(5 Tips for Giving Your Character Powers.)

The primary level of secondary characters are those who are most important to the life of the sleuth, and therefore the plot. The best supporting role at the Oscars! The romantic interest, the villain, the possessive mother. We need to know a lot about them because we need to understand their motivation. Is the boyfriend worthy of her love, why does the villain want revenge? It really helps if we can picture them clearly and hear their voices too.

In my new book, Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure, my heroine is dumped by her husband and flees to the South of France with two women who have both been treated unjustly by society. We come to know a great deal about all three women by the end of the book as they interact with the heroine and with those around them.

Then at the level below that, we have characters with whom they will interact with in the French village. Characters important enough to the plot that we need to know who they are, some of their back story, and what drives them. Once a character betrays the heroine. We find out why, but we don’t know everything about him.

Below these are those who would be the extras in a movie: the baker in the village, the priest, the doctor. They are just cameo appearances and therefore we don’t need to go too deeply into describing them. We don’t need to know what motivates the baker to make bread. But we must take pains to make sure they are more than cardboard stereotypes: The Irish Cop. The wicked stepmother, the rough edged waitress with the heart of gold.

If you see each of them as an individual, your story will be fresher. Think Harry Potter and the secondary characters—the individual professors and students, Harry’s uncle and aunt. All real people that we feel we know well.

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So how do we create real people when we don’t want to give up too much of the page to describe them? Our first impression of a person is usually visual, although it could be auditory like an annoying laugh across the room or someone who can’t stop sneezing.

1. Try to find something about them that encapsulates them. Think of a party in a room where we know nobody. As we look around, some people catch our eye and stand out. That woman is wearing too much make-up and trying to look younger than she is. That elderly man has dyed his hair black and it doesn’t go with his too pale skin and eyebrows. That woman talks with her hands. Is she Italian? That too tall boy stoops because he’s self conscious.
2. They come to life through their dialogue, especially when they interact with the main character. When we first meet them, are they rude, curt, witty, flirtatious? Do they like to talk about themselves? Are they hesitant, shy, feeling out of place? Menacing, spooky? Their dialogue also helps to anchor the story in time and place. If the heroine has moved to a new environment, it is the characters she meets who will show us what that new place is all about, by the way they talk, act, move, dress.
3. They reveal themselves through their gestures, mannerisms, the way they walk. The woman sitting at the restaurant table scratching lines on the tablecloth with her fork is clearly tense. Why? Another man is gulping down his food. As a writer, take time to observe when you are stuck in an airport, or waiting for your food.
4. Names are important. Once you have the name, you know the character. Sometimes I will have called a character Robert for 50 pages and things are going slowly. Then out of the blue he’ll say “Why do you keep calling me Robert when my name is Richard?” And then the story just leaps ahead. 
5. Once you have introduced them, their character will be revealed not only by the way they speak and act but by the way the main character interacts with them or observes them. You will come to know them as she does.
6. With secondary characters, as with your main character, once you have created them it’s their story. Don’t try to force them to do things it’s not within their nature to do. Allow yourself to be surprised if they say or do something unexpected. In every book, at least one of my characters surprises me and goes on to play a role I hadn’t expected. Be open to that. It makes the story much richer and more real.
7. Hint: Only give up precious time and space to those who will further the story for us. We don’t need to know that the policeman holding up the traffic when the heroine is in a desperate hurry is tall, ginger haired with a little mustache. Not important.
8. Another Hint: Don’t introduce us to too many characters at once. You confuse the reader.
9. And a last hint: If you really want to understand a character, write a paragraph in their first person. You’ll be surprised at what they want to tell you.

My whole aim when I write about another time and place is to take the reader there, not tell them about it. And it’s the secondary characters who will make this world real.

Check out Rhys Bowen’s Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure here:

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So, there I am, overwhelmed by the birth of our first child, blown away by the magical moment that occurred between mother and daughter, and I’m also feeling quite relieved. See, I had heard that sometimes it takes a while for a mom to bond with her child, and I love my wife, Nora, but it even took her a minute to warm up to the idea of me. So, I wasn’t sure how she’d feel about some seven-pound squiggly newborn thing. But, as is often the case, I was wrong. In fact, I was so busy wondering how Nora would take to the adjustment of becoming a mother that I spent very little time wondering what becoming a dad would be like for me. 

Turns out it felt a little like getting hit by a Mack truck, but in a bad way. In those early days, weeks, and months, I was overwhelmed. My usually sunny disposition (just ask any friend or family member, and they’ll tell you it’s my defining characteristic) was hidden beneath a veil of diapers and confusion. I knew my daughter was this thing that I would give my life for, but I wasn’t sure I even liked it all that much. A few weeks in, my wife scolded me, “That’s not an ‘it.’ That’s your daughter. Get it straight.” Fine, whatever she/it was, it had really thrown me for a loop. 

It’s hard to articulate how I felt, but I think I was struggling with my new identity as a dad. Transitioning from my awkward teenage years into a rakishly handsome man came naturally to me, but this was different. 

We’d been given a ton of children’s books, including a huge stack of hand-me-downs from my sister. So, out of desperation, I read the books in the hopes that they might teach me what a dad was supposed to do. I read every single one of them. 

Right about now, you might find yourself judging me. Totally. I get it. Dads come in many shapes and sizes. And few of those shapes and sizes are particularly impressive. It is what it is. But these were desperate times for me. So, I turned to the kids’ books.  

It turns out the children’s books were not much help (in hindsight a licensed therapist would have been a smarter route). In most of the books, the fathers weren’t even present, and when they did pop up, they tended to be fast asleep on the couch, dashing out the door for work, spilling coffee on their clothes, or sometimes just sitting around farting (I’m not big on farting, and I don’t much like the word).  

It all rubbed me the wrong way. How was I supposed to figure out how to be a dad? The books taught me nothing—except for one of the Berenstain Bears books, which taught me I would likely hammer my barefoot toe someday and scream and holler and scare my whole family. 

So, I bumped my way through my time as a new parent. Eventually, the “it” became my beloved daughter and, a few years later, we had another “it,” which became my son (sidenote: The other magical, cosmic shift in the universe I witnessed was when my daughter held her baby brother for the very first time—she fell in love instantly, just like her amazing mother). Along the way, I began telling my kids bedtime stories and reading to them most every night. 

As a dad, I’m still adjusting and changing with every new phase, but those children’s books? Not so much. To be fair, children’s books are called children’s books; they’re not called “Books For Dads Who Are Flailing Around But Are Too Obtuse To Ask For Help Books” (catchy, I know). Still, I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world.  

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A little over a year ago, my very own children’s book, Daddy and the Beanstalk, was published by Little, Brown. More accurately, it’s an early-reader graphic novel, but that’s splitting hairs. It’s based on bedtime stories I’ve told my daughter (it #1) for years. It’s an homage to her, my family, my childhood, and even to myself, as I’m right there front and center telling my daughter about the time, when as a kid, I took the grocery money my mom gave me and spent it on magic beans. (I was not always that well-behaved as a child.) 

The Frog Daddy, the second book in the series, was published last month (again by Little, Brown). It recalls the time I got turned into a frog while on a class field trip to New York City. I have to say, I love this book as much as anything I’ve made (professionally speaking, of course).   

The book is for children and works as a read-aloud for younger kids and those that are reluctant readers, and it’s also great for independent readers. But it’s not just for kids; it’s also for grownups, especially the dads who are simply trying to figure it all out. 

So, what sort of representation of fatherhood was I looking to create? Honestly, I don’t know. I think about my own father and what he was like as a dad. He would play catch with me even when he didn’t feel like it. He’d take me fishing. He’d read me books and tell me bedtime stories, which I’ve shared with my kids. He’d take me to bars to watch a game on TV (it was much more wholesome than it sounds), and when we came home from the bar, he taught me how to say, “We had a salad,” when my mom would invariably ask me what we ate.  

At an early age, I developed my deep love for creative writing, which he open-heartedly nurtured. He still reads whatever I send him, and he is more often than not the audience in my mind’s eye when I sit down to write something. A few years ago, my dad told me he wasn’t that good a father, but he did what he could. I was a little shocked. For my money, he’s the gold standard. Among many other things, he showed up. And sometimes, that’s half the battle, and other times it’s the entire battle. Show up in real life, of course. But, also, let’s have the dads show up in books, as well, modeling the kinds of male role models we want to be. 

It turns out the Berenstain Bears got it right. Just show up. Every so often, that might mean whacking yourself in the toe. But, trust me, it’s worth it. 

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(Unforgettable Settings in 5 Simple Steps.)

Thoughtfully crafted small town settings do more than simply frame the narrative. They can become part of it, weaving the emotional and romantic threads that connect each character’s journey.

Think of your setting as the soil from which your characters grow. It forms the backdrop that defines their histories, influences their motivations, and guides their actions. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the small-town setting of Alabama in the 1930s profoundly affects the characters, shaping their worldviews and development. Similarly, in Robyn Carr’s Virgin River, the town itself becomes a place of healing, reflecting the internal journeys of the characters.

Your small town should feel like a home to both your characters and readers. Delve into the town’s history, its nooks and crannies, and the places where your characters spend their time. These details should subtly influence their journeys. A cozy local diner, a bustling community event, or a long-forgotten street can all reflect and challenge your characters’ growth.

More Than a Location

Setting is also much more than location. For each scene, think carefully about weather, climate, even time of day, then utilize those factors to reflect your characters’ emotions. Use your setting to magnify those emotions. It isn’t simply about where they are, but how the environment resonates with their inner struggles or triumphs.

A tempestuous thunderstorm can mirror turbulent feelings, while a bright day might contrast with hidden struggles. A winter storm could symbolize inner conflict, while a spring festival might represent rebirth. Ground your setting in specifics, allowing it to enhance each characters’ emotional arc. This taps into your readers’ senses, making the story not just something they read, but something they feel.

To capture the essence of a small town, start by asking yourself key questions: What history does this place hold? Where do characters naturally gather? How do these spaces influence the unfolding story? Include the landscapes, the unique culture, and the sensory details that anchor readers in your world.

For truly memorable small towns, it’s important that writers treat the setting with authenticity and be wary of falling into stereotypes. Move beyond the familiar nosy neighbor trope and create unique, compelling characters to fill your town and help move the story forward.

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5 Tips for Enhancing Setting

1. Visit locations: Spend time in small towns similar to your setting for inspiration. Observe the people, sights, sounds, and rhythms unique to the town.
2. Know how your characters might see their surroundings: As an exercise, describe your small town through each character’s point of view. How do your characters’ individual life experiences shape how they see their community and how does that perspective influence their motivations and behaviors?
3. Map it out: Sketch a map of your town, detailing important locations and how they relate to characters’ lives, focusing in particular on spots of key emotional turning points.
4. Immerse the senses: Describe settings using all five senses, integrating details gradually to create a rich, evocative experience without overwhelming readers.
5. Reflect growth and change: Allow your town to evolve alongside your characters, reflecting changes in economy, population, or social norms, which can fuel character development.

These techniques will help you visualize and deepen your narrative landscape.

Setting is far more than simply a static stage upon which your characters perform. It can be the dynamic heart of your story, inviting readers into a vibrant, living world. Craft your settings with care, and they will deepen your characters’ connections and enthrall your readers.

Check out RaeAnne Thayne’s The Lost Book of First Loves here:

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(Secrets We Keep From Each Other.)

Distinct from moral control, one of the most beautiful aspects of books is their ability to achieve a kind of mind-control by transcending the boundaries of consciousness, by taking over through subsumption. A book can only achieve this if the writer has written with complete and unconscious faith in the reality of his characters: Only then can a character stand for himself, only then can he stay vivid and strong (even if the character himself is weak-hearted and spineless) as readers address him with their queries, or project onto him their visions and theories. 

When writing fiction, the desire to too directly guide a reader has never occurred to me. Ava, the narrator of my debut novel What You Make of Me, invites projection; she invites a bit of theorizing, despite her defiance and desire for control. A reader might wonder at her aims, at her self-awareness, at the things she says and her reasons for saying them, at her art (she is a painter). But while writing, I felt I knew Ava and understood her. She was multidimensional to me. My goal (‘goal’ is not quite the right word… but my ‘charge’ sounds absurd) was to create a character who is equal parts definitive, present, evasive, inward, self-contradictory. 

Confronting this challenge became my favorite part of writing the novel. I was constantly aware of Ava’s shifting levels of self-awareness. I wanted a few aspects of her psyche to bubble up, cross the threshold of consciousness, and make their way into clear, explicit writing. I needed other aspects of her psyche to hover just below that threshold of consciousness, to be underthoughts that haunt but do not penetrate the narrative.

At times Ava has an idea of what is hovering just below. At times she does not. Then—when she thinks she does know—at times she is right, at times she is mistaken; further, at times she knows she is mistaken about herself, and at times she does not know she is mistaken (but the reader, perhaps, knows she is mistaken). This is all to say: Ava is a human being, with oblique paths of access into herself, some more right and revelatory than others, some errant (but still, somehow, psychologically productive). 

AND WHY SHOULDN’T THAT BE TRUE?? AFTER ALL…in a novel, it is a characters’ ultimate unknowability—their ability to evade our capture—that endows them with real human spirit, for the simple reason that in the real world, real human beings possess an inwardness that is and should be inaccessible to us. We don’t know if Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is frigid and remote despite or because of her romanticism (or neither). In Lolita we can’t quite gauge Humbert Humbert’s interpretation of his primordial wound (that first love), or its impact on his psyche. We don’t know for sure if Dostoyevsky’s monkish Alyosha is noble and circumspect, or if he is rather weak, naive—or if he is each of these things (he is!). 

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As Zadie smith writes in “Fascinated to presume: In Defense of Fiction”: “Fiction suspects that there is far more to people than what they choose to make manifest … Fiction is suspicious of any theory of the self that appears to be largely founded on what can be seen with the human eye (…) Fiction—at least the kind that is any good—is full of doubt, self-doubt above all. It has grave doubts about the nature of the self.” 

It is this doubt—the doubt we feel even when looking into the eyes of a loved one and feeling not just closeness but in fact, and paradoxically, an insuperable distance—that feels most human, that drives and feeds our will to know and understand. In novels, we might come to love characters or despise them; we might argue in defense of them, or protest their actions; we might put our book down and feel a narrator’s presence as a shadow self throughout the day, or we might put a book down as if it is the blade that will slice through us next we return. 

A text, I believe, is at its deepest when the reader does about as much ushering in of her own as possible. It’s not that writers trust their readers to do this (or trust their readers to hold the ‘right’ impression of their characters), it’s that readers always and must do this—they must use their minds to co-engineer a character. It is an ineluctable part of the reading process (see Barthes, etc). The most a writer can (must) do is put human spirit onto the page in all its lucidity and difficulty. Thus my decision not to ‘explain’ on Ava’s behalf is not an intentional act of evasion, it’s an unconscious process of trying to generate reality. 

Of course, because I respect her life and humor, and because I have faith in Ava, it would make me itch to see readers come to her with what I take to be misunderstanding. But that’s the way it goes. There’s nothing she or I can do. The reader must take over, accrue his own impressions of Ava, and project his own reasons, and supply his own logic. 

This fact, I believe, wouldn’t bother her. I hope readers will see her as the kind of person who is both radically open—she would change her clothes with the door open in a dressing room or easily talk constipation—while at the same time rigorous in protecting a deeper privacy, a more profound and complete solitude, her inwardness, which no misunderstanding could touch.

Check out Sophie Madeline Dess’ What You Make of Me here:

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(Immutable Moments: The Load-Bearing Beats of a Story.)

Readers fall in love with characters, not plot charts. And while a well-structured plot might be the bones of your story, it’s the emotional arc that encourages readers to tattoo your protagonist’s words on their forearm or draw fan art of the entire ensemble of your novel. Readers remember characters who feel alive, and that life comes from the emotional arc.

I love a good plot twist as much as anyone. Give me a moment of “That was the murderer???” or “Oh no, the evil goats were the true villains all along,” and I will happily drop my tea in shock.

But readers don’t stay for the twist. They stay for the people it happens to.

You can build a plot so intricate it deserves its own wall of Post-It notes, but if the reader doesn’t care about your protagonist, it won’t land. If your character doesn’t struggle, fail, or crack open some part of themselves by the end, readers simply won’t care.

But how do you make your characters feel flawed, real, and unforgettable? And how do you craft an emotional arc that matters?

Writing an Emotional Arc That Matters

A well-crafted emotional arc gives shape to your character’s transformation. It asks:

• Who were they at the start?
• What did they believe about the world?
• What challenged that belief?
• What did they choose to do in response?

The emotional arc generally has three phases:

The Things They Believe

Your character starts the story believing something untrue about themselves or the world. They don’t need other humans, they’re unworthy of love, they aren’t strong enough to save the world. This belief drives their early choices, for better or worse.

The Struggle

In Act Two, the plot tries to kill your character—emotionally or literally and your character struggles, fights, and fails. Internal conflict brews. The events of the plot poke at long-held beliefs. Shift happens.

The Shift

At some point, your character does something that reflects a change in belief. They change not because the plot needed it, but because they did. They’ve been transformed by the story.

In other words, plot is what happens. Emotion is why it matters.

An Example of an Emotional Arc

A high-powered lawyer with an espresso addiction and the emotional availability of a granite countertop believes she needs no one. That’s the initial lie.

The events of the plot? Her grandma has died and left her a homemade marmalade and candle shop called, “Orange You Glad It’s Jam.”

She returns home, intending to sell the shop and get out fast because she believes she needs no one—until she meets the woodchopper widow next door. Strong forearms. Kind eyes. A tragic backstory. Probably also has a dog.

Enter act 2 where the plot does everything it can to attack the original belief. The lawyer tries to juggle legal briefs by day and candle-making by night. She does not need help! She meets with potential buyers. Then things break down and the widow next door comes over to help fix them. The community begins to endear themselves to your character. The widow next door wears very soft flannel shirts.

Eventually, the protagonist reaches the shift—maybe when she lets herself grieve for her grandmother, or when she misses a big city client call because she’s hosting the town’s jam festival. Whatever the climatic moment, it’s clear the protagonist is a new person. And she and the widow next door adopt a second dog.

Why the Emotional Arc Matters

Internal conflict is the tension between who your character is and who they could become. It’s not about what’s happening to them—it’s about what’s happening inside them.

Maybe your protagonist is torn between loyalty and truth. Maybe he thinks vulnerability equals weakness. Maybe they’re trying to be the hero but secretly believe they’re the villain. Whatever it is, internal conflict keeps readers turning pages because they see the stakes even when nothing explodes. It’s that ache of watching someone continue to make mistakes which readers recognize because real humans have also made so many.

It’s imperative. You can have aliens and explosions in your climax, but if your character hasn’t wrestled with what they believe, the moment falls flat. The high-powered lawyer finally kisses the hot, flannel-wearing widow, but if there hasn’t been an emotional journey to it, who cares? A good emotional arc makes quiet stories resonate, but it’s also there to give a human element to your epic action-adventure stories.

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Pairing the Emotional Arc With Plot Beats

Every major plot beat should do double duty—not just moving the story forward but deepening or challenging the emotional arc.

The Inciting Incident: Something changes in the character’s world. It’s also the first time your main character starts to question the worldview that’s gotten them to where they are now.

First Plot Point: They commit to a new path, but they’re not always ready. Things begin to change. They’re learning how to navigate this new world, making new allies and enemies, and all of this causes emotional reactions.

Midpoint: The external plot twist should intersect with a shift in emotional understanding. Maybe they see a reflection of who they used to be. Maybe they feel something they haven’t allowed themselves to feel in years. Maybe they start to believe they’ll be able to do this thing, whatever this thing is.

Dark Night of the Soul: A loss. A failure. Everything falls apart and it’s probably your character’s fault. This is where they realize everything they thought they wanted has ruined everything they really want.

Climax: Whether they are beating the villain, closing the case, or saving the town’s jam festival, the emotional choice matters most. Your character is able to save the day because they’re changed.

Ultimately, emotional arcs give plot beats a human factor. They make the stakes feel personal. And when you sync them up, readers will not only go along on your character’s journey, but they’ll also feel it.

And it isn’t always a full, perfect arc. Real emotional growth is jagged. It happens in fits and starts. It backslides.

Write From the Heart First, Brain Later

It’s okay to let your character resist the truth for longer than feels comfortable. It’s realistic for them to have moments where they start to change, then backslide. Or maybe they make the wrong decisions, even after they’ve supposedly learned better.

If you let your characters reach their moment of self-growth through awkward attempts at doing better, the moment they finally reach their ah-ha moment will feel earned.

At the end of the day, plot gives your story structure. But emotional arcs give it soul.

Readers will remember how your book made them feel. The ache of longing. The sigh of relief. The moment of transformation that gave them hope.

So yes, build your plot. Tighten your beats. But don’t forget to ask:

• What does this mean to my character?
• How are they changing—and why now?
• What truth are they terrified to admit?

Write from the heart first. The brain can catch up in revisions. Because the stories that stay with us aren’t the most logical.

They’re the most felt.

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(25 Plot Twist Ideas and Prompts for Writers.)

This is something I tried to do in my debut novel, An Ethical Guide to Murder, where a failed lawyer, Thea, discovers she has power over life and death. She can tell exactly how long someone has to live and transfer that life from one person to another—killing the first person in the process. She wants to do the right thing and creates an “Ethical Guide to Murder” to punish the wrongdoers and give the deserving more time. But of course, deciding who gets to live and die is tricky, to say the least, and she quickly finds herself in an ethical minefield.

When I describe it, people get excited about Thea’s power and instantly start asking questions I explore in the novel. So, without any further waffle, here are my tips for giving your character powers that people care about.

Find your why

Superpowers tend to be more interesting when there’s a point to them. For example, telepathy is endlessly fascinating because we’d all love to know what people really think. Getting clear on what you care about will help you define your world, the story, and the power itself.

I was interested in the concept of fairness. Specifically, how is it fair that some good people die young while some bad people live long healthy lives? So, I gave Thea the power to change this.

So, what do you care about? I recommend doing some rambling free-writing to figure this out because you probably care about more than one thing. Continually ask yourself “and why do I care about this?” until you zero in on what feels like the most important reason—use this as the anchor for your story.

Connect character with powers

Your character and their power are intertwined. You’ve probably heard of concepts like “fatal flaws” and “defining misbeliefs”—powers are a great way to amplify these and see what they are really made of.

In Ethical Guide, Thea starts with a very black-and-white view of morality. Suddenly gaining power over life and death upends this worldview, and she spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out what “the right thing to do” really is. This gave me much more scope for character development than say, giving the power to an evil serial killer. No ethical dilemmas there, just murder.

She’s also a hot mess who struggles to be responsible for her own laundry—not someone you would trust with such power. Sometimes, giving powers to a surprising or unusual character and seeing what they do with it is more interesting than the power itself. It’s definitely more fun to write.

Click to continue.

More power more problems

Powers will help your character solve problems, but they should create just as many. Some of these will be external problems. Is there a cost to using the power? What happens if your character’s power is discovered? How will they learn to control it? Do other people have powers too?

But my favorite problems are the internal ones. A character with trust issues might struggle to find mentors. One with anger issues might use their power rashly and get caught.

The more powerful your character is, the bigger the problems you need to give them. This stops them simply solving the conflict of your novel too easily. In Ethical Guide, Thea is extremely powerful, but she’s also facing the impossible problem of deciding how to “ethically” murder people (alongside others, many of her own making).

Create a fresh spin

It’s hard to create a truly unique power. You also don’t have to. I hadn’t seen Thea’s exact power before, but I’ve read about characters with the power to kill by touch and ones who could tell how long someone had to live. Sometimes you might combine existing ideas to create something new, or slightly change how a power works.

Your fresh spin could even be the situation or the setting. In Naomi Alderman’s The Power, the most unique aspect is not the power itself, but the fact that young women everywhere develop it overnight. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Lauren has hyperempathy. But what’s so unusual is that she has this power in a dystopian world full of pain and suffering. It can physically incapacitate her at times, making it an extremely dangerous ability to have.

Remember that it’s your character and ideas that make your story unique. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel unless you want to.

Let the reader discover the power

My final tip is a quick one. It’s tempting to over-explain how a power works, especially if you’ve put a lot of thought into it. Don’t! Give us enough to understand what’s going on, and then leave little seeds to intrigue us. Coming up with theories about how a power works is fun, especially if we’re proven right later on. Or, even more fun, when there’s a clever twist we didn’t see coming.

Check out Jenny Morris’ An Ethical Guide to Murder here:

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(CL Montblanc: Community Is a Crucial Part of Being a Writer.)

I start with the characters.

To be honest, characters are a scary thing for me. I am so incapable of inhabiting a different persona that I even got kicked out of the high school play (before you feel bad, they did let me be Dancer #4 for the musical). I know how my brain works, but not anyone else’s, really. And yet, the majority of nice comments I get about my books relate to the characters. That, Alanis Morissette, is true irony. This leaves me thinking that my personal writing methods must be contributing to this phenomenon, at least a little bit, so now it’s time for me to share them.

Technically, I’ve lied to you (great start). When writing my books, I actually begin with the sketchiest, roughest idea of a premise possible. For Pride or Die, it was “LGBTQ+ mystery set at a high school.” And then it’s all about the characters.

I began by asking myself: What would the characters’ established relationships be like? How do they relate to one another? For this, I used the framework of a school club to craft characters that were based on these roles. For example, a club president, to me, sounded like a protagonist. Someone who cares—perhaps too much—and holds a lot of responsibility over others. A character like this may have a “do whatever must be done” attitude, while also being prone to cracking under all of the pressure that they’re facing. Hey, we’re already starting to see potential character arcs and storylines shaping up!

The next question for me was how this character got to be this way. What kind of backstory might turn someone into a stubborn leader burdened with a sense of duty? The answer was a tragic one, of course, where they’re haunted by powerlessness and have become a control freak as a result. These character flaws are bound to lead to conflict, right? Well, knowing that this is a mystery novel, this character might take charge too much, even going against the wishes of their peers, throwing a wrench into the mystery investigation. And now, even though we have no idea of what this mystery is even about, we’re already able to envision pretty specific character dynamics and scenes. With the character themself as our jumping-off point, we could go on and on like this.

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A pattern I notice surrounding books that are criticized for having “forgettable” or “same-y” characters is that these characters are not quite entwined into the story the way they should be. I get the sense that the author had a hooky premise but saw the characters as vehicles to move the story rather than as an intrinsic part of the narrative. For me, I feel like I know that I’m doing a good job writing characters once they start fighting me. There have been times where I’m sitting at my computer and thinking, “I need these guys to do xyz for the plot,” but am faced with resistance because in actuality, the characters would never behave in this way. Instead of forcing them like dolls, I believe the better solution is to mold the story around them. Goody two-shoes character wouldn’t break into a building? Then don’t have them break into a building. It can be as simple as that.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, I am only myself. So, when I must write a hot charismatic jock character, then what am I to do? One thing that helps me is to infuse small parts of myself into each character, no matter how different we are otherwise. For example, I gave this particular jock IBS and a nerdy hobby. Even if these details are so small as to not have a tangible impact on the story, it still helps me better understand and connect to the character. It also guarantees that every character comes off at least partially authentic, since I’m always drawing from myself.

When I think about some of the most beloved books among my peers, there’s usually one thing in common: They’re all character-driven series, following a lovable cast over multiple installments with hundreds of pages of room for development. I won’t name names, but I’m familiar with dozens of random characters against my will thanks to fandom. How often do you recognize characters from fan art despite having no idea what the source material is even about? I’m certain the answer is “very often.” Because at the end of the day, characters are what stick with people.

Characters provide that sense of emotional attachment that a hook or title or synopsis is unlikely to ever match. All of this is just further proof to me that we need to be letting our characters drive our books, prioritizing them above all else. Because even if my readers don’t remember the random expository scenes I so carefully crafted for my mystery plot, they probably will remember that there was a hot jock with IBS. And I think that’s fantastic.

Check out CL Montblanc’s Pride or Die here:

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(4 Tips for Building Suspense in Mysteries.)

But a series also presents challenges. How do we maintain a sense of freshness when writing about the same characters for 20 years? How do we add new layers to our protagonists and their lives in ways that keep readers coming back for more?

When I started writing my Sebastian St. Cyr historical mystery series way back in 2003, I was hoping to be able to produce—maybe—six or eight novels in the series. And so, long before I sat down to begin the first chapter of that first book, I spent several years thinking about Sebastian.

I pondered the kind of man he would be, the past that helped make him that way, and the ordeals he would face; I thought about the people around him, about their lives and personalities. And then I put it all together, crafting the arc of Sebastian’s personal story. I essentially envisioned the series as one long saga, with each novel functioning much like a chapter in the overarching tale of Sebastian’s life that plays out behind the series of standalone mysteries.

Ironically, I seriously overestimated how much each book in the series would progress that background story arc; by the time I wrote book eight, I wasn’t halfway through Sebastian’s tangled personal tale. I’m currently finishing Book #21, and I’m still not finished. Despite that miscalculation—or perhaps because of it?—all that advance planning has paid off. And if I were to distill what I’ve learned from the experience down to concrete suggestions for other authors, here are eight of the most important:

Give your protagonist an intriguing set of personal mysteries, questions, or secrets that can be gradually revealed over the course of the series—sometimes with dire consequences.

In the very first book, my protagonist, Sebastian St. Cyr, begins to suspect that he has been living a lie. Is the Earl of Hendon really Sebastian’s father? If he isn’t, then who is? What happened to Sebastian’s mother the summer he was 11? Did she really die? If she’s still alive, where is she? Will Sebastian ever see her again? And what the heck is the story behind that strange necklace?

Cast your series with an array of appealing friends and allies who have problems and secrets of their own.

Sebastian’s longtime friend, the surgeon-anatomist Paul Gibson, is a one-legged veteran with a serious opium addiction. Kat, the old love who comes back into Sebastian’s life when he’s on the run for a murder he didn’t commit, has been secretly spying for the French. His valet, Calhoun, has a mother who owns one of London’s most notorious flash houses. The more questions you can raise in your readers’ minds, the better.

Remember to add at least one powerful, enduring enemy.

Sebastian’s continuing nemesis, Lord Jarvis, is the ruthless, amoral royal cousin who serves as the real power behind the Prince’s fragile regency. Not only is he a dangerous enemy to have, but partway into the series he becomes Sebastian’s father-in-law. And there are hints that Sebastian has at least one more enemy lurking in the weeds that he only gradually becomes aware of.

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Give your protagonist a troubled past that has left them with vulnerabilities and traumas they still need to work through.

This one can easily become a cliché, so try to think beyond the recovering-alcoholic PI who left a distant city’s police force because they accidently killed their best friend/a child/a pregnant woman. Sebastian is a veteran of the Peninsular War who witnessed Something Really Awful and then did Something Really Awful. Those twin events haunt him throughout the series, although the reader doesn’t learn all the details until somewhere around book nine or 10. Not only do those events trouble him, but they also provide the motivation for much of what he does.

Add a complicated love interest . . . or two or three.

Love interests are a great way to add conflict, suspense, and change. At last count, James Lee Burke has killed off three of Dave Robicheaux’s wives. But be warned: If your readers get overly invested in your protagonist’s initial love story, some will not take it kindly when that ends. (Yes, that’s the voice of experience talking.)

Choose an interesting, dynamic setting and make it an important part of your stories.

Nevada Barr did this by setting her Anna Pigeon series against various national parks; Burke introduced millions to Louisiana’s Cajun culture. Historical settings offer rich, useful backgrounds, especially if you stay true to the facts (as a recovering history prof, that’s important to me). What Angels Fear, the first book in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, is set against the machinations surrounding King George III’s descent into madness and the 1811 proclamation of the Regency. The Napoleonic War plays a part in many of the books, as do Napoleon’s escape from Elba, Waterloo, and such lesser-known historical events as the Frost Fair of 1814, the accidental discovery of Charles I’s decapitated corpse, and Jane Austen’s visit to her beleaguered brother.

Introduce a sense of uncertainty by killing off one or more of your continuing characters.

When you put a long-time series character in jeopardy, it’s easy for readers to think, “He’ll be okay; he’s a continuing character.” Kill off your protagonist’s brother or the dear friend we’ve known for six books, and your readers will never make that mistake again. Plus, killing off a character is a great way to shake things up.

Don’t forget to have your characters grow and change.

Whether a series continues for five, 10, or 20 books, the events the characters experience, the things they do and witness, need to change them. So does the passage of time. A 30-year-old protagonist should be more mature than they were at 25. Relationships change. And the mileage should start to add up. That bullet your protagonist took in the thigh in Book 12 means they can’t run as fast in Book 13, perhaps with serious consequences. Marriage also changes a man or a woman, as does having children. They aren’t going to rush into danger as recklessly as they might once have done; they’ll pause, think of the consequences, weigh the odds. They now have more at stake.

You don’t necessarily need to come up with all of these before you begin writing your series; some will inevitably come in a bolt of inspiration one night when you’re lying awake wrestling with the plot of book #10. But the more of these concepts you can incorporate, the easier it will be to keep your continuing series fresh. Your future self with thank you.

Check out C. S. Harris’ Who Will Remember here:

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Go dark and stay dark

Today’s best crime fiction leads with a crime, a criminal, and a victim. Resist the urge for backstory, meet cute, a day in the life of your detective, or any clever opening you’ve seen done once by a mega bestselling author who has earned the right to delay fulfilling reader desires. Horrific crime + villain + victim who deserves justice is the impetus of every crime fiction novel. Start dark and stay dark, with violence, murder, theft, betrayal, kidnapping, and the like. For a series, weave this crime into an underlying crime narrative and/or villain who can extend across books and have readers leaning in from one to the next.

Torture your lead

Readers today embrace suffering, and it starts with your lead. Give her a tortured past that results in Grand Canyon-sized flaws in her character and haunts her to the present, influencing her choices and behaviors and shaping her motivations. Something about the combination of the crime plus your lead must result in her drive toward justice, which makes her willing to take chances with her wellbeing… and that of others. Then, plant people and things in her life that are important to her so you can torture her by putting them at risk or taking them away. Beware the desire to solve her problems. She must continue suffering for reader enjoyment.

Crave sympathy

Every crime begs a criminal. Crime fiction especially begs one with a capacity for evil, but a healthy dose of self-justification and motive that must make sense even as we law abiding denizens of good cannot accept it. Your criminal will be driven by the mirror image of that which is driving your lead to pursue justice. He will be creepy but not one-dimensional with a unique signature to the crimes. How creepy? That depends on the comfort level of your readers for darkness. And your own…

Breaking legs

It’s not only the crime narrative and your lead’s dark past that help you create a series. It’s also the supporting cast of realistic if imperfect characters with their conflicting motives and desires. Every one of them should have a backstory (at least known to you), even if only one sentence, that makes them memorable and launchable into roles in future books. Your lead cannot carry the burden of sustaining reader interest alone. Beware killing off one of them on a whim when they are necessary for the legs of the series, but do not shy away if it’s their time to go.

Click to continue.

Introduce the fear factor

Let your readers feel fear through the five senses of the crime victims, characters they care about because of their authenticity. Build up the tension and amplify the terror in the cutaway shot, where your readers use their imaginations to paint a scene far worse than you’ll ever describe for them. Stephen King’s It comes to mind.

House of horrors

A cabin in the woods, a deserted warehouse, a posh apartment overlooking Central Park. Wherever your crime is set, give it the depth and authenticity of a character. The sounds, the smells, the textures, the emotions it evokes. The weather, the terrain, the culture, the traffic, the community, the food. Once you figure out the capacity to create havoc and terror in your setting, you will more clearly see what kinds of characters live within it and what they will be up to. This may impact your crime, criminal, and victim, in the best of all writing worlds.

Electric shock

Another reasonable expectation of your reader is that you will deliver unto them a dizzying series of electric shocks in the form of chapter ending cliffhangers, timely and well-extended red herrings, and jaw-dropping plot twists at crucial beats within the story. Peruse the reviews of successful contemporary crime fiction and you will see the theme of twists, surprises, and shocks repeated across them. It may be tempting to end a few chapters or acts on notes of success or peace but see above Torture the lead and resist, resist, resist.

Detail kills

In the world of crime fiction, assume every reader is an armchair expert (sometimes, they truly are). Consult or research to ensure your details are correct and use them to build a plausible story that is on the bounds of possibility and credulity. But omit most of what you learned. Use just enough, not too much. Write it authentic but lean. Why? Detail kills. Not only is this where you will inevitably make a poor judgment call or an outright error, but excessive detail kills pace. And the death of excitement, tension, and forward propulsion in your book may be the death of your series.

Just desserts

Depending on your sub-genre, you’ll end your story with a solve or not, justice or not, retribution or not. Beware failing to know which your readers need to continue with the world you’ve built. You’ll have taken them on a journey of suspense, repugnance, and excitement. Might they be craving some modicum of relief?  They’ll skewer you publicly over any clues and loose ends you fail to wrap up, at the least. A comment on society cleverly woven into the fabric of your book and subtly punctuated in the final pages can help further delicious closure for many readers.

Mastering these elements may make you the hero who saves your own story from a gruesome death.

Check out Pamela Fagan Hutchins’ Her Burning Lies here:

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If I outline, my story will be the same as everyone else’s.

I don’t want to know everything!

Planning takes away all my creative freedom.

I get it. Plotting can feel like putting a straitjacket on your creativity, forcing it into a constrictive shape, leaving you no wiggle room for all those brilliant ideas that pop into your head in the middle of the night.

But plotting is inevitable. When you finish your book and start writing your query letter, my friend, it’s made of the first few beats of your novel. That synopsis agents and publishers want? It’s also made of all the beats of your novel.

Creative freedom is lovely, and I fully support that. The thing is, there are some moments in your book that are non-negotiable. If they don’t happen, the entire story collapses like that soufflé you made to procrastinate writing your novel.

So, you need beats, but you still want freedom. That’s why I started a plotting method I call “Immutable Moments.” It’s a big word for the simple idea that there are certain beats of your novel which are load bearing. Unchanging and unchangeable. It’s like building a house. If you knock out a load-bearing wall, your whole house is coming down. If you knock down (or rearrange) your decorative walls, you haven’t done anything but create a fabulous new kitchen and made room for that SMEG fridge, which you definitely didn’t buy just because they use them on the Great British Bake Off.  

The basic idea is that Immutable Moments are the events your story can’t function without.

• If you remove them, the story falls apart.
• They directly push the protagonist forward in their core goal.
• They connect the overall arc of the plot from start to finish.

An example:

In The Princess Bride, Westley “dying” has to happen, otherwise Buttercup doesn’t agree to marry Humperdinck. It’s an Immutable Moment.

But other things, the Rodents of Unusual Size (R.O.U.S) or the encounter with Miracle Max are wild card moments. They can be shuffled, even omitted. But the world won’t collapse.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Earth has to be destroyed, otherwise, Arthur never goes on his journey.

But things like the bowl of petunias and the sperm whale are wildcard moments. They’re fun and they add to the richness of the world, but they don’t collapse the core arc of the story if you remove them or shift them around.

So how do you figure out your Immutable Moments before you accidentally write an 80,000-word novel without a plot and have to go back and figure out how to restructure it to make sure it doesn’t crumble to dust around you?

You should know the basic arc of your book. This means that before you start writing your story, you should know three things:

1. Who is the main character?
2. What is their primary goal?
3. What do they have to learn/do/experience to get there?

Once you know these things, you can start fleshing out the rest of your beats. Start with your inciting incident. This is the event that starts everything in your novel—the moment where the protagonist moves into the quest, the pursuit of the love interest, the fight against the monster tidal wave threatening to destroy the world, the step into the new way of living.

Once you know your inciting incident, you can work forward with the cause and effect of the rest of the structure and ultimately, sum up the entirety of your plot arc in one long sentence.

Click to continue.

Main character experiences inciting incident which causes them to move into new world where they face rising action and conflict in pursuit of main goal until they finally resolution.

In The Princess Bride, this might look like:

Buttercup believes Westley has died (inciting incident), which leads her into a forced engagement with Prince Humperdinck and is moved to the castle (new world), where she faces kidnapping and deception (rising action and conflict) in pursuit of her own freedom and true love (main goal), until she is finally reunited with Westley (resolution).

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide, this might look like:

Arthur Dent experiences the destruction of Earth (inciting incident), which propels him into a bizarre and terrifying universe (new world) where he faces evil aliens, improbable technology, and existential confusion (rising action and conflict) in pursuit of understanding his place in the universe and simply surviving (main goal), until he ultimately accepts the absurdity of the cosmos and settles into his strange new life (resolution).

Try writing this yourself, for your story. Write your plot arc in one sentence.

Now you’ve done it. If you can write a sentence like the ones above, you have the Immutable Moments of your story.

You have the inciting incident. The new world. The rising action and conflict. The main goal. The resolution. Those moments hold the entire arc of your plot together. Simple, right? But there’s still so much to explore!

From here, you can go deeper into emotional arcs by asking yourself questions about each beat:

• Does this moment force my protagonist to change something about their beliefs?
• How does this moment affect my character emotionally?
• If I cut this moment, what would it change about my character’s emotional arc?

Using the beats of your story to build an emotional arc can lead to a more satisfying payoff for the reader. Knowing the beats of your story, even just the Immutable ones, means you have a roadmap, not only for the plot, but also for the character’s inner journey.

Developing your Immutable Moments also means you can filter in those wild card moments. Remember the decorative walls we talked about earlier? These are scenes that add to the richness of your novel without bearing the weight of the entire structure. Wild card moments are those added details you think about when brainstorming. Silly moments. Heartfelt ones. Hilarious comments from another character.

In The Princess Bride, some of the best parts of the book are wildcard moments such as the “mawwaige” scene, the over-the-top sword fight, and the bisexual subtext between Inigo and Westley.

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide, wildcard moments make up the heart and soul of the series. Consider the improbability drive’s side effects, the ghost of Zaphod’s grandfather, the guide entries sprinkled throughout the book, and Marvin the Android’s endless pessimism. Would the book be the same without them? No. Would the entire arc still stand without it? Absolutely yes.

The best part about wildcard moments is you can plan them ahead of time or you can lean into them while you’re writing. They give writers who crave creative freedom the ability to go off on tangents, all the while keeping the Immutable Moments in mind to keep them on track, to keep the structure solid. If you know the Immutable Moments of your novel, you can start writing today without worrying about utter collapse and ruin because one of your load-bearing walls was built on a slant.

Try it today. You may still end up in a writerly crisis at some point, weeping over plotting beats and asking yourself why anyone ever writes anything. Ever.

But at least you’ll have Immutable Moments. Unchangeable. Unchanging. And waiting for you to stop crying and start writing.

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