How To Make Sure Every Character Counts In Your Story

Stephanie Morrill is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com and the author of several young adult novels, including the 1920s mystery, The Lost Girl of Astor Street (Blink/HarperCollins). Despite loving cloche hats and drop-waist dresses, Stephanie would have been a terrible flapper because she can’t do the Charleston and looks awful with bobbed hair. She and her near-constant ponytail live in Kansas City with her husband and three kids. You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and sign up for free books on her author website.

I have a tendency to create large casts of characters. I never intend to do this, it just seems to be the way my stories come out.

Within These Lines is actually the first book I've written where I didn't have to cut a character or scale back someone's role dramatically. I hope this means I'm getting better at identifying which characters need to exist and which do not.

If you want to write a story that reads smoothly, it is critical that every character serves a purpose. In well-crafted stories, there is no space for characters who are cuttable.

How do you make sure you accomplish that?

My first suggestion for creating purposeful characters, is to give consideration ahead of time—or in edits, if that ship has already sailed—about what motivates each character during the story.

Here are the primary motivators I listed for several key characters in Within These Lines:

(This is part of my story workbook that I create for each book I write. If you want to get a free tutorial about how to make one for yourself, all you have to do is subscribe to Go Teen Writers Notes.)

When you know the different primary motivators for each character, not only does it naturally cause each character to play a different role in the story, but a source for conflict is built in.

There is also a way to make sure you are accomplishing purposeful character choices within each scene. Think about each scene as though you are planning a heist. (Not that I have ever planned a heist, but I've watched Ocean's 11 several times, and I love Ally Carter's Heist Society series. So I'm totally qualified to rock this analogy.)

When planning a heist, everybody has a specific role to play. One is the decoy, another takes care of the technology, another does the actual sneaking in and stealing, and so forth. Unless there is a very specific need to double up, you never see two people filling the same role in a heist. We don't need two characters dropping in from the ceiling to snatch whatever it was that Tom Cruise was stealing in Mission Impossible.

The same idea applies to individual scenes in your book. You don't need five characters to disagree with your main character, you just need one. Maybe two or three can be justified in certain circumstances, but only if they bring different reasons for disagreeing to the table. We don't need different characters saying the same thing.

An easy ways to figure out if you are already doing this is to ask, How would this scene be impacted if I cut this character? If you could  cut the character and keep the scene mostly intact, then that character is not serving a strong enough purpose to be there. You should either look for ways to give them purpose or remove them completely.

Just for fun, pick five of the most important characters of your story. In a phrase or sentence, tell me what their primary motivation is in the story.