Writing a story is no easy task, but it’s fun to dream up new lives and new worlds, and our initial excitement often gives us the momentum to make a fair amount of progress up front.

For most of us, the cracks in our stories don’t start appearing until we’ve reached the middle. And then, if we’re not disciplined, we can easily throw our hands up in the air and abandon this story beginning for a shiny new idea.

The truth? Starting a story is the easy part. Finishing a story takes guts.

If we’re going to grow as an author, we must figure out how to solve problems instead of avoiding them. Patching cracks is part of the storytelling life and you can absolutely learn to do it.

Last Friday, we learned that the first step in this process is to diagnose the problem. My recommendation is to attack the diagnosis from a standpoint of story element.

Every story has five essential components. We call them story elements. They are: Character, Setting, Plot, Conflict, and Resolution.

For the purposes of diagnosis, we can lump conflict and resolution problems in with plot issues and that gives us three major problem groups to discuss over the next three Fridays.

Character, Setting, and Plot.

Today, let’s talk about some of the common problems we often find in our characters once we reach the middle of a story:

Is every character in your story serving a purpose? Every character in your story must have, not only have a purpose, but a clear and distinct purpose. And the best characters in any story often fulfill more than one objective.

Protagonists are fairly easy to sort out–without them, your story doesn’t move forward. But what about all those secondary characters? And tertiary characters (did you even know you had tertiary characters)? Have you lost track of all these people you’ve created?

Sometimes story middles have a way of showing us that we don’t need nearly as many characters as we once thought. And sometimes story middles remind us that we created characters early on and we’ve not used them to their fullest potential. They’re available to help move our story forward if only we’ll flesh them out a bit more.

So, what do you do when you realize you’ve created characters that aren’t serving your story as they should?

You could cut the character outright. Simple and clean. And sometimes very freeing to not have to worry about developing another character arc.

You could combine two (or more) characters. In my current work in progress, I had a father figure and a big brother figure who served the same purpose. And since they were very peripheral characters, more talked about and thought about than actually seen, the two names and various attributes became heavy and clunky, adding words to a story that needed less telling. It was an easy (though painful) call to take the most crucial aspects of both characters and create one singularly important tie to my protagonist’s life back home.

You could re-purpose a character. This, I think, is an oft overlooked solution to so many problems we find at our story’s middle. Sometimes we’ve created a character because they felt RIGHT in a story and it takes a while for us to figure out just why that is. It’s possible this wayward character, drifting without a purpose, can help carry a storyline for you.

Maybe this character exists to introduce a plot twist or to become an obstacle that will move your story forward. Maybe this character can provide the answer to a plot hole you’ve yet to fill. Before you decide a character is worthless on the page, consider the other problems you’ve been trying to puzzle out. You might find a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Is your main character boring? Early in our Grow An Author series, I talked about how I discovery write my protagonists. The goal is always to create a lead character who is compelling enough to follow throughout an entire book. Once we reach the story’s middle, we get our first real test.

If you’re not excited to come back to your main character’s story, you need to ask yourself why. Perhaps you need to add to your hero’s complexity. It’s also possible you haven’t given your main character enough opportunity to show off who he or she really is. We’ll talk more about this when we get to plot, but it’s in the dark moments that we see the shine of our characters. Maybe you need to give your hero time to dazzle the reader.

Is the right character telling the story? This is more a question of perspective than character, but the two issues are so intertwined we need to discuss it here. Whether you’re telling your story in first, second, or third person, by the middle of your tale, you should be convinced that you have chosen the correct viewpoint(s).

If other characters are more compelling, if their stories are the ones that beg to be the center of attention, you need to make an adjustment. Either up the focus on your hero and the quality of their journey, or switch viewpoints. It’s a big adjustment halfway through, but better now than when you’ve reached the end.

Do you know what each of your characters want and need? A character’s wants and needs should play into their dialogue and should motivate their actions. What makes wants and needs so interesting is that they are rarely one in the same.

Few of us want the things we actually need. Often these two are at odds. For example, we may want peace and quiet, but what we need is the company of others. The warring complexity of these two states create for juicy, meaningful moments.

As we draft, we often lose sight of our original designs for our characters. Stopping now to refocus each character’s wants and needs will pay off in dividends as you move forward, and it may bring clarity and the fix your story needs.

Tell me about problems you’ve discovered in your characters? What would you like to improve upon? Are you brave enough to make a major character adjustment at the midpoint of your story?