Character Change and Backstory

QUESTION: My main character used to be a bad guy, but now he’s not.  He’s gone elsewhere and changed his name.  How much of his past should I include?  Do I need to write scenes from his past?  Will readers believe he has changed?

If his past (backstory) is important, and it probably should be, you don’t have to include scenes of that past unless you think the reader wouldn’t understand him or his backstory is really complex.  Usually in a case like this, his past life must impact his present one, and backstory scenes are interlaced with the present day.  

Remember that every time a scene from the past is inserted, the reader stops dead to get his mind into the past then must stop dead again to get back in the present.  This kind of back and forth is not a good thing in popular fiction like fantasy.

Backstory can be inserted easily enough during present time scenes through dialogue, thoughts from the main character, and events.   

He could be in a tavern to meet another character and hear a drunk nearby talking about his former identity's bad-ass behavior and think — “He'd piss his pants if he knew he was sitting a few bar stools away from me."  Then you could have another character say to the drunk, "But (insert former name here) was decent enough.  He'd never fight around civilians and that time he rescued the child from the burning house instead of taking the money.  You wouldn't see (insert new bad guy's name here) do that." 

Sooner rather than later, you’ll also need to tell the reader why he chose to change.  Again, it need not be a huge info dump.  

As to whether readers will accept a bad guy as a good guy, part of this is determined by genre expectations from its readers.  A truly despicable character would never be accepted as a hero in a romance, but, elsewhere, readers have a lot more forgiveness about this.  In your reading of the genre you are writing, do you recall characters who switched moral sides and did it work and why?  

Two superhero movies I can recall where the bad guy turned into the good guy are MEGAMIND and DESPICABLE ME. The change in their characters was the story. 

And think also of Magneto in the X-Men series.  As a bad guy, he is morally and emotionally complex, and he's helped his former friend Charles Xavier more than once to save the day for everyone's sake. 

Usually, bad characters who change sides have already shown they are capable of good behavior with the bad behavior.  That makes it more believable.  A psychopath who changes to become a hero is totally unbelievable.

The trick is making your character's choices and changes believable.  If you do, the reader will accept them.  

 

Getting Into Your Character's Head

 Creating a character is emotional detective work. You need to deduce what has happened to this person over the years because of the situations they've gone through then decide how that has affected them and how they react to different things because of those situations.

Let's say that your main character is a woman in her late twenties who has had a relentless stalker after her for eight years. Every time the stalker finds her, he will hurt anyone close to her, he will destroy her reputation and her job, and he will generally make her life hell. The police have been unable to stop him, when they actually try, so her only recourse is to change her name and run.

Imagine yourself as this character on an average day doing average things like meeting new people. What are your thoughts?

You and I would probably be thinking very different thoughts meeting a new person as opposed to your heroine.

You and I probably don't have an escape plan if someone threatens us. Would your heroine? How would she live her life knowing she might have to flee at any moment? Would her apartment be filled with memory items? Or would it be fairly empty of personal stuff? Would it make her messy or neat?

If something unusual happens, would she immediately expect a threat?

In your plot, what characteristics will your heroine need to survive? What characteristics would make it harder to survive to add to the tension of the story?

These are just a few questions you should ask yourself.

If this is hard for you, try to think of a character similar to your major character in a book, TV show, or movie you've seen that really grabbed you. That may give you some ideas, too.

Reaction versus Goal in Plot

When I started plotting my romantic suspense novel, GUARDIAN ANGEL, I decided that my plot line would be the following--

(Back story) High-powered defense attorney Lauton O’Brien hires Gard Gardner to protect his adult daughter Desta if one of the organized crime lords or killers he defends decides to go after him or his family.

(Book plot) Lauton realizes one of his clients is out to kill him. He sends Desta and information about who is out to kill him to Gard, and he disappears. Desta comes by boat to Gard’s lake home. The boat blows up with the information, but Gard saves Desta. 

Desta and Gard go on the run with hired killers hot on their trail.

At first glance, the plot sounded great. Lots of action, adrenaline, scary bad guys, and a perfect situation for two people very suited to each other to find love and a happily-ever-after.

Then I realized the plot had a fatal flaw. The two main characters spend the whole novel reacting to what others are doing to them. Reaction is passive, and passive creates less than stellar main characters and a much weaker book. 

I needed to give the characters a goal which is active. 

I wanted to keep the hired killers hot on their trail, but I decided that Gard and Desta weren’t running away, they were working toward their goal -- following clues to find Lauton so they can figure out who is trying to kill them then stopping that person so they can have a life together. 

When you are creating your main plot, you also need to be sure that your main character or characters have an active goal instead of being swept along by circumstances or by someone’s actions against them.

Make them heroes, not victims.

NOTE:  This book is going out of print next month because the publisher is closing down. RIP, GUARDIAN ANGEL.  

Thinking Through a Minor Character

 You are an old and powerful fae (fairy) with lots of human money and your own retainers.  You discover a powerful magical artifact, and others want to kill you and take it.  Do you

1.  Hire fae warriors to protect you the moment you realize you are in trouble.

2. Contact other powerful and friendly fae for help to get you to your own protected domain.

3. A long time after you find the artifact and have done nothing to protect yourself and the artifact, you leave a message on the answering machine of a half-fae private detective who has neither the power nor the skill to protect you.  Then you don’t bother to tell her who is after you or why even though the assassins have just broken in the door.  You do, however, ask her to solve your murder.

Unfortunately, in a novel I recently read, the author chose #3.  She obviously hadn’t given any thought to the background, skills, and options of her murder victim so she created this whooper of a ridiculous storyline.  

If she’d wanted a victim who had no means of protection or power, she could have created someone to fit the bill.  

Creating a believable story requires not only a good viewpoint character with her strengths and weakness fitting the storyline; it also requires the same careful thought about minor characters who influence her and the storyline.

Making Info Tidbits Palatable

No matter what kind of novel you write, you’ll face the problem of how to share bits of information with your reader.

These bits are minor plot or character clues that the main character and the reader need to know to go forward to a logical conclusion.

Often, these small clues come from different sources, but writing a scene for each bit of information often slows the pace to a crawl.  What to do?

One method is delegation.  Have your character delegate the task of finding out this information to a secondary character who will do it off page.  The secondary character will report back and in one scene present all the necessary information.  This method is often used in mysteries, but it can be just as effective in any genre novel.

The second method is finding a gossip, expert, or reporter who already knows the information.  To make this scene work, make that gossip or expert a bit larger than life, funny, or someone who knows embarrassing things about the main character so the scene is interesting.  

The most important thing to remember when doing this is to make it integral to the novel and to make it a logical choice for the main character to make.

Info Dumping and Modern Tech

 I read a novel recently where characters researched other characters by using their smart phones to check out Facebook and search engines.

To a certain extent, this worked.  The information was given in a tidy manner without some character thinking about his past or offering too much information via dialogue.  And these days, it’s a very common way to check someone out so it was realistic.

On the other hand, the writer went overboard with this technique by giving too much time and attention to facts in a massive info dump at the very beginning and stalling the story for pages.  He also spoiled the reader’s fun of figuring out what makes this character tick and wondering about the dark hint some other character gives by mentioning the hero’s final Super Bowl game.

Sure, the hero is a former NFL player, but the YouTube video of him accidentally killing another player during a tackle doesn’t have to be presented immediately because that information doesn’t inform the reader of what is happening at the present time.  Later, when the hero makes a comment about this moment changing his life, another character can watch the moment of YouTube.

Just because information is easy to find these days doesn’t mean that the reader needs all of it at the beginning of the story. 

The Big Picture

 QUESTION:  What’s a good way to describe events going on that no one is aware of? Do I do a prologue explaining it? It is important the reader understands the context of the story I'm telling.

One narrative choice is to have a prologue that's strictly overview, kind of like the scrolling words in the first STAR WARS movie. This may work in a sprawling epic fantasy or an historical novel, but it's so old-fashioned that most modern readers won't get past it to get to the real story. For any story that isn't an epic, it absolutely won't work.

You also have the talking heads method where characters who know the overview have a chat about the subject.  Again, this is old-fashioned and boring to the modern reader.

The real question is whether the reader needs this "big picture" information, or do you need it to get the big picture straight in your head?  Most often, in the case of an inexperienced writer, it’s for you, not the reader.

Readers are smart, and they are interested in what is happening with the viewpoint character--what is his goal, who is thwarting that goal, what are his emotional reasons for doing what he is doing, etc.  The big picture isn't so important at the beginning.

Instead, you broaden the knowledge of the main character as he goes along so that he knows why doing what he needs to do is as important to the bigger picture as it is for his own personal story.  Or, even better, have him discover that what he wants works against the big picture so he must choose to do the right thing or the selfish thing.