Character Depth

Books can either focus on characters or plot.  Obviously most books have some amalgamation of the two, but usually one or the other takes a slight edge in focus.  Sometimes it’s extreme, as in World WarZ(where the “main” character is only chronicling events) or The Old Man and theSea(where the boat ride and fishing takes a back seat to the old man).  But yes, most books have a better balance.

I write this because Schism has a few characters that the story is told through, but they’re not the focal point of the story.  As such, the secondary characters around them become even more extraneous.  I’ve got characters in Schism that appears once with important information, and then they dissolve into the background, never to be seen again.  The biggest challenge with this was remembering who was involved at certain stages since they were more vehicles to take us through the plot rather than people of independence who were vital to what was going on.

Perhaps this shows I’m a cold-hearted bastard who doesn’t care about people.  That’s not the case as far as I see it, but I can see how folks could come to that conclusion.  Honestly, I’m not much of a people person, and creating characters of depth drains me.  It’s necessary, but notice that my first few books contain very few folks that we get to know well.  In a book like Wrongful Death, there’s one person who spends a lot of the story alone.  Even the villain in that story is only there to push the main character forward.

Like I said, maybe I’m just more captivated by story, so few people involved need depth.  Think about how exhausting your own life is, and that’s just you.  If you had to live the lives of five to ten other people just as fully, wouldn’t it wear you out as well?