Character-Driven Narratives
Crafting Well-Rounded, Take-Charge-of-the-Narrative Characters
By Julie Tollefson
Richard F. McGonegal’s approach to character development has evolved over the course of writing four novels in the Sheriff Francis Hood mystery series and more than 20 published short stories. “My early works were much more plot oriented than character oriented,” he says. “Now I really try to develop the characters and let them infuse, drive the narrative.” Here, Richard shares five points he considers when developing characters.
1) Embrace complexity — People are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual beings, and authors can — and should — tap into all of these traits when developing characters, Richard says.
“One of the things that I’ve noticed is that authors tend to focus on physical description and the character's thoughts and feelings,” he says. “But unless the book is decidedly about the spiritual, they tend to leave out what a person’s spiritual component is. And I do, too.”
But embracing a full range of traits creates multi-dimensional characters and opens opportunities for ramping up the tension in your work. If a character’s spiritual and mental codes clash, for example, you’ve created inner conflict that will keep readers turning the pages.
“You have to have a compelling reason for a character to open the dialogue on any given aspect of themselves,” Richard says.
His first novel, Sense of Grace, featured a children’s book illustrator who has synesthesia, a neurological condition in which sounds are translated into colors and images. As the character illustrates a book on religions of the world, she listens to the music of each religion to help her develop pictures to match the book’s text and in doing so, explores her own spirituality. In this way, plot and multifaceted traits work together to bring the character to life.
Use a light touch, though, Richard cautions, to avoid the impression of the author intruding on the story.
2) Lean in to motivation — As crime writers, we understand motivation, but our characters may not. And that can lead to rich, entertaining stories.
“Each person has some kind of code of conduct or value system,” Richard says. “What I find is that people — because I’m guilty of this myself — often fool themselves. And sometimes we’re not even aware of our own motivation.”
Ask yourself, he says, what drives a character and what are the consequences? Does your character stick to their principles, no matter what? Or do they find reason — fame, fortune, expediency — to abandon them?
“Rationalization or justification or denial — peel that away and honestly look at it,” Richard says. “There can be this second layer of intent that goes beyond your stated motivation or your stated reason or rationale for doing a thing.”
3) Show, don’t tell — Respect your reader, Richard says, and craft a more compelling story in the process.
“Revealing character through word and deed is more convincing and indicates respect for your readers’ intelligence,” he says. “If I do things through a character’s dialogue, what they say and what they do, then I leave open the possibility that they may be deceiving themselves and I give the reader that opportunity to be a skeptic.”
When a narrator states a fact, readers often accept it as true. But the same “fact” revealed through words and actions opens the possibility that the character may be unreliable.
“It gives extra dimension in character development,” Richard says. “They may be consciously deceiving me or going through some form of self-deception.”
4) Be consistent — Don’t force your characters to act inconsistently with their personality solely to advance your plot.
“To me, that’s contrivance and I see the puppeteer. The author reveals themselves and that takes me out of the story,” Richard says “It hurts credibility. Now I see the author’s hand working away here, and I don’t like it because hopefully by now I’m invested in the story.”
So what do you do when plot and character misalign? One of them has to change.
“I’ve got to go back to the drawing board and reinvent something to make that more believable, more palatable to the reader,” Richard says. “It’s kind of like killing your darlings. For each book I have a file called cut scenes. They just didn’t work. I like them but they didn’t develop character or advance plot. They had no use other than ego fulfillment.”
5) Develop, don’t dump — When it comes to character development, too many details too soon can muddle the picture for readers.
“Early on, I would tend to introduce a character and you’d get the whole shooting match,” Richard says. But feedback from beta readers made him rethink that strategy. “They got so much information so quickly, they didn’t really know who this person was yet. As the story evolved, they would kind of forget things that I put in as character introduction material because there really wasn’t anything to hang it on.”
Now, Richard says, he lets events unfold to reveal character through responses and emotions.
“I prefer to let the character evolve as the story evolves and as the action dictates that they react or respond. That’s part of pacing,” he says. “That’s part of the fun. It’s discovery — discovering the story as we go along based on the characters.”