I have a tendency to create overly large casts of characters. I never intend to do this, but I frequently have to spend time in edits pruning away needless people from my first drafts.

One technique that has really helped me is to think through each character’s primary motivator. I started doing this when my cast for The Lost Girl of Astor Street was bloated and my agent suggested I take time to list every major character and their primary goal during the story. I was amazed at how helpful this was for spotting who could be cut.

I found this exercise so useful that I did it before writing Within These Lines.

(This is part of my story workbook that I create for each book I write. If you want to get a free tutorial about how to make one for yourself, all you have to do is subscribe to Go Teen Writers Notes.)

If you want to write a story that reads smoothly, it’s critical that every character serves a distinct purpose. When you know the different primary motivators for each character, not only does it naturally cause each character to play a different role in the story, but you might notice opportunities for conflict baked into their individual goals.

Identifying a primary motivator or story goal for each major character is a great macro level strategy for making sure every character matters, but it’s important on a scene-by-scene level too.

Think about each scene as though you are planning a heist. (Not that I have ever planned a heist, but I’ve watched Ocean’s 11 several times, and I love Ally Carter’s Heist Society series, so I’m totally qualified to rock this analogy.) When planning a heist, everybody has a specific role to play. One is the decoy, another takes care of the technology, another does the actual sneaking in and stealing, and so forth. Unless there’s a very specific need to double up, you never see two people filling the same role in a heist. We don’t need two people dropping in from the ceiling to snatch whatever it was that Tom Cruise was stealing in Mission Impossible. We just need Tom.

You can apply this same idea to each scene of your novel. Think about every character who’s in this scene. Why do you, the author, need them to be there? What purpose are they accomplishing for you? You probably don’t need five characters to disagree with your main character. Or if you do have multiple characters playing the role of disagreeing, be sure to bring out different reasons for disagreeing. We don’t need five different characters saying the same thing.

As important as it is to know why you need the character in the scene, I’ve also found it helpful to consider why the character would say they’re there. Knowing that detail shades the way you write them and keeps your characters from feeling like pawns.

An easy way to spot a useless character in a scene is to ask, “How would this scene be impacted if I cut this character?” Sometimes you might have some “extras” that you put in a scene to provide a certain vibe, but most of the time if you can cut the character and keep the scene intact, then that character is not serving a strong enough purpose. You should either look for ways to give them purpose or remove them completely.

Who are three major characters in your story, and what are their primary motivations or goals?

(If this post felt familiar to you, you must’ve read the original version from our 2018 Grow An Author series. Thanks for hanging out with us for so many years!)

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.