Our theme for the month of March is “How to.”
A few months ago, I started reading Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada because if it’s YA and gay, I’m there. Before even beginning the book, I was struck by what Nerada wrote about his main character in his letter to the reader:
“At first, I set out to write a light-hearted romantic comedy that loosely paid tribute to a classic pop-punk anthem. But when its main character, Wesley ‘Big Mac’ Mackenzie, revealed his true colors to me, I knew there was so much more to tell.”
There’s something special about those two sentences. The fact that a developed, complex character—sometimes containing layers you hadn’t anticipated—can take an author on a completely different narrative journey is a real testament to power characters hold over writers.
When the character presents this alternative path, we have two choices. We can stick with the story idea we’ve had for months, the one we’ve rehearsed in our minds. Or, we can take the leap and trust our developed characters to take us down an unexpected, sometimes risky, path.
In my experience, trusting your characters leads to pleasant surprises.
This is by no means a revolutionary idea, but character building is my all-time favorite part of writing, so I would like to use this month’s prompt to talk about the narrative beauty that comes with giving the reins of storytelling to your characters.
It took writing a novel for me to understand that just because I have the power to create characters doesn’t mean I have the power to make them do whatever I want. Because if that were the case, then they wouldn’t be characters, just puppets that mimic my every move.
My first draft was a doozy. I got fifty thousand words in when I realized the plot I was creating was not feasible, so I chopped off half of the content and went back to the exposition.
But then I found myself looking at my two main narrators, and I wasn’t satisfied with what I saw. They didn’t feel complete yet, so I rewrote most of the exposition to match a revamped version of them. Now, they had more distinct voices and personalities that didn’t feel cliché.
After giving my narrators characterization makeovers, drafting the rest of the novel flew by compared to the drudge those first fifty thousand words were. Because I was now writing about characters I connected with, I became more emotionally invested in the story. I could be anywhere: sitting in class or waiting for the bus when ideas would run through my mind. And I couldn’t wait to sit down and put them into writing.
The more my characters developed, the more they separated from my mind. When I think of them, I don’t see them as figments of my imagination. They are their own people with their own personalities and their own out-of-pocket opinions.
Sometimes, when I’m thinking about a recent event or a piece of media, I think about how this certain character would react or what this absolute diva of a character would have to say about it.
Though I’d spend my days imagining how certain scenes would transpire, my characters would surprise me once they got onto the page. On my screen, some scenes would play out differently as my character’s personalities and reactions shaped it, making it clearer and sharper and more authentic than my daydreams could’ve ever done justice.
It wasn’t just the drafting that my characters had control of—they were part of the editing process. While line editing, I’d pause over a sentence, thinking to myself: “Wait, why did I write that? She’d never speak like that.” If I wrote something out of character, the whole scene would be off. The dialogue would feel artificial and shiny, as if someone put a shitty AI voiceover on top of my characters’ words.
Even my best friend would notice when a character wasn’t being themselves. “I don’t think they’d react this way,” she said to me once over the phone. “It doesn’t feel like them.” She noticed the inauthenticity that came when I tried to stronghold a character into acting a certain way. And since they’d never act like that, the scene was clunky, dishonest.
Trust is a necessary element of writing. You need to trust your craft, even if you’re like me and randomly wonder whether you’re good enough to be doing this.
But you also need to trust your characters. We can’t helicopter parent them, keeping them on a child leash so they follow the strict narrative structure we’ve cooked up. We gotta let them run wild, tearing through constraints so they can create new developments, new plotlines, and new dialogue that have the power to shape and mold our stories in their image.
After all, the story is their home, not ours.
Liana Hirner graduated from Calvin in 2024 with a bachelor’s in writing. She currently lives in her hometown of Aurora, Illinois and works full-time in a warehouse filled with books waiting to be sorted. Writing is her first love, followed swiftly by lattes and dark chocolate.
