Character Distinctiveness

With Impressions finished, I’ve dug into writing Rogue Planet in earnest…which meant realizing that I needed to take a step back and figure out a better way to manage the extensive cast.  Rogue Planet will be written in third person omniscient and feature an ensemble cast of some twenty-four distinct crewmembers, not including other significant characters outside the crew.  If Impressions was an exercise in learning how to focus on a single character, Rogue Planet will be an exercise in learning how to manage a large cast.

This was a deliberate choice, since learning to manage such a cast will be essential in tackling whatever Fo’Fonas becomes.  My first step has been writing down basic information in a table about each of the crewmembers: first and last names, origins, basic physical characteristics, a few personality traits, work history, educational backgrounds, and their positions on the crew.  I normally don’t bother recording a lot of this information, because I haven’t written stories with so many characters that were long enough that I couldn’t hold all of this information in my head.  This project is different.  The process has also forced me to rethink some of my initial character choices and reminded me how much I don’t like writing anything set in the real world, even if it is the future (or the past).  It just adds an extra layer of complication around reader expectations – think about how, in older science fiction, it can seem so strange the assumptions the authors made about what the future would look like in terms of geopolitics or when certain technologies would be available.

I originally started writing the story with a fairly tight focus on just one of the characters, but now that I’m digging into the project in earnest, I intend to walk back that grounding.  A little less character drama, perhaps, and a little more focus on the plot and the science.  Instead of an intense character arc for one character, I’m going to attempt to juggle numerous, smaller character arcs for all of the characters.  Mostly, I want each of the characters to really come alive, which, at least in the initial chapters, is proving challenging.  There just aren’t enough opportunities to showcase each of the characters being unique and interesting, at least going along with one stream.

With that observation in mind, I think I’ll need to split up the chapters a little more.  Not make them shorter – they might end up longer – but use more section breaks within the chapter to allow the narrative to follow different characters doing different things at different times.  I’m struggling with how specifically to plot those divisions out in advance.  Do I need to map out the character arcs, compare them, and try to synchronize them with the plot arc so that the sections are adequately balanced amongst the characters?  Or is it better to let the divisions and distribution of narrative attention happen naturally as I move through the story?  140,000 words might sound like a lot, but recall that I spent 180,000 words in Impressions focusing on just one main character.

Therefore, I must keep reminding myself that Rogue Planet is a very different kind and style of story.  A lot of the plot motive, the tension, and the conflict in Impressions came from following Raven’s experiences throughout the novel.  Rogue Planet is different.  The plot motive is external (very external), and the tension and conflict mostly arise from that, with the characters there more to add seasoning.  Yes, that’s a good analogy, and good way to look at it.  In Rogue Planet, the characters are the spices and the seasoning that make the meal worth eating, but the meal itself is not made from the characters.  Impressions, on the other hand, really had Raven as the main course.  That…doesn’t sound as insightful as I thought it would.  The point is that whereas the character drove the story in Impressions, the plot will drive the story in Rogue Planet, though that does not excuse me from the need to write compelling and vibrant characters.

This is where being a keen observer of human nature is of utmost importance as a writer, and also why I firmly believe that my writing would suffer if I did it full time.  There must be certain commonalities between the crewmembers, since they all got to the point of being crewmembers on this mission, but that doesn’t mean they’re all going to be similar.  That’s easy enough to see looking at a workplace, and mine is a perfect analog – we all somehow ended up in the space industry, which means we all tend to have certain common interests and tendencies…but we are still very different people.  Not that any real people ever appear in my books, but that doesn’t mean I don’t draw inspiration from real world observations.

I already know the first few chapters of Rogue Planet will need significant revisions to bring them in line with my ultimate vision for the story.  As I dig deeper into the writing, I will hopefully start hitting a stride.  In truth, I was pleasantly surprised with how well Impressions came together in the end; it gives me hope that I will achieve something similar with Rogue Planet, even if it seems a little scattered as I’m starting it off.