First Sunday Q&A: Should This Person Even Be in My Story?

You love writing them, but how do you tell if they really contribute? How to look for the "why" of each person in your story via a simple bio exercise

Dec 01, 2024

Welcome to our community of practicing writers at all levels of experience. Here’s where we can dissect and discuss your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. Send your challenges and questions to me and I’ll do my best to address them, along with great resources from other writers. You can message me on Substack or email me at mary@marycarrollmoore.com. And a big thanks to the 100+ of you who have become paid subscribers to Your Weekly Writing Exercise. Your support truly keeps me writing this newsletter each Friday plus once a month on the first Sunday.

three yellow crumbled papers inside gray trash bin — Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Q: Some of my characters feel worthless to the story I’m writing but they feel far from that, to me. Can I say that I tend to get attached? I’m sure the attachment doesn’t always serve (me or) the story, but I can’t seem to change my feelings. The real downside is that I am in the middle of a novel with an exploding cast.

I’ve gotten great feedback from my writing group but I’m stuck. How do I figure out who is relevant and who is just someone I’m having fun with? At what stage do I start to triage people? If' I’m still working with my first draft of the manuscript, is it too early to trim? (I hope you’ll say yes.)

But I do know I’ll have to do the deed eventually, so I’d like some steps to take. For instance: What happens when there is an event that involves one of the questionable characters, the ones who aren’t really making a difference in the story? I’m thinking of one particular person who is kinda pleasant wallpaper. Do I change them into hateful?

I know you’ve always suggested that each scene should move the story forward but that would mean getting rid of this person I really like. Some of my less worthwhile characters supported the narrator in her past, but there was no conflict back then. Should this character be part of the story now?

How does a writer at revision decide what is only working for her, versus what is actually working for the book?

A: Last month on George Saunders’ excellent newsletter, Story Club, he spoke about this very topic. You can read the full post here. Essentially, he answered your question better than I ever could (I admire George very much). He wrote, “Sometimes, in early drafts, I see that I’ve made two characters but they are somehow not reacting to one another. The writing is good enough but the scenes haven’t come alive in that particular way that happens when two characters start exerting an influence on one another.”

I think about this for my own writing, since like you, I also tend to fall in love with my characters. Or I fall into a passionate dislike and can’t seem to let go of that group either.

Early drafts and revisions are all about discovering the story, not distilling it into something tighter and more formed. I let myself roll with whomever shows up—at least for a while. I’m still figuring out what I want to say and how is it best said. Such latitude is important to giving imagination freedom to roam.

Often, though, my characters accumulate without purpose. They are riding on two separate trains running parallel tracks. Maybe their personal stories wave to each other. But they aren’t interacting other than that. To use George’s analogy, their wires haven’t yet crossed.

As said above, all this is fine when drafting, when I still don’t know the flow of the scenes or how I’ll build them into chapters. No way I can tell who needs trimming out of the story.

Not everyone bloats with people. Some go wild with too many places. Others too many dramatic events (my post on November 21, “Finding the Pivot in the Problems,” gives some tips for trimming events, if you tend that way).

But this weekend we’ll focus on people and your two questions: When do you decide to start trimming out secondary characters and how do you decide who gets the boot?

Beware the early editor

Timing is essential in assessing the worth of characters.

For a long time, at least in my experience, you just don’t know. That’s because when we first draft a person on the page, we often only have a sketch. We haven’t yet explored their backstory extensively. We haven’t seen the intersection of this new cast member with the story’s important moments for our main characters.

I’ve suffered after trimming too early. I get impatient, decide to clean house. It never serves my story’s evolution. Yes, it’s also damaging to carry along everyone you’ve written in, convincing yourself that the large cast can all contribute. But deciding that a character is worthless before you’ve allowed time to get to know them speaks to me of a lack of trust in the process.

Here’s the process so many of us go through: We explore first, we gather. We write plenty of stuff we may end up discarding, people too. To me, it’s the way of the healthy creative mind. It’s fine to include a character who tickled your imagination early on, as long as you know the process may eliminate them later.

As long as you know this, it pays to include more than exclude. And not everyone will agree with me. Those who love to sketch out the story at length before writing a word may do this exploration and sorting in their head or on index cards or on a storyboard (see below) without drafting anything. I have to write, to figure out a person’s worth.

Excluding ideas, especially in the early drafts, constipates the imagination. The editor takes too large a role. Remember the movie, Finding Forrester? My favorite line: “You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think!”

So when we edit (think) too much in that early draft, the heart takes a backseat.

Start with one

When I start a story, I usually start with one person who intrigues me on an emotional or psychological level. The heart is fully engaged with this person, in curiosity, wondering how they have become who they are, why they do what they do. I have a lot of compassion for my characters, especially the mishaps. I want to get to know them.

Some writers begin with a pair or trio or a crowd. Personally, I have trouble starting with more than one person, maybe because it takes me time to get to know someone—I’m slow, overall, in relationship building. I take whatever time I need to get into that person’s heart and life: their place in the story, their environment, their consequences, their longings.

I am fairly strict with myself to stay open, to not think anything about them is irrelevant at that early stage. Do I really know yet? My view of the story—and this person—is still so limited.

I’ve found this approach to pay off in a big way, because it makes my characters complex. The ones I write who are less successful are the ones I think I know too soon and make judgements about. Does that make sense? What’s your approach?

Bring in someone else

After a few scenes or chapters, as I get a clearer sense of this character and how they might play out in the story, I bring in someone else.

I do the same with that person: spend time getting to know them until I have a second character in their own train, running on that parallel track. I start to play with ideas on how they might “cross wires,” to use George’s expression. That’s when things get more interesting, of course.

Again, this is just my approach. If you’re a writer who starts with a crowd, more power to you. I can’t get into a lot of people at once without feeling like I’ve skated over their lives superficially.

I may be an introvert with my characters too—just realized that! But as my particular cast, or crowd, grows, as I get to know each person, I keep adding. One more, then another.

Then I begin to test each of them for their effect on the story. First, on the story itself, then on the main character, whoever that is turning out to be.

Testing their effect

There’s a point, either when you get feedback—as it sounds like you have, from your question—or you lose the thread of the story because of the sheer numbers, when you’ve decided you have to test the effect of each person on the story itself. What do they contribute? Are they more than the “kinda pleasant wallpaper” or historical person in someone else’s life?

It works best, I’ve found, to start your testing with events, a routine task on your first pass through the manuscript at revision. Ask if each action furthers the story’s conflict and how. If it doesn’t, rethink it. Either jettison it or rewrite to make it more relevant. You’re after a gross evaluation of the plot. You’re considering the cause-and-effect of events first, because how people weigh in, depends on the weight of the events.

I’ll share my little tutorial on the storyboard again below, in case you want to use it to run this first test. It lets you study your choices, working both backwards and forwards along the timeline.

South Park’s test

Here’s one more great way to test the cause-and-effect of your events before you test the worth of characters.

Remember the show, South Park? I admire this simple formula that creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker use for testing the purpose of events in their scripts (and eventually, the characters in those events).

Rather than setting up your sequence of events as this, then that, try looking at each one what it causes. Ask if each event creates the next scene, in some way, using the formula This because of that.

Once you have your events tested, you can take the test into the people you’ve chosen. You ask a very similar questions to the one above:

Because they are in the story, what happens that can’t happen otherwise?

Useful or not

Maybe this person helps the reader understand more of the why behind the actions, decisions, motivations of the narrator. Maybe they cause the narrator to do something because of something they say or do or discover. Maybe they cause a longing in the narrator. Maybe they cause a loss.

We’re crossing wires now, testing if the intersection of this character with the main player, the narrator, creates more tension.

Sometimes my test results in a complex “genealogy” chart. Maybe my new character isn’t directly affecting the narrator but they affect someone who does. That works too.

I try to start with the narrator because this is my most effective person onstage at any time. I know them best, I’ve spent serious time with them. They affect the trajectory of the story the most. So whatever or whomever enhances my understanding about this narrator, that person or event is worthwhile. Not trim. Develop—make even more so.

The all-important why

For me, writing is a search for the why. Why this happens, why it means something to this person, why they decide to do this or that in response.

Why is the most important gift your characters can give each other. As you learn more about the why, it makes the writing more compelling and complex, allowing everyone to stick with the reader in a convincing way, creating no doubt as to their purpose in the story.

So your task—and mine, of course, in my writing—is to get to the why of your narrator, and as I said, anything that brings you closer is worth a look. There are lots of ways to get deeper into character, you know many of them if you read craft books or take classes on writing or have followed this newsletter for a while. Today, though, I’d like to revisit my simplest exercise: the bio.

Maybe it’s my background as a journalist, all those years interviewing people for features. I take my interviewing skills into my imagination, sit down with the character I’m testing, and let it rip.

You have to suspend disbelief for this. It’s quite amazing how much information you’ll “get.”

List the questions you want to ask, just as a good interviewer would, but also listen carefully to what you get as you ask. Think of your favorite podcast or TV show, where the host successfully draws out the person in unexpected ways. Imagine what the answers might be—just write whatever comes, without analyzing it.

The final step: turning points

Once you have the bio, examine it for the pivotal moments in this person's life that shaped their beliefs and misunderstandings about themselves and the world.

Look for the intersection of their values with the world. Look for disappointment, loss, revenge, hope. Wherever there’s conflict or agreement, there’s often a turning point.

Circle these moments. Then consider your narrator. Revisit your narrator’s pivotal moments and the quality of them, the impact on their life. See if you can locate any echoes or parallels between the turning points of the two characters.

For instance, the abandonment by a parent and the forging of an independent spirit because of it.

I think about how this paralleled emotional experience might connect them, not just at an event level but emotionally. What did they each do with this experience? What did they learn? What changed inside?

Writing the bio will bring these to your awareness, which is a very effective way of deciding who really belongs in your story and who may not.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, what you might try from this, what you’ve learned in your own writing life about how to choose who belongs in your story.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise