Create Real People, Not Paper Dolls
Jenny Margotta, High Desert Branch
For the most part this summer, I’ve found myself unable to get interested in watching television.
There just doesn’t seem to be anything that holds my interest as much as a good book.
I’ve always loved to read, but now I’m reading more than ever.
Since I’m a storyteller as well as a reader, I found myself analyzing the books I read. Why did I only “enjoy” some books while, with others, I could get so lost in them that I would suddenly look up after several hours and be surprised that it was dark or that multiple hours had vanished with no awareness on my part? What was it that dragged me into a book and held me there, captivated, invested in the story’s events?
I discovered it was so much more than the “surface” story. Yes, the story by itself was of interest, but the books I lost myself in had one nearly magical ingredient others did not. And that ingredient was?
Characters. Characters that came to life on the page, that became, in my mind, real people. People I cared about, agonized with over their conflicts and decisions, laughed with and cried with. That, to me, is essential to making an okay book a treasure to read.
I love book series. When I pick up another book in one of my favorite series, I’m anxious to find out what my “friends” have been up to since I last checked in with them. What new fiend is menacing them or their families? What new triumphs have they managed?
New loves? New problems? In short, what have they been doing since I last visited them?
When I was a little girl, paper dolls were all the rage. You could buy a book where you cut out the paper dolls from the back cover or sometimes from a thin cardboard page inserted in the book. You then cut out the various outfits for your dolls from the remaining pages of the book. These “clothes” were attached to the dolls by small tabs that folded over the shoulders, around the waist, or around the legs. That was fine, so long as you didn’t try to move the dolls very much. If you did, the “clothes” fell off. And, of course, you only had a vision of the doll from the front. The back was just brown or gray cardboard. There was no way you could think of those paper dolls as real people.
That’s what I’m reminded of when I read a book with undeveloped characters. They appear one-dimensional. Stiffly constructed with no depth to them. They react to the plot but don’t interact with it. They have no capability to drive the plot; they don’t develop and evolve, and the storyline simply swirls around them like debris caught in a flood.
So here’s my advice for the month. Don’t cut out paper dolls and stand them up in your story. Create real people. People who can love and hate, laugh and cry, grow and develop. People who don’t just react to your plot but who can actually affect your plot. If the people you create in your books are real enough, you may even find them driving the plot, not the other way around.
Give your readers someone to care about. Someone to get invested in. Someone they’ll eagerly wait to meet again in your next book.
This essay original appeared in the October 2023 edition
of The Inkslinger, newsletter of the High Desert Branch