Get Control of Your Characters

Ever have a character show up in your WIP and you liken the experience to a neighbor barging through your front door, bee-lining for your fridge in nothing but Fruit of the Looms?

I have.

So what to do when you’re cruising along with your novel and a character shows up out of the blue? Most certainly a good evaluation is in order. Fridge-going skivvy donning character needs to undergo a necessary exam before he off-roads your work and it ends up in a ditch, then ditched by potential readers.

The following are a few questions you may want to have on hand for an interrogation such as this:

• What is the purpose of this character’s presence in my work? What is his role?
• Does she help reveal any crucial elements about my MC?
• Does he serve as a distraction, thus earning the name Peter Cottontail for veering your work off course?
• Does she move the story along (read Patti Hill’s account of drop dead Fred in this Novel Matters post)?
• How well do you know him and can you trust him not to sabotage your story?

It’s fun to be a writer. We get to play with pretend friends as adults. But we need to keep our friends corralled and we can’t forget who bosses whom.

We are in charge. We can cut them out at any time. Like a skilled director, we too can yell “Cut” and remove characters when they don’t serve to better our work.

Have you ever killed off a drop dead Fred, a Peter Cottontail or a Wandering Wanda? Or on the flip side, have you ever been introduced to an unexpected character who managed to make your WIP sing?

*photo from Flickr