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A writer emailed me to ask, “How do you handle it when you have a secondary character who makes your story seem complete, but also seems superfluous. You know, when his/her personality just isn’t emerging like it should, and (s)he isn’t really THAT necessary to the plot, but there are some things about him/her that you really do need. How do you handle deleting him/her when you’ve already written the whole book, and are only now realizing that (s)he’s unnecessary?”
This is a wonderful question.
First let’s briefly look at a few things that might make a character unnecessary:
- They don’t help the main character on his or her journey.
- Their life seemingly revolves around the main character (they have no problems of their own)
- They are never in conflict with the main character.
If a character isn’t doing any of these things, you have three choices:
- Leave them written the way they are and frustrate your readers.
- Flesh them out more and make them matter.
- Cut them.
I try to avoid number 1 whenever possible, but I’ve done both number 2 and 3 with success. Both take work, especially if you’ve already written the book, but if you’re committed to writing a good book, it’s worth it.
First let’s talk about fleshing them out. If you’re going that route, here are some questions you can ask:
- Can I give this character a story line of his/her own?
- If I can, how can their story impact my main character’s?
- Can this character help my main character somehow? (Like provide them with something they need for their journey, either a piece of truth or wisdom or something tangible?)
- How could this character be more in conflict with my main character?
- Could they do something that challenges my main character to think about the world differently?
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| James Scott Bell talks about character journaling in his fabulous book. |
If you’re committed to keeping this character around, you might try doing a character journal for them and seeing if you can get them to “speak” to you about what their story is and why they matter. (That always sounds hokey when I talk like that, about characters speaking to us, but that really has been my experience during the character journaling process, that I unlock great bits about my secondary characters.)
Or if you decide they don’t matter or that your story is already feeling too cluttered, you can cut them. There’s no shame in that. In The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series, I cut about 3 of Skylar’s friends, and even still when my agent read it, she was like, “Skylar has too many friends; you need to cut one.” So I cut yet another, and it had zero impact on the story. The few things Caroline said in the book I was able to pass off to the other friends, Alexis and Lisa, which fleshed them out a bit more anyway. The biggest hassle was proofreading, since I sometimes referred to the “3 girls” and needed to make sure my numbers reflected cutting Caroline.
I suppose there’s also a fourth option, which is to merge characters. In the manuscript I’m revamping right now, I discovered I have two antagonists – one named Molly and one named Holly and both of them are after my main character’s boyfriend. This book has already been through a couple drafts, and for whatever reason, I’m just now catching this. Molly and Holly are going to be merged because the story certainly doesn’t need both of them.
Have a writing question? Email me.