Building Character Arcs Without Building Six Different Novels

by

I’ve been doing a major revision of the outline for Book 2 before I move into detailed scene planning, and lately that has meant taking apart a story I’ve already spent a considerable amount of time putting together. This is apparently how outlining works for me. Build the machine, admire it for a few minutes, then start removing parts to see whether it still runs.

One part of that process has been separating the major characters from the larger outline and examining their stories individually. I’ll pull out Dain’s scenes and follow his journey from beginning to end, then do the same with Elise, Garrick, Lorna, Liora, Lucien, and the other Hawthornes. Each of them came out of Book 1 with their own relationships, problems, goals, and assorted emotional baggage, and all of that needs somewhere to go.

What I’ve discovered is that making each of those journeys compelling is only half the problem. A collection of good character arcs does not automatically produce a good novel. They also have to feel like parts of the same story rather than several different novels politely taking turns.

That has become one of the bigger questions I’m working through as I develop Book 2: How do you give several characters meaningful stories while still making all of them feel like one story?

First Make Every Character’s Story Work

My current approach is to temporarily ignore the larger novel and isolate each character. I want to follow Dain from the beginning of Book 2 to the end and see a clear progression in the pressures he faces, the choices he makes, and the consequences of those choices. Then I run the same test on everyone else.

Those journeys shouldn’t be interchangeable because the characters aren’t interchangeable. Dain is a young Templar whose instinct is generally to act. Elise is a priest whose faith and responsibilities shape the way she approaches problems. Garrick is an engineer and inventor, so he naturally looks for solutions differently than his siblings do. Lorna operates through secrecy while carrying a past she would much rather keep buried somewhere nobody is likely to go digging.

If I can move a major plot beat from one of them to another without changing much, I probably haven’t made that beat personal enough.

K. M. Weiland argues that internal and external conflict work best when they are interdependent. A character shouldn’t have one story happening inside his head while an unrelated plot happens around him. His fears, beliefs, and changes should influence what he actually does, and those actions should have consequences that affect the rest of the book.

Then Put the Novel Back Together

Once an individual character arc works, I get to put it back into the novel and discover what it broke.

A sequence might be exactly what Dain needs at that point in his development, but if I drop it into the middle of an urgent Elise storyline, it may stomp on the brakes just when the larger novel needs to accelerate. I can have the same problem with Lorna. Her subplot might be fascinating, but if I stay there too long, returning to Garrick can start to feel like opening a browser tab I forgot about three days ago. I know something important was happening in there. I just need a minute to remember what it was.

Donald Maass has warned about rotating among plotlines simply because each character seems due for another scene. That temptation makes sense in an ensemble novel, especially when I notice someone hasn’t appeared in a while. But “we haven’t seen Garrick lately” is not, by itself, a compelling reason for a Garrick scene.

I’m starting to think of this as the difference between character fairness and story momentum. The characters don’t need equal numbers of scenes, equal page counts, or equal intervals between appearances. They need the scenes the novel requires at the moments when their actions matter.

The Arcs Need to Collide, Not Just Coexist

Getting the individual arcs working and properly paced still isn’t enough. Those stories also need to affect each other.

Something Garrick discovers might eventually create a problem Elise has to confront. A choice Liora makes can change Niotta’s circumstances rather than remaining safely contained inside Liora’s subplot. Dain can make a decision whose consequences reach characters who weren’t even present when he made it.

There’s a difference between six parallel character arcs and one story containing six character arcs. In the first version, everyone has interesting things to do, but those things mostly remain in their own lanes. In the second, one character’s actions keep changing the road underneath everyone else.

Writer’s Digest has made a similar point about supporting arcs needing meaningful connections to the core conflict. Otherwise, the subplots can start feeling like separate novels that have been crammed together and told to get along.

That has changed the way I evaluate scenes. I still ask what a scene does for the character at its center, but now I’m also asking if it changes the novel as a whole.

Landing the Squadron

I like to think of this as an aircraft carrier (I know, just bare with me).

The beginning and middle of an ensemble novel can feel a little like launching a squadron of fighter planes. Dain can head off in one direction while Elise goes another. Garrick can pursue his own problem while Lorna and Liora are occupied somewhere else. For quite a while, those aircraft can spread out and operate independently.

The trouble comes when everybody needs to land.

As the novel moves toward its climax, all those awesome planes have to land on the carrier, but they can’t all land at once. One comes in while another circles, and a problem with one landing affects everyone waiting behind it. Suddenly, the order and timing matter as much as whether each aircraft can land successfully on its own.

At that point, the author becomes an air traffic controller, except instead of aircraft full of fuel and explosives, I’m dealing with fictional people full of unresolved emotional problems. I’m not entirely sure which is easier.

That’s the challenge of bringing an ensemble into the climax. Each important character needs a payoff, but those payoffs can’t keep interrupting the larger conflict so everyone can finish their personal business. Ideally, the arcs begin converging before then, and the characters’ climactic choices help cause the resolution of the larger story.

This is one of the places where advance outlining becomes particularly valuable for the kind of ensemble epic fantasy I’m writing. I’d rather work out the traffic pattern now than discover six aircraft approaching the deck at the same time after I’ve already written the scenes.

What I’m Changing in My Process

My development process for Book 2 has gradually become a series of layers. I started with the broad story, broke it into acts, worked through the major character arcs, and eventually built a scene list. Now I’m taking that nice, organized scene list and pulling it apart again.

I’m extracting the individual character arcs and reading them independently from the surrounding novel. Looking only at one character’s scenes makes it easier to spot gaps, weak transitions, decisions that aren’t properly motivated, or payoffs that haven’t been earned. Once I’ve repaired those arcs individually, I’ll put everything back together and examine the complete novel again for pacing, continuity, causality, setup and payoff, and how well those character stories are braided together.

One lesson has already come out of this process. I’ve found places in the outline where I wrote something along the lines of the character begins to understand X. That sounds perfectly reasonable while outlining, but it isn’t particularly useful when I eventually have to write the scene.

A realization by itself isn’t dramatic. I need to know what choice or action demonstrates that change. If a character understands something now that he didn’t understand earlier, what does he do differently because of it? That gives me something concrete I can eventually put on the page instead of relying on a realization happening somewhere inside his skull and hoping the reader notices.

That’s increasingly how I see outlining. It isn’t simply deciding beforehand what happens. It’s testing whether hundreds of decisions, reactions, discoveries, mistakes, setups, and consequences actually create the novel I think I’m building.

Building Book 2 One Layer at a Time

Developing Book 2 this way has reinforced something I hadn’t fully appreciated when I started working with a larger ensemble. Compelling characters with carefully designed arcs still aren’t enough. Their stories have to collide, their choices need to change one another’s circumstances, and eventually those separate journeys have to converge around the central conflict.

That means I’m spending a considerable amount of time on the architecture before I start drafting scenes, but that’s intentional. I would rather discover now that a character disappears for too long, a payoff arrives too early, or two arcs are competing for the same stretch of the novel than make the same discovery after writing tens of thousands of words. Outlining doesn’t eliminate those problems, but at least I can make most of my mistakes with bullet points instead of finished chapters.

If you’d like to follow along, I’ll continue sharing the development of Book 2 as I work through the outlining, character development, worldbuilding, and eventually the writing itself. I’ll keep these posts behind the scenes without spoiling the story, which may become its own challenge once I actually have to start talking about the good stuff.

Sources