My writing advice on characters that donât fit
You have characters that you don't know how to include into your story? You don't know if they're going to be friends or lovers? Well... Here's my advice:
- Imagine in your head how they'd fit in each role, e.g. the villain, the lover of another person or the mentor.
- Write it down and play with the different ideas. Have a chapter you have to decide what will happen to them? Try to write from a different POV about them, let them do different things/ decide otherwise if they face a decision. Just write it differently.
- Design a third person. If you still can't figure out who what is missing, or who or what needs to do it differently, design a third party guest. Maybe they are the lover of your first character or they should go on the mission, not another character.
- Think of another background of the character. Maybe they don't fit in your plot because of an event of their past. Like a parents death, a relationship that ended, a battle they've lost. If you have mentioned that now wrong detail, don't forget to change it in the story. Maybe you solve some other problems with it.
- Have another person look at your story, or just the problem. Another pair of eyes mostly sees things you don't.
- Leave the story for a few days. Do something else, don't think about it. Meet some friends, go outside, but don't think of your problem. It's likely it will solve itself or you come up with different ideas.
- Also you can put their appearance later into the story. But this doesn't work in every plot.
And in case even that just won't help you, here is the ultimative super tip:
- Just forget the problem for a while. Continue writing and you'll find yourself including that little bastard in a way that fits them. All unintended.
I hope that can help you. It did work for me.
