Character Matters: The Importance of Developing Characters as Much as (or More Than) Plot
I was recently talking with another mystery author who confided: “You know, I’m really much more interested in spending time with my characters than I am in the actual mystery.”
Her comment resonated with me. Don’t get me wrong. I love who-done-its! But to me, the most satisfying mysteries are the ones where we grow to care about the characters and their personal struggles.
As a writer, my personal experiences and those of others close to me have frequently inspired my characters’ issues and conflicts. Take Caitlin O’Connor, the homicide detective in Missed Cue. Caitlin has a terrible habit of getting involved with married men.
When she goes into therapy to figure out why she keeps doing this to herself, she realizes her avoidance of relationships with available partners has a lot to do with her wanting the approval of her late police chief father. While insisting that Caitlin’s mom stay home to raise the children, he’d repeatedly voiced his admiration for single women laser-focused on their careers in law enforcement.
While getting involved with married men isn’t one of my particular foibles, I certainly identify with Caitlin’s desire for parental approval. Growing up, I worshipped my dad and patterned my work ethic after his. A big part of the reason I married my first husband was to please my father, who adored him and always said he was the son-in-law he’d “personally chosen.”
Then there’s Caitlin’s partner Stan who suffers from alcoholism. My family tree is littered with folks who’ve struggled with substance abuse, and I’ve lost friends to the disease, including a gifted ballet dancer and teacher who resisted all attempts at intervention. At age 50, he died from advanced liver disease. Until the end of his life, my friend denied that he had a problem, much like Stan repeatedly denies that his drinking is out of control—until he nearly dies.
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Characters in my novels struggle with other issues I’ve witnessed as well. I’ve known so many dancers and other young people in the arts who feared coming out to their parents. I’ll never forget the young man who’d grown up attending a Baptist church in eastern Kentucky. He sat in my office, tears streaming down his face, as he told me: “I’ve prayed and prayed not to be gay. My minister says gay people go to hell, and my parents will never forgive me, but I can’t seem to change.”
I don’t know whether my saying that I was sure God had made him just the way he was meant to be, helped. I hope so. His distress inspired a subplot in Deadly Setup, in which a teenager attempts suicide in the wake of his parents’ horror at discovering his relationship with another male student.
Another theme that has appeared in my books stems from personal experience. My father did not approve of my going into dance and actually refused to allow me to take dance classes in my senior year of high school or to apply to a college with a dance major. My dad’s behavior didn’t stop me from going on to pursue a rewarding career in dance, but it certainly damaged our relationship.
As a teacher at a performing arts high school and later a counselor at a residential summer program for students gifted in the arts, I’ve also listened to dozens of young people recount how painful it is for them to deal with their parents’ disapproval of their hopes and dreams to pursue artistic careers. Not surprisingly, lack of family support for artistically inclined teens appears in two of my novels, While I Danced and Leisha’s Song.
On the other hand, the parents in my novel, It Should Have Been You, are so obsessed with fostering the career of their piano prodigy daughter that her twin is more or less an afterthought in the family. While I never had to deal with a piano prodigy twin, it was clear that my middle sister and I were considered the “much less desirable” offspring. My father prized academic achievement, and our older sister was brilliant, a National Merit Scholar who graduated first in her class at Wellesley and went on to earn her PhD from Harvard.
While my middle sister and I were no schleps, we were not in that academic stratosphere! It wasn’t fun to live in the shadow of our big sister, and I drew on that experience to portray how Clara, the less favored twin, feels in It Should Have Been You.
Growing up in an uber-wealthy community rife with prejudice and snobbery, as well as studying sociology and spending time living and working in a community of color, also made me very conscious of racism and classism, both of which appear front and center in my novel, Leisha’s Song.
Moreover, my experience coming of age in a community with friends from wealthy backgrounds also served as fodder for my fiction. Several friends lived in enormous mansions and enjoyed every possible material advantage but had parents who paid remarkably little attention to them. Their experiences partially inspired the self-absorbed heiress mom in Deadly Setup. Despite all of her financial privilege, Sam, the main character, is emotionally neglected and longs for a loving family.
Lest I give the impression that in my view, parents are always the enemy, I should note that I’ve known plenty of amazingly loving, supportive parents with great relationships with their children. It’s just that those stories don’t make for fiction that’s nearly as interesting!
Ultimately, I think we love stories about characters who experience all kinds of challenges and problems. We grow to care about them, and we root for them.
Character matters.
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