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One Thing to Know About Your Character Before the Book (or Scene) Starts
One of the things we’re taught as writers is to start our books and scenes mid-action. Readers want to start somewhere exciting, without scads of backstory or boring “here’s my character’s daily life.”
But, nine times out of ten, writers (new and seasoned alike) think about where to start their book (or really, their scenes) without thinking about what comes before. What I mean by that is, they don’t know who their character is right before the book/scene starts.
The Importance of Knowing Who a Character Is
I worked with an author earlier this year who had a great book, but she wasn’t getting any traction with agents. She didn’t understand why, because she started the book right in the middle of the action. It jumped off the page at you by the third sentence, for crying out loud!
When I read the book it became quickly apparent that the problem was that, with the action starting that fast, we didn’t know the character enough to care how the inciting incident affected her. Maybe this happened all the time to her, maybe not. Maybe, it was just a blip on her radar, and maybe it slammed into her like a ton of bricks and uprooted her entire life. But we didn’t know that, because we didn’t know her.
Even worse, neither did the writer. And because the writer didn’t know who the character was and what they wanted before the action started, they weren’t able to convey that to the reader.
Keep in mind, I’m not suggesting that you dump a bunch of backstory on us before anything exciting happens. I’m telling you that you have to know who the character was right before the inciting event…and, really, right before every new chapter and scene. Because, by knowing who the character is and what they want and why—their goal and motivation—you will know what they want and whether they get what they want or not and how it will affect them either way.
Some Examples of Knowing Your Character
To illustrate this really simply, let’s say, for instance, that your character walks into their kitchen one morning to find that the entire thing is flooded. I imagine we would all feel the frustration of that. But, depending on who your character was right before that scene, it could mean a whole lot more to them than the reader even knows.
Here are some examples of different characters and how they might interpret this event differently, as they look at it through the filter of who they are right before the event.
Your character is a new mom who got zero sleep last night, because the baby kept her up all night. She’s exhausted, nearly in tears already due to lack of sleep, and her husband is leaving on a business trip today, which he can’t miss or he’ll lose his job. Her family lives across the country, and she’s just moved to this city and has absolutely no idea who to call or how to handle this. Who she was right before walking into that kitchen—new mom, exhausted, whose husband is leaving town for the week—informs how this character is going to react to, interpret, and filter the events of this scene.
Your character is a plumbing contractor, between jobs, who was just wondering what household projects she would work on until the next job starts in a few weeks. She’s been wanting to redo her kitchen anyway, so, despite the water damage resulting from the leak, she’s actually a little bit excited to know that she can start on the kitchen reno and get at least some of it paid for by her insurance company. Who this character was right before the scene—a contractor between jobs, itching to do some work on her house, and already wanting to remodel the kitchen—means that this event isn’t going to impact her in the same way it is New Mom above.
The idea of filtering events that occur in a book through the lens of the individual character is very important. Witnesses to crimes often describe things very differently. They each notice something different and interpret events in a different way, all based on who they are in their life…the filter through which they are viewing the event.
In another example, let’s say there’s a bank robbery, and the suspect gets away, and all the witnesses give their statements to the police. Here are ways in which different people might notice different things about the suspect:
A grandmother of four tells the police that the suspect was very young, maybe in his teens or early twenties. He reminded her of her grandson, Tim, who’s been having some trouble with the law lately. She’s so worried about Tim, that seeing the robber just made her start to cry, worrying that Tim might take to a life of crime if he didn’t get some help soon. She can only tell officers that she noticed he seemed polite to the teller, even while pointing a gun at her, so she’s sure he’s just a good boy who needs some help.
The CEO of the business across the street tells officers that the man was six feet tall, medium build, brown hair, brown eyes, dressed in jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket, and brandishing what looked like a high-caliber pistol, perhaps a Glock (she’s a fan of true crime novels, so she’s pretty sure she’s seen a photo of the same gun before). He spoke like he was nervous, and his voice got high-pitched if he didn’t get immediate reactions to his demands. She thought he looked like he knew what he was doing, like he’d done this before.
Finally, the florist down the street, who had just broken up with his boyfriend last week couldn’t really say exactly what he looked like, other than he wore Levi’s jeans and a brown leather jacket that looked just like the one his jerk of a boyfriend had stolen from him when he left.
The point of the above exercise is that different characters are going to filter the same events through their own eyes, their own life experience, and their own level of intelligence, knowledge, and emotions. They will view the events based on who they were before the event took place.
Each of them will be struck by different details and draw different conclusions. Just as the grandmother drew the conclusion that the robber was a good boy who just couldn’t catch a break (based on who she was when she came on the scene), and the CEO was sure this was premeditated and not an act of desperation (likely based on all the true crime novels she reads and who she is because of that choice of reading material), you would also have a different interpretation of the events based on who you are when this event occurs.
It’s all about the filter. We must be able to see what’s happening to the character through their eyes and recognize that how they interpret and react to events is unique to them and their experiences and who they are just before the event happens.
Keeping Up with Character Changes
Regardless of whether we’re talking about the whole book or the next chapter or individual scenes, the same applies. Your character will experience new things throughout the book, filtered through their own eyes and experiences, and the events in the book will build upon each other. So, who your character is before the beginning of the book might be vastly different than who they are halfway through, as the events continue to shape them as they go along.
So how do you both start mid-action and make sure that your readers understand who your character is, enough to know how they are filtering the events that are happening to them? It doesn’t take much. Even a few sentences can make a huge difference.
Taking our first example above, we could have a few lines at the beginning of the book about Courtney, our new mom, dragging herself out of bed, bleary-eyed and exhausted, just wishing she could stay huddled under the covers for a few more minutes. Her husband is in the bathroom, and she can hear the shower running, and she wants to go down and make him (and herself) a good breakfast before he leaves for his trip. She’s more than terrified of him leaving…she can’t help but admit it, and as she tiptoes past the baby’s room, monitor in hand, to make sure he’s still asleep. She gives herself a pep talk as she descends the stairs to the kitchen. She tells herself she can do this. She can do hard things…after all, she just gave birth, didn’t she?
Then, when she steps into the kitchen and finds two inches of water on the floor, and the faucet spewing a fountain into the middle of the pond that once was her oak hardwood floor…we feel her pain. Much more acutely than we would if a random woman opened the door to her kitchen and found it full of water.
By knowing even a paragraph or two about Courtney, getting a glimpse into her “Ordinary World” first, which informs us about who Courtney is before she opens the kitchen door, we know the impact of this is much stronger than it would have been if our plumbing contractor had come upon the same scene.
The Importance of Knowing Who a Character Is
Books—stories—are not just a series of events, but a series of events that happen to a specific person. You need that connection right away or readers (and agents) aren’t going to be invested in the character and what is happening to her soon enough to want to keep going.
Again, keep in mind that this applies throughout the book too. What if, by the end of chapter one, Courtney has successfully dealt with the plumbing issues, and even made a new friend in the process, the single mom plumbing contractor next door? Who is Courtney now before the next chapter? Someone a little less lonely, a little more confident that she can handle things by herself and find a support system in her new home.
Then, when some other seemingly huge event happens to her, she’s going to likely deal with it a little better than she did the plumbing incident, because she has successfully accomplished something she wasn’t sure she could do just a few days before. She is, in essence, a different person than she was before the plumbing disaster scene.
Take a look at your current work in progress and determine if you know who your character is before the beginning of the book, as well as before each scene. Then make sure your character acts within the scene in accordance with who they are before the scene begins.
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