Tips

What happens when you decide to change the personality of a supporting character midway through writing? We’ve all done it – on purpose or – let’s be honest – accidentally. Soaps do it all the time. One minute the buff, blonde actor turns heads. The next he’s bald and skinny with a drink problem.

In the story I’m trying to tell right now, I decided the disapproving social climbing mother was too obvious. Sure, there’s humour to find in someone who twitches net curtains and social climbs at the golf club. It also means appropriating Hyacinth Bouquet. My character had become a trope. And so, I decided to take her in a different direction. She became a one-time hippy, once arrested and still determined to rebel. I’ll be the first to admit that she’s still a trope. The thing is, I needed her to stand out among others who spend their lives trying to fit in.

It meant my work in progress needed radical surgery. It wouldn’t be enough to rewrite her lines and turn her from hanger-on to maverick. A major personality change would influence those who spin in her orbit. Her daughter, her husband, her immediate family, her friends.

This change presented an opportunity to rewrite whole chapters and skew the humour differently. I’ve been able to talk about how ideals get compromised as our lives change. It also helped me explain better why the main character allowed herself to hold so much in for so long. Why did the meltdown happen so late? When a child has to play the parent, it builds defences.

And then there’s the language – should my character speak differently? I wanted to keep the polite aspirations of middle class in her Waitrose-fuelled life, but expose the past. Of course there’s the temptation to cram back story into dialogue. This is a Bad Thing ™. Nobody says: ‘I know you disagree, darling, but when I was hanging out with communists in the 1980s, we saw things very differently.’ It’s far easier to have my narrator fill in the gaps and keep the dialogue authentic.

Finally, what about the surroundings – the home she helped build built. I thought long and hard about people I know who once considered themselves distinctly left wing. Myself included. As we grew older, lives changed. Souvenirs of rebellion gathered dust in cupboards and drawers, but we still want people to know we’re different. We have an edge.

As an exercise in unblocking the flow of my story, it had massive impact, and I’d go so far as recommending this, should you find your writing blocked.

Have you ever changed someone midway through? Have you ever dared recast your main character?

At some point soon, I’ll need to write something that convinces my readers that a failed corporate advertising executive could fall in love with a guy who sells the Big Issue. Fair enough, that’s the stuff that rom-com is made of – bonding against the odds and often because of them. But when I first asked my beta readers what they thought of a (very) early draft, it was this concept that they flagged as hardest to accept.

“Can you make it clear he isn’t a tramp sipping meths and living in a box?” one of them said. She added that she hoped that didn’t sound in any way dismissive of Big Issue sellers. After merciless mocking of such overt political correctness, I took the feedback on board.

No matter how wrong this may be, the phrase homeless comes with certain preconceptions. And I probably should mention that my Big Issue is a reformed alcoholic, so my beta reader did sort of have a point.

It got me pondering how soon I could spin up the rom in the com.

Too much, too soon

How many films have I started to watch, and then stopped, just because an unlikely pairing gets flagged up too soon? A misty eyed exchange across the boardroom table between sworn enemies, the (hot when he has a make-over) homeless guy who helps when the ditzy lead drops her shopping in the street.

At the same time, stuff like this can’t come out of nowhere. Sparks need to smoulder before they burst into flame.

This morning, I looked back over my plot outline. This is the writerly thing some of us pretend to stick to for every work in progress. Have I featured him enough? Has he had enough lines? Are they lines that suggest hidden depths (and soap)? Does the other romantic lead have space in her heart and her head to jump on board?

Beyond belief?

Obviously the very idea of their getting together must be both credible and absurd, or where’s the reader interest? But how absurd before credible goes? In a book like the one I’m trying to complete, it feels like every (non-romantic) exchange must be sprinkled with a hint of the possible.

I’m about 30,000 words in, a third of the way through my plot outline and this feels like the right time to step the romance up a gear. The pages I write today will matter, and they need to convince me as much as anyone.

This isn’t a Hollywood movie where the character gets sent away for a makeover to meet some absurd plot twist (she gets dumped at the last minute before an important company event and needs a plus one).

I need ‘Danny’ to drift into focus in ‘Sally’s’ life. He’s already there as someone she knows. He’s already moved from nodding acquaintance to friend. The next steps matter.

As a writer, how do you handle this? Flag it from page one, or wait for the moment? Should romance come out of the blue or do you lay down clues?

It’s all about me, or at least that’s how things might appear to a casual reader of my writing. I’ve written so much in first person that no matter how hard I try to present the story from another point of view, I drift back.

I start in the abstract third person, smugly enjoying how this ever-present voice lets me talk about other characters behind their backs. By the third page, one voice has taken over, and even if he or she isn’t yet talking directly to the reader, it’s pretty clear they need to.

It seems I need someone tell the tale for me. Perversely, I enjoy the restriction of only having the narrator know what they can know. The lack of insight into what others are seeing and doing creates tension. It lets me set up scenes without pages of explanation.

First person head hopping

Staying in that voice is the problem. When I first started to write, I found myself making the rookie mistake of ‘head hopping’. Early drafts are peppered with lines like, ‘She nodded as I spoke, knowing she’d ignore every word.’

As if first person isn’t enough, I’ve developed a love of present tense. Something that most writers hate. It puts me in the driving seat. Things happen in real time. Of course, linear timelines can become dull for the reader, and that’s where the tricks of the trade creep in. Reflection and the plain art of a character giving themselves ‘a damn good talking to’ help vary the pace. One thing to watch for is that you don’t let your characters wallow in self pity – it’s a huge turn off.

Stage directions are my next big sin. Things have to flow. The first draft may say, ‘I walk across the room to the widow as he speaks, stopping and looking back, gasping at how tired he looks sitting on a chair.’

The second draft better not.

What’s wrong with, ‘I stare through the window, as he speaks. He sounds so tired.’ Who needed to know about me walking, turning, staring and gasping, or him sitting?

As I reach the mid-point of a fifth draft of my next novel, I realise it has little resemblance to the first. But this isn’t a bad thing. I’ve uncovered the head hops, the wallowing meditations and detailed choreography. Next stop typos.