Getting to Know You

Sometimes characters’ personalities change once you start writing them. Your villain turns out to have a sense of humor. The hero’s loyal ally proves to be secretly sort of a dick.

Outlining is based on plot kinetics, concrete events. To the extent that anyone’s interior state is represented at all, it’s very broad. Probably based on the role or archetype of the character more than details about their motivations. “Bob opposes Alice, so when she enters the bake-off he… switches her sugar and her baking powder.”

Writing the prose is when you start to see out through these people’s eyes. The antipathy between Bob and Alice becomes something you can feel, not just a specification for the project. And, that ingredient switcheroo is easier said than done. Bob looks up at you and asks, “How do I not get caught?” and you sternly order him to figure it out. He does, or when he gets caught he talks his way out of it, or he invents a completely new way to sabotage Alice, and in the process you figure out how his mind works.

There’s also the grit of everyday life, sensorial stuff like clothing choices or a favorite snack, little challenges like too much traffic or too little coffee, and so on. Small-scale things that reveal so much more about this person than we get from the macro plot structure.

Here at SkellyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, each of us tends to “adopt” a subset of the cast. This spreads out the load, so each of us only has to learn to wear half as many heads. The initial adoptions have a tendency to stick, but we rarely make formal assignments — Kent might take the lead with a given character, but Jen can step in to write later scenes in that POV, which helps round out its voice.

A writing partner is someone who gets to know you a little more on every page, as you get to know them better, too.