StoryCraft Novel Challenge Day 11: Every character should have a purpose.
When we’re developing a novel, sometimes the ideas just come flying. Suddenly, we’re surrounded by a lush world with a host of different characters who make up its parts. The ideation period is so important because we need to allow every part of the story to come to us naturally, but at some point, decisions need to be made.
It can be really difficult to decide whether or not a character “belongs” in the novel, especially once we become attached to them, but characters who don’t have a narrative purpose end up bloating the story and could turn readers away. If a character doesn’t add anything to the plot, characterization, or the worldbuilding, then should they make the cut?
An easy way to look at this when we’re building the foundation of our stories is to categorize characters into roles. You don’t need to fill every role for every story, but every character should have a role and add to the overall narrative.
Protagonists are main characters who undergo an arc of change. They showcase a point-of-view of the story, and act as the lens of the reader. You can have a single protagonist, a dual perspective, or even multiple POV characters for an epic story.
Antagonists stand in the way of your protagonists’ goals. They can be villains as well, but they don’t have to be. Sometimes a character will get in the way even though they mean well, which makes them an antagonist in the story without necessarily being a baddie. Antagonists also work well when they have an opposite emotional arc to the protagonist, which makes for delicious contrast.
Mentors are the opposite in that they help our protagonists along the journey. This could be your classical mentor character like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, or a more modern version could be your plucky heroine’s BFF who guides the protagonist through decision making and can act as a voice of reason.
Secondary Characters can then be classed as Friends or Enemies, in that they either help or hinder your protagonist(s). They could add to the worldbuilding by providing context for a centuries-old family feud, or literally stand in the way of the journey by adding an obstacle. The point of this outlook is to make sure each character within your story, no matter how small, has a reason to be there and they don’t become wallpaper.
We talk about this deeper in our online course StoryCraft: Writing Your Novel, which is currently in Beta! You can save $150 with SCBETA
Once you have your character list started, we’ll go deeper into the specific roles this week as we build out the Characters and the World for our story to take place in.
Use hashtag #StoryCraftNovelChallenge to connect with other writers and share your progress!
Happy Writing,
Jess and Theo