Just Supporting The G/t Community

So my approach to characters, specifically ones that are more of the main/core casts, is to specifically treat them like other, real people. There are some characters that are more background, that are more narrative, and that's not to say they aren't 'real people' within that world, but from the perspective of the story and the characters who we are getting the perspectives of, they are less complex and less deep. An example would be Thorne. We know as much about the man as anyone really truly cares to among the main cast, and given his position and power as it pertains specifically to the narrative of The Stranding, we won't be giving a damn about how the man likes his eggs, unlike with someone like Daniel.

Melanie and Henry as our main characters are ones we tend to get to be deep into the cores of. We're going to be in their heads and seeing through their eyes the most out of everyone, so it's not as much of a surprise that by the end of however-many chapters, you know their favourite colours and foods, what times of the day they like to wake up, and a bit of background things that build up the main gears of their decision-making processes. We're going to be seeing them do the most changing over the narrative and see more deeply how the narrative effects them.

Daniel and Peter we ALSO get into the heads of a fair bit. I'll be honest with you, I wasn't expecting when I started to write The Stranding to ever really jump directly into Daniel's perspective like I do with the others, but the more I wrote for them all and saw how important Daniel was to Peter's whole being-- they both effect each other's decision making processes a wild, wild amount-- it became almost natural to wind up behind his eyes at points.

I think that's where a lot of my character-creation and really getting into the core of people really, honestly comes from. It's thinking of how these characters connect/have connected/will connect with the main characters in the story. Why are they connecting that way, why do they have the effects that they do? There's so many layers of complexities to every relationship that you, as a person have with other real people, that once you have things set up, things just start to click into place.

Henry and Daniel do not get along. Why?

They used to get along. What happened, why did it happen, why are they still carrying these feelings? Why did they get along before? How did they click, where did they chafe against each other, etc.

What flaws are they both portraying that make this conflict worse? Have either of them learned or changed in a way that might have made it better? Can they change in a way that might make it better? How would that have to happen?

It's through these interactions-- big and small, though not in the usual way I use those words haw haw-- that you start to piece together who a character is, specifically by contrasting them against another that you might already know (or that you might think you already know-- those are the fun ones).

Here's a sneak peek at the next chapter of The Stranding, whenever I manage to get around to writing and editing again when everything here has settled down more:

-----------------------------

The sailor eased himself into the chair and groaned as loudly as the planks did while the Pyrrohn adjusted course. “She wasn’t aware--” he tried to barrel out another excuse, this time for her. Daniel was not about to have it.

“Do not feed me horse shit,” the words hissed out of him, and the spots of heat on his face made him hope his rage was obvious. Perhaps if he looked as angry as he felt, the man across from him would understand how serious this actually was. “What she did was tantamount to assault of an officer, and that will be discussed with the weight it deserves once we’re back with the Commander.”

If there was something to be said for Lemuels, it was that he was rarely an obvious man. At least, he hadn’t been back in the older days. Since he had returned, however, his expressions were larger. More varied. Readable in a way they hadn’t been before, but also now like an untranslated poem in a foreign language. Every time Grant believed he was close to understanding what Lemuels was feeling, the man did something wholly erratic in response.

Such as now, while he waited for the sailor to argue. To jump to defense. To find some excuse as to why his fifty-foot menace should avoid any punishment or consequence. Such as now, when he did the opposite.

“You’re right, she will be, and I merely want you to understand that she will be just as upset as you are that any of it happened,” Lemuels explained, a hand coming to brush the loose hairs away from his face. 

“I don’t--” Grant began to snap at the man.

“Daniel, just understand that she already understands that she shouldn’t have. That’s all.”

He wanted to shout at the man in the stupid blue coat. He wanted to demand an explanation, some kind of clarification.

But there it was, that obvious expression again: Henry Lemuels looking tired and bitter-- bitter!-- at the wall of the tiny cabin.

‘He should be preening,’ Daniel thought, shaking what the sailor had said out of his thoughts like a duck shedding water. ‘He always preened and swelled with obnoxious pride after any Naval drill or operation. The man looks like driftwood in the rain.’

“We shall see,” the Captain said tersely, eyes dropping from the sight. “Once we’re back, we shall see.”

-----------------------------

It's their mix of familiarity and strangeness with each other that I feel draws out a lot of their deeper parts. Every person you meet is a gem of many facets, and the light will hit a different side depending on the situations they're in and the other people they're interacting with. In The Stranding, they're seeing some of the old facets they were familiar with before, but also seeing new ones. They're also shining the light on facets of each other that they had been trying to hide or thought they had moved past.

Another thing I really like to do when developing/exploring a character, even for my own sake, is to remember the golden truth of writing.

You are every character you make.

In some way or another, every character is you. You are following your own logic to make decisions for them, to create the paths they're choosing to forge. Lean into this. Let it be you. Even when you're writing a character who's a foil, or someone who's there to specifically act against and conflict with your main characters, your heroes, the goals you want them to achieve... don't distance yourself from it.

You've been a 'terrible person' in your past, from someone's perspective. You've made mistakes, you've been in bad places and you've learned and grown from them. Think back to your past self, think back to the you that made those mistakes and throw away what cringe comes from it; the person you were made the decisions you made for reasons. Try to empathetic of that. Try to understand that everyone around you is always several lessons ahead of you, and several lessons behind you, in a myriad of different categories.

If you need a character, especially a more main-one, to make a decision to push the plot forward and you, yourself can not get into their head enough to find a reason why they would do it-- something with a core, something with a goal, something with a trail that led to it that you could describe as a logic that you understand, even if just a little!-- then you need to step back and rethink what you're hoping to achieve. See if there's another way to get to it.

Something your main characters/audience/someone hoping to reach the end-goal of your story will not like needs to happen, you still need to be able to go 'Yeah Daniel's being a prick, but he has his reasons. He is compelled to do these things because _____', and that core reason? A lot of the time, it can be really simple at a glance, and diving deeper into it you can discover all kinds of new, incredibly nuanced things about the characters, world and story you've created/are creating.

Daniel's core often comes back to doing what's best for The Eastern Coastal Watch. He wants it to be strong, he wants it to be able to continue to operate, he wants it to be good.

When you explore deeper into why, you find out things like the reason he's so attached to the Watch is not just because Peter's in charge and he wants to help Peter, but because he truly believes it's a branch that focuses on helping people, helping the towns and people nearby, helping the kingdom as a whole, whereas he feels the others are increasingly more about expansion, growth, power in ways that lose that noble pursuit of simply being there when they're needed by the people, etc.

Why does helping citizenry in those ways matter so much? Where did that start? These are the fun threads I really like to pull when you're getting to the core of people.

SO ANYWAY, I am sorry if this is just... wild rambling. My head's still scrambled eggs from everything going on IRL, but I really really loved getting this ask and thinking about it, and it gave me a nice chance to drag poor Daniel back out of brain storage to rotate him in the blorbo-rotator again as examples, hahaha. I don't know if this is necessarily helpful, but I hope it is? At least in some weird way? This is the kind of shit I could talk about forever if I had the spoons to go grab a coffee with someone and the coffee shop owners wouldn't be mad that I'd be there for 3-4 hours just yammering.

Whenever I'm actually like, settled and things are stable again, maybe we can connect in DMs or something and chatter about this and pick the process apart together sometime!

Much love always,

How many "main" characters are there? These are the ones that will be in nearly every single chapter, who we will be following either through their own perspective or the perspective of the other main characters throughout the entire story. This step is to help you set up the core points for your main cast. What are their defining features as individuals, etc. What are their goals typically/what would their goals have been if they hadn't wound up in this situation? How do they usually achieve these goals?

Which ones are the MOST out of their element in the g/t dynamic? Is the character that's big or small USED to being that size, vs the other one? Are they in an environment that fits them/is familiar to them with little changing, or is the environment itself changed? This sets up who is likely to be the fastest changed at the start of the main meat of your story. A borrower isn't likely to be changed as a character as much by being seen by a giant, who they know exists, as say someone who has suddenly been shrunk/wound up in a world where everything is bigger. Melanie was not going to change as much meeting Henry in the Rescue, as she was going to change (even after being used to interacting with Henry in the Rescue) in the Stranding, where she now has so little familiar environment around her in comparison to before.

How has the basic, bare-bones version of this situation (are now small/big, are in a big world/small world, etcetc) changed the character's goals? How does it change how they would achieve their goals now? How are things prioritized for them in terms of goals? Pick one character to focus on and then focus on their other characters in regards to THEM: Do the other characters HELP or HINDER them achieving their goals? How do they do this? Are they doing this intentionally or unintentionally? Do this for all of your main cast.

***While doing that last step, I usually then wind up with at least a couple of notes about how each main character's core personality traits are likely to unintentionally/unconsciously conflict or compliment with all of the other's. This is wildly beneficial for thinking of/plotting out scenes with the most interesting dynamics at their core.

Biggest Goal for me, the Author: Once I have a decent amount of these core things locked in, I look at what I WANT from this story/from these characters. What situations do I want to explore and what dynamics are going to be the most interesting/satisfying TO ME to write and explore. Do I want a nice, easy time for characters to reach a positive outcome where they're on the same page, working toward the same thing, and the only puzzle/problem they encounter and have to overcome is the situation? Or do I want them to have to kind of fight and butt heads? Do I want them to fight over conflicting goals, or just over conflicting ideas on how to achieve the SAME goal? Over the course of this event, do I want them to go from being close to being farther apart dynamically? Do I want them to go from being father apart to being closer? Or, do I want to throw in a stick of dynamite that would make the dynamic they had previously somehow even stronger-- and then set up a future situation where that is explored either as a good thing/bad thing for them, or for the others of the story?

I'll be honest, I will tend to keep a character's full history/full goals a bit more vague toward the beginning. You will know their main priority at the time, the most immediate prior situation that lead them into this moment (the story), and everything else will be revealed a bit more later as it becomes relevant. This is my secret trick for keeping my characters fluid and getting to write them a bit more tailored to the situations I want to write and explore. Grant and Martellis are extremely close, and have been for a long time. The minutia of how that came to be is known only to me until it's story relevant, and in some cases it gives me the freedom to tweak it from what my original ideas for them were as the story unfolds and I find them in situations where I want them to have more direct roots that go to how they would react to the scene/issue.

Personally, the thing I want every single character to have, from main characters to side characters, to like... one-off, incidental characters, is a goal. A Top Priority. Something that they are working for, something that is going to drive them either into, through, or out of the scene at hand. It doesn't have to be complicated! But it does have to be there. Grant? The Watch. Peter? The Watch *but for way different reasons*. Miller? To find purpose through helping. Jones? Wants to keep Miller out of trouble (this is a joke, Jones has actual dreams and goals outside of Miller I just felt this would be funny). Thorne? An enviable and honourable retirement.

This helps not just set up the existing characters for good ways their dynamics will conflict/compliment others, but how those dynamics will CHANGE as goals (theirs or others) get met. Also lets you develop more characters, more deeply: What would it take for them to change their usual way of achieving their goal? What would it take for them to change their main goal entirely? Loads of space to play.

AND it can give you an excuse to create either more characters, or add more things to existing characters that aren't as fleshed-out yet to create/enhance the dynamics you want to explore. One of your main characters wants to achieve <this> this chapter. What if there was someone who, either intentionally or unintentionally, was in opposition to that? What kind of difficulty could it cause to the main character based on who that character was and their reasons for being in opposition? etc. etc.

How you're going to come to your own process through all of this is probably going to be wildly different from me, writing is an area where there's tons of variety in paths to get you to your goal and it can be based on what you personally find the most interesting, or the most satisfying. I hope these points and ideas help, if only to give you ideas on why they might or might not work for you!