This week my writing partner was having trouble making decisions about his protagonist’s character arc. One of the ways this was manifesting involved a minor character’s story threatening to overshadow the protagonist.  We were discussing this dilemma during one of our daily writing/life conversations.  What I realized as we talked about why this might be happening is that everything that is not either outlining, writing, or editing may in fact be writer’s block and I am thoroughly suspicious of any outlining that takes more than a few days. If you don’t have a general idea of what your story is after consciously sitting for a few hours a day and mapping it out, you aren’t really mapping it out. You might be musing or you might be overthinking, or maybe you might not really be turned on by the story. Another reason is maybe you have several beginnings, middles and ends and can’t decide which one to write. More about commitment next week. 

To be clear, I am not talking about collaborating with someone, or taking a commission to write someone else’s idea where they are going to have input.  Those outlines could take longer, perhaps months with a complex subject and a picky collaborator/patron.  I am talking about an idea you get and decide to write a story about. Whether you outline or not, whether it is a sketchy skeleton or a full out scene-by-scene, you have to realize that an outline is not a story and eventually you have to write it.

I also realized that every single thing that happens in the writing process is designed to either help you find your story or to help you destroy it. To find out which one you are experiencing, you need to self-reflect. The answer is sometimes murky, but if you are honest with yourself, you can squash the infidels and get on with creating.  

If I take the hypothetical example of a main character’s arc remaining frustratingly unclear or stalling while a secondary character is charming you and seems to know exactly where they are going, I can reach a few different conclusions. For each of these there are several ways to approach the problem.  First, you should come to the realization that you don’t need to write things chronologically. If the end is laid out in images before you, write it. If when you think of the bar scene that happens in the second act you can smell the stale beer and hear the horrible pop music on the speakers, write it.  If that minor character starts tapping her foot and sucking her teeth, it may just be time to write her. If you don’t think you can write her because the main character’s arc is the catalyst for her arc, then maybe you need to let go and let god, as they say and trust her to tell you her story.

Alternately, it may be that she is actually the main character of the story in disguise. This doesn’t happen to me often in prose, but I find that a lot of times when I am writing poetry that my first few lines wind up becoming extraneous upon editing and reflection. It was like I made a false start, but once, as one of my friends says, “the antenna is up,” then I realize where the actual poem is. I am sure there is a corollary for prose. The danger to watch for when another character starts to talk over the character you are writing is if it is monkey mind trying to distract you from doing the work.  Monkey mind is lazy and doesn’t want to do anything. Monkey mind wants to dream big dreams until the going gets tough and you are in the trenches scrambling for ammo. Then monkey mind is off to the next daydream.

I have had two instances in my writing where a minor character has demanded a bigger role. In the fantasy novel I am currently shopping to publishers, I had a character named Keith, who was human, but had some magical powers. My plan was for my main character to meet him on an estate before the main character embarks on his quest. Keith was supposed to be left behind when the story switched from our world to the fantasy world.  He refused to do that. The more I wrote him, the more I liked him, and before I knew it, he had become my main character’s sidekick and, later in the story, becomes a minor hero himself. Moments like this are why, even in a complex novel like that one, I do cursory outlines if any. If I had a detailed outline with many interlocking parts, and suddenly I have a Keith telling me he is a contender and I need to keep him in the game, then I either have to revise my entire outline, or slap a gag on Keith and wonder forever if he was the key to a better story. 

The second instance happened in a novel in progress. I planned to have an acolyte in this religious order deliver a devastating and infuriating message to one of the high priests who was also the villain of the story. The villain is quite intimidating, and I tried to write it so the reader believed there was a distinct possibility that he would literally kill the messenger. This character, Matthew, was supposed to deliver the message and that was all.  Whether he was to be killed was up in the air, but I didn’t really plan on it.  Neither did I plan to ever see him again.  However, as I wrote the scene, Matthew started to have personality. He was scared, yes, but not as scared as he should have been.  He was bumbling and kept calling the villain “sir” instead of “father” and suddenly I knew that Matthew was going to be important later.

I have previously mentioned the dangers of these characters perhaps wandering off into the brambles and getting both the reader and writer lost. The other problem that might arise is a one of decision and commitment that I will address next week.

I am not a religious person, but the best analogy I can use to give advice about controlling your characters’ roles in your stories is to completely oversimply the bible—because when all else fails go for sacrilege.

The bible is divided into two parts, the old testament and the new testament. In the old testament, God is very obsessed with rules and is rigid and angry that people are not following these rules. He gets so angry that he periodically destroys whole peoples and tribes. Eventually, he gets so fed up that he grabs Noah and a few select animals and destroys the entire world.

In the new testament, god sends down his son who is a lot more forgiving—pardon the sacrilegious pun.  Jesus, rather than having rigid laws and structures and a set of dietary laws said that god’s will could be summed up in two commandments, as outlined starting in Matthew 23:37. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

If you think of yourself, the writer, as the god of your worlds, your stories, then if you are an old testament god, you may be trying to fit square pegs into round holes. You may want your world to be structured so that you are secure in what will be happening and angry at the characters who disobey that order. Ultimately, you may need to destroy the entire world because you damned your creation.

A new testament god is less concerned with the specifics and is looking at the big picture. Jesus is god who has learned to let go of the small stuff.  The new testament writer doesn’t care if the story veers in an unanticipated direction, or if characters don’t behave exactly the way he wants them to. The new testament writer, as Jesus, cares only that the characters love each other, and through that love show the love that is present in the writer for the story and his readers.

May you be more Jesus than Yahweh, my friends.

Keep Writing.