luck.

If this sounds familiar there are steps you can take to rectify the problem.

Moving Beyond Cardboard Cutouts

When I first started banging out words in sophomoric attempts to create the next great fantasy epic, my writing had scads of deficiencies. Over time, I overcame those shortcomings, but my writing was still fatally flawed. The characters were lackluster.

My first breakthrough in figuring out how to create more dynamic characters came with my second short story credit, a speculative fiction piece featuring a father and his young children. My wife read the story and pointed out it had far more emotional resonance than anything I’d ever written, perhaps because it featured a father’s relationship with his children. At the time, I didn’t want to write a novel featuring a father and his children, but I had a realization. I was better at writing younger characters than adults. Opposed to writing an epic fantasy for adults, I needed to target a younger audience.

At the same time, I was working on my third attempt to write a marketable novel. I noticed a theme in the critiques I received. The few times I managed to inject emotion into my protagonist, I was informed the writing was hyperbolic. However, my critique group enjoyed the novel’s female lead, claiming she often stole scenes from my protagonist.

This led me to a decision that has served me well. My next novel was going to feature a female protagonist. The moral of this anecdote is to listen and act upon critical feedback, especially when it comes from multiple sources.

Writing a Female Protagonist

My number one tip: write your female protagonist as a person first. This can be applied to any character, even villains, and your writing will be better for it.

My second tip is to practice. I didn’t drop everything and immediately start writing a novel with a female protagonist. First, I wrote several short stories, all with female leads of various ages and backgrounds, to see if I could pull it off. Turned out I could, at least well enough in the short form to get a few publication credits. This gave me the confidence that maybe I could pull off writing a female protagonist in novel-length fiction.

I settled on writing an urban fantasy with a teenage protagonist. I imagine her as a typical high school student with friends, homework, and bullies to survive. Unbeknownst to her and everyone else, she possesses untapped magic, which she will discover and attempt to master as the story progresses.

When I started reading the piece to my critique group, it wasn’t all roses and unicorns. I still needed to tweak my protagonist, but I soon received positive feedback on my characterization.

Why It Worked

Writing a teenage female protagonist gave me extra degrees of separation between myself and the character. It made it easier to separate how I might respond to a situation from how the character should react. Exercising this writerly muscle has made it easier for me to write all types of characters.

If you struggle to create dynamic characters, ask yourself if you need an extra degree or two of separation between yourself and the people in your head. Changing the age, gender identity, or ethnicity of a character might be all that’s needed to unlock your creativity and bring a character to life. Of course, you might tweak other aspects of the character. The point is to alter how you perceive the character, so you write them as a realistic, multifaceted person.

Practicing writing characters with different backgrounds helps too. An easy way to do this is to write short stories as writing exercises with no publication expectations. If the story is published, awesome. If not, it doesn’t matter because writing the story was an exercise.

Always listen to critical feedback about your characters, even if it’s hard to accept. I find the criticisms that are the most difficult to take are the ones to listen to the most. Those are the criticisms pointing out flaws at the core of your writing.

If you face struggles similar to mine, I challenge you to try my suggestions. You might discover all you need to go from cardboard cutouts to characters readers will love are a few extra degrees of separation. That’s what I needed to get my first novel from the slush pile to debut.

Author Bio:

Dan Rice pens the young adult urban fantasy series The Allison Lee Chronicles in the wee hours of the morning. The series kicks off with Dragons Walk Among Us, which Kirkus Reviews calls, “An inspirational and socially relevant fantasy.”

To learn more, click here to visit his website or here to join his newsletter.

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