NOVEMBER, 2019
LESS IS SELDOM MORE:
AVOID INSUBSTANTIAL CHARACTERS
By: Alice Orr
Last month I asked
the question, “Who is
driving your story?” I
cautioned that you
must have the proper
protagonist at the
wheel. The most fas-
cinating person in the
room. The one with
the most to lose, and a desperate need to
win. Every eye must be on her. Every
heart must root for her to triumph.
What if your main character can‟t
realistically carry such an overwhelming
burden? What if he isn‟t strong enough
for your reader to believe him in that
role? Does that mean you have to scrap
the entire story and start a new one? My
almost always answer would be,
“Absolutely not!” You simply have to
make some changes. Specifically, changes
to your main character.
Can you really reinvent someone as
pivotal to your narrative as your main
character? The answer to that one is en-
tirely up to you. I‟d like a dollar in my
pocket for every writer who has told me,
in no uncertain terms, that she could not
possibly alter her story. Usually, in ways
much less far-reaching than what I‟m
suggesting here.
“Definitely not. Totally impossible.
Cannot be done,” the author protests. As
if her story‟s characters and settings and
circumstances were as fixed and final and
inevitable as sunrise the next morning.
17
As if to change a sentence would be peel-
ing off a chunk of her own living flesh,
one word at a time.
“Yoo hoo,” I respond. “All of those
so-called immutables are imaginary.” The
places, the predicaments, even the peo-
ple. You made them up. They only exist
in your head, in the universe you created
for them. And you are the Grand Em-
press of that universe. You can do any-
thing you want there. As long as what-
ever you do serves your story by making
it stronger.
Change can give your story new
life—especially necessary change to your
main character. In my many years as
editor and then agent, I read many manu-
scripts where such change was more than
necessary, it was crucial. Where the main
character, who should have been the
vivid center of the story‟s vitality, ren-
dered it dull as dirt instead.
What was to be done with these
flawed fictions that limped across my
desk? Most often, the characters who
drooped and dragged their stories down-
ward were more in need of modification
than replacement. Something had to be
winnowed out, or added on, to make
them capable of hooking a reader in the
heart, as it is every self-respecting hero‟s
first duty to do.
Which goes double for capturing the
positive attention of an editor or agent.
Publishing professionals read a lot of
dreck. In my own experience, most ulti-
mately rejectable submissions were me-
diocre rather than terrible. The mandate
of the pub world pro is to acquire or rep-
resent work that will attract large num-
bers of readers. Reject piles are peopled
by the lessers than that.
Writers sabotage themselves by cre-
ating heroes who are okay, but not ex-
ceptional. Characters that live in the val-
ley of less, not the mountainsides of
more. A character in the process of be-
coming, who cries out for development.
Who doesn‟t yet possess enough sub-
stance, and it shows. Because her creator
doesn‟t yet know her creation well
enough to be writing her.
These are often also characters we
just don‟t believe. At the outset of her
story, she‟s portrayed as a wimp. Can‟t
manage her life and comes across as inef-
fectual, even cowardly, Then, a calamity
occurs, and she transforms into a power-
ful aggressor. She enters a phone booth
as a cipher and emerges as Superwoman.
Beyond cartoonland, adult readers won‟t
buy that.
Continued on Page 17