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Your hero has helpers. These characters make up his team.

I didn’t realize this when I wrote my first novel. I just threw names out and characters started having conversations and then plot happened.

But ten chapters in, I had these hangers-on, these useless louts who took up my brain power but didn’t do anything except run in fear when bigfoot burst from the forest.

It was too much to keep track of, and each had little mini plots going that were boring.

The solution was easy, if a bit tedious to execute. I had to merge some of them into a single character, and others I simply removed.

If someone had told me about teams, my creative mind might have known to fill out the roster more efficiently.

Your main character’s team will also help you, the writer.

If you’ve watched any TV cop show, you’ll quickly recognize that the hero has all sorts of experts they can call on to do stuff for them. Think of the specialists in Oceans 11. You’ve got the master of disguises guy, the technology nerd, the suave con-man, the stealthy ninja.

Or how about The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo is aided by a wise wizard, a burly strong dwarf, a noble ranger, a deadshot elf archer, and his loyal friend Samwise.

Remember the A-Team? It was an awesomely silly 1980s action show about a band of Vietnam vets, discharged from the military for “a crime they didn’t commit,” and who now take on heist-style missions. (The 2010 movie remake lived up to the stupidity of the original.)

✅ Hannibal: Master of disguise, and mastermind (the leader of the group)

✅ Murdock: Pilot and jack of all trade (mentally unstable)

✅ B.A.: Strong man who can drive or build anything (afraid of flying) Mr. T!

✅ Face: Charming con-man who can source any vehicle on short notice (disgustingly good looking)

They only take on jobs that pay, but also that are just.

I loved this show when I was a kid. Especially the midpoint montage where they inevitably got cornered in a barn and had to build a monster tank from a dilapidated tractor and 50 gallon barrels.

CSI in all its variations feature teams in support of the main detective. Forensics can discover anything, if the plots needs them to.

Arrow, the comic adaptation TV show, has a team surrounding the Oliver Queen. I love how Felicity Smoak can do anything with technology to help Oliver stop criminals.

Smoak: “I just picked up the bad guy’s phone signal in the Glades!”

Arrow: “Track it!”

Smoak: “To do that I’d have to install a virus on his phone that pings the doohickey with the interflooser wangfidget.”

Arrow: “You have five minutes.”

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So if you’re mired down with a bunch of characters who seem to have no point in existing, it might be time to ask your creative mind to sort them into buckets of abilities.

What can this character do that my hero can’t do?

Some archetypes in popular teams:

The Tank: strong man who can beat up guys and absorb huge amounts of abuse

The Brain: super smart, explains the science/history of what’s happening, builds the “tech machine” that solves a problem.

The Charmer: master of persuasion, can elicit info from anyone, ease tensions

The Thief: sneaky and silent, can unlock doors and pick pockets

The Sage: sees the big picture, knows the ancient history, might be weaker than others, but makes up for it through experience. Often the mentor to the hero.

The list goes on, and you should pay attention anytime you watch a show or movie to see how a character fits into this sort of role.

Oh, BTW, badguys have teams too: minions. Watch Die Hard again, and take note.

We sometimes make promises to readers without realizing it. This happens all the time when we introduce an intriguing mystery or enigmatic character. Some won’t remember them, and won’t notice if you never show the resolution or purpose of these elements.

But others will, especially if you have re-readers.

If you’re writing a series, you can carry these over from book to book, answering some, introducing new ones. But the trick is to keep track of them and bring them to a close in some manner or other.

I have an Excel spreadsheet called “open loops” for my Starside Saga series. I have a short name for all the open plots in the left hand column.

Here are some examples:

• Vol. Minn and her merculyn army
• Raginalt Keel
• Startle

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These are characters I’ve mentioned and who were last seen “doing something” of import or interest. By the end of the series, I need to close these.

I occasionally go through and add a column to update the current-state of that loop.

Sounds like a lot of thinking and inventing, doesn’t it?

But that’s not how it works for me.

By regularly reviewing and updating this list, I reawaken those characters and plots in my mind. I sometimes go back and read some passages to refresh my memory. And then I continue on my merry way, trusting my creative mind to take advantage of those open loops to solve other plots.

Leaving a few stray loops open can give the readers a sense that the world you’ve created will continue after the story ends. But they better not be important ones!

One of the biggest open loops in a series that I remember is the question of Who Killed Asmodean? in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

I read the Brandon Sanderson books that ended the series (very excellent work, BTW), but I had to look up the answer to the Asmodean question on the internet. The question was answered in the books, but not explicitly, and that was a let down. It was a small thing in the scope of the story, but the manner of his death was so dramatic and surprising (and his murderer’s identity withheld), that it was an enormous question and source of theories for years, and years, and years. So it was a huge question in readers’ minds.

If you’re dealing with one book, you can do most of this during revision. As you read through your first draft, you’ll see the plots and characters and objects that seem important.

If you wrote about a snake that got loose from somebody’s aquarium, we’d better discover what happened to it.

But if you get to the end of the novel and the snake hasn’t reappeared and it’s disappearance wasn’t important at all, you can:

1) take out all mention of it

2) close the loop by having someone mention finding the snake

3) use memory of the loose snake to spark a new idea in your hero’s mind

4) have the snake’s disappearance end almost immediately by finding it in the same scene.

And there’s a dozen more ways to handle it. But leave it unresolved and your readers will feel that something isn’t quite tidy about the ending of your novel.

As a visual artist, I’m at a disadvantage. I have zero natural talent.

But that’s not stopping me from learning to draw. My ultimate goal is to be able to draw concept art of my characters. So I’ve been drawing heads (from every angle) for days. They are invariably bad, but they are improving.

So what does this have to do with writing?

The smaller the sketch, the less detail I can put in without it turning into a muddy mess.

This is true in writing. If you are introducing a walk-on character, you can’t spend four paragraphs describing him. If your character dives into a restroom to hide during a gunfight, you can’t break the pacing to give us paragraphs of description about toilet stalls.

But you don’t want to miss the opportunity of establishing these elements firmly in your reader’s mind.

A guy called Foster came in with the report. He handed it to her.

“This it?” she asked, leafing through it.

“Yeah. Not much there. A few burglaries, a noise complaint.”

She didn’t even notice when Foster left. It seemed impossible her suspect had left so few tracks in his record. Nobody went from robbing a double wide to killing fourteen people.

That’s fine, we don’t need any context to know what’s happening. But the reader is forced to fill in the details of the world with the Generic TV Cop Show setting. It works. Many super successful writers do it, but that doesn’t mean you should settle for generic.

A guy called Foster came in with the report. He scratched a fat earlobe and extended the file across her disaster area of a desk. He raised an eyebrow, scanning the debris of yesterday’s lunch. “Want me to call FEMA?”

She grunted a laugh. Her desk wasn’t that bad. “Want me to call your cardiologist?”

She flipped open the file. He muttered something about his cholesterol. “This is it?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Foster said. “A few burglaries, a noise complaint.”

It seemed impossible her suspect had left so few tracks in his record. Nobody went from robbing double-wides in Pine Place to killing fourteen people in a Stanel Heights mansion.

Yes, it’s a bit longer. We see that she has a messy desk. But we now see that Foster might be a bit unhealthy. We see they have a relationship based on teasing. The pace is just slightly slower.

If the description of Foster went on more than this, the reader would start to think Foster is a more important character than he is. Or they might wonder why our detective is losing focus on the task at hand to notice so many details about him.

Just as in a small sketch of a face, we can’t pack in every wrinkle, every freckle, or the smallest creases above the eye. Give us the shape and a detail or two that captures the essence.

The more sentences you use to describe something, the more important the reader assumes it to be, and the slower the pace becomes.

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I am often impressed by my own accidental genius.

Wait. What?

Accidental genius is one of the great joys of writing fiction. And you have already encountered it.

When something I “just made up” during the flow of writing back in chapter 3 suddenly becomes pivotal to the story in chapter 15, I grin like a maniac and type like a fiend.

“It’s happening!” I cry. “It’s really happening!”

The best part about these things is that they appear to be oh so carefully plotted out. “Readers are going to think I’m brilliant!”

And a thousand writers will lie right to your face and say they thought and thought and thought and weighed detail after detail and assembled their novel like a Swiss watch. And yes, they did put that in on purpose and it relates to the theme of “urgency” as it applies to the human condition in the twenty-first century blah blah blah blah.

They did no such thing.

I love when my subconscious mind—the creative mind I mention in nearly every post—delivers its genius up to me like a gift. I still give myself credit, because if I didn’t sit down and write every day and remind myself to relax, it never would have happened.

In his book Creating Short Fiction science fiction grandmaster Damon Knight teaches that we must learn to “collaborate with Fred.” Fred is the name he gives to the creative mind. He instructs writers to give Fred a story problem at bedtime, sleep on it, and chances are you’ll see it in a new light.

We don’t have to “puzz and puzz until our puzzler gets sore” (Grinch reference!) We simply need to let the same genius who stuck in that chapter 3 detail to realize you’re waiting for him or her to tie a couple plot points up.

All the accidental genius needs from you is to keep writing.

“Write. Don’t think. Relax.” —Ray Bradbury

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Your character has thoughts, share them.

How much woolgathering your POV character can do is dependent on your genre and your particular style. I like characters who think and reflect. In fact, it’s required if we are to write descriptions that are filtered through opinion.​

So how do we deliver thoughts effectively?

This will depend on what perspective you’re writing in.

So here’s a quick rundown the common choices.

First Person is written from the viewpoint of “I” as in: I didn’t know I would fall in love with a vampire, but when he bit me it was all over.

Third Person: She didn’t know she would fall in love with a vampire. But she did, it was all over.

In first person you can easily share the POV character’s thoughts, because the narrator IS the POV character.

I never liked cats. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I never trusted them. When I was a kid we had them on the farm. They were distant animals, half feral. Dad never let us feed them, and frankly who would want to? They killed cute mice all day long.
That’s a direct line into a character’s thoughts.

In Third Person we have to come at it with some slight of hand. Because in Third Person the narrator is NOT the character.

She never liked cats. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say she never trusted them. When she was a kid they were there on the farm, but they were distant, half feral. Her dad never let her feed them. Who would want to? After all, they killed mice all day long.

That example gives us some thoughts, but we get a sense that the narrator is telling us what her thoughts are. To get deeper, we have to peel off some of the narrator.

She never trusted cats. She knew their kind, sneaky, greedy little mouse killers that they were. A cat was a sort of demon, and folk who kept them in their houses were idiots. Dad agreed with her, and he wouldn’t let anyone feed them. The best thing she could say about cats was they kept the dogs busy.

Now that we’re getting into her opinions more directly, they come across as hers. There’s a tone to them that feel like she’s thinking them.

Dang. There was a cat ahead. Nasty calico with a notched ear. She circled to keep wide of it. You can’t trust cats. Sneaky little devils. They play with their kills. Merciless. She had no idea how people tolerated them in their homes. Growing up on the farm they were everywhere. Only purpose they served was to keep the dogs busy. She’d trained ol’ Barney to kill them every chance he got.

Now we are deeper into the third person POV. Did you notice how? The narrator is first reporting her direct experience of the moment. And the declarative opinion: “You can’t trust cats.” This feels like her direct thought. We are in her head.

Going deeper into a POV or choosing to hover a bit higher is a choice. We can move up and down these levels as the scene requires. I’ll address that in more detail tomorrow.

For now, just try it out.

You don’t need to italicize thoughts most of the time. But in some genres it is standard and readers like it. Some editors hate italicized thoughts. I’ve never read a convincing explanation for or against it.

Dang. There was a cat ahead. Nasty calico with a notched ear. She circled to keep wide of it. Can’t trust cats. Sneaky little devils. They play with their kills. Merciless. She had no idea how people tolerated them in their homes. Growing up on the farm they were everywhere. Only purpose they served was to keep the dogs busy. She’d trained ol’ Barney to kill them every chance he got.

To me that has a different feel, a different pace. I “hear” the italicized thoughts as unvoiced dialogue. So make your choice based on how it sounds best to you.

If you are introducing a new POV character, starting way down deep in their thoughts really helps immerse readers. Thriller writers often do this when introducing crazy villains and serial killers. Sometimes they’ll be so deep the thoughts come across disconnected and jarring.

He huddled in the garbage bin, nose full of old cabbage and rotty smells. Earthy stink. Worm breath. Eye to the hole. The street was dark and quiet. This was where she passed each night. Twelve thirty. Screw driver, flat head pressed against his thigh. Pain blossomed just shy of blood. The gift, the gift giver, the giver of glorious gifts. The honed flat edge. Like a knife, a wedge, to pry up the skin like a locked lid. Stay still! She might hear him breathing. He let the gift giver sliced his skin, just a little. He stopped himself. Save it. Save it. Save it. Save some for her.

Now we are mainlining this dude’s madness. We are witnessing stream of consciousness as thoughts arise. The reader understands he’s mad, and might even have slight sympathy for him even as they fear what he’s about to do.

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.