Last night, while nursing my baby and staring into the silent night beyond the fairy-lights framing our ceiling, I decided to do something that I’ve been needing to do for months (probably years) but haven’t had the courage to do because I wasn’t sure how to handle the consequences. Basically, one of my WIP* YA** novel characters—we’ll call her “C”—and I had a DTR*** and a minor falling out (that was quickly resolved).****

It went something like this:

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t have time or space for you anymore. It’s not that your perspective isn’t important—well, actually, no, that is it. Your perspective isn’t important to this story that I’m trying to tell. Like, I still need you in the story, but I don’t need to know what’s going on inside your head at all times. At least, I don’t need other people to know. We still have a good thing going, and I need you to let me in on a few things. But I need to focus on your friends right now, okay? Not you. I know, once you were the main character of this whole thing, and now, you’re kind of just the main protagonist’s best friend and maybe a foil? Emotionally, anyway. So of course you’re still important, but… you’re just not that important.”

And then:

“I mean, let’s be honest, the portions of the story that were yours were limping along at best. They were throwing off my pacing and jacking up the tone. Because, that’s your strength, remember, your strength and purpose in this story is that you’re pretty unaffected. You’re fine! While everyone else is falling apart! Think of yourself as the stalwart, the one who says, ‘Suck it up, Buttercup’—in the most loving way, of course. Because that’s who you are. You are unchanged by all this, so I do need you in the plot, I need you to be there for your bestie—but, from a point-of-view perspective, you’re just not that interesting so I don’t need you.”

Maybe I could’ve said that a little more nicely.

You may think it a little silly for me to ‘talk’ to my characters this way or to imagine them feeling any type of way about my authorial decisions involving them. And I have hyperbolized this a little, for dramatic effect. But only a little.

The reality is that, as a writer, creating characters is a very personal undertaking. Crafting a life often takes writers into their own psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual depths. We produce characters—or plot points within their arcs—who are sometimes literal extensions—or explorations—of ourselves. It is vulnerable, messy, wonderful work.

Characters also have a way of taking on lives of their own. If you’ve ever spoken with a writer, you’ve probably heard them say something along the lines of, “Well, I wanted to write that, but that character would never do that!” or “I’ve been trying to figure this character out, but he’s just so stubborn/complicated/difficult/enigmatic!” As if we aren’t the ones deciding every aspect of the characters’ lives for them.

As someone who personally values diverse opinions and finds great joy in having lots of different people around the table, limiting the number of characters in this particular novel has been a task. The “main characters” used to be a group of six. After months of (extremely helpful) haranguing from my Creative Writing MSc workshoppers, I whittled the number down to five and eventually four. It seemed reasonable. Four “main” characters, each with a unique relationship to the Key Event, which meant alternating chapters written in limited third person perspective so every character’s internal psychological state could be explored, that way every reader could identify with at least one of them and so everyone would read my book and feel seen and loved and encouraged, hooray.

Four isn’t too many “main” characters when universal connection is the goal, right?

Sigh. Yes. Yes, it is.

At least, it is for this story. I have read books written with multiple characters from multiple POVs***** (the most recent being Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys which is absolutely beautiful and horribly gut-wrenching). And they work!

But that won’t work here. Hence the rambling break-up with C. She will still be part of the story. An important part, as I promised. But her POV will no longer guide any chapter. C is now a “secondary” character.

Man. That still hurts to admit.

More than that—and this is the “resolution” to which I alluded earlier that I realize now resolves my assassination angst but doesn’t do much for my character—I decided that a particular plot point originally designed to create tension in C is much more compelling when it doesn’t bother her at all. Sorry, C—you no longer get the dramatic (in the literary and high-school-drama sense of the word) spotlight. Let’s not call you “one-dimensional,” but you don’t get to ride the character arc rollercoaster like your friends.

Sorry… not sorry!

Call me sadistic, but this process of elimination has been exciting. Freeing. I’ve been “hanging out” with these characters for almost two decades, which means I’m simultaneously very attached to them and very ready to be done with their journey. Frankly, the only way this journey will come to a satisfactory close—literally, the close of the book—is through cold and “heartless” betrayals. We must “cut” our characters from spaces they don’t need to be, so that the plot can flow (not plod), the heart of the narrative can shine, and we as writers can bring our manuscripts one step closer to the bookshelves.

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* WIP = Work In Progress

** YA = Young Adult

*** DTR = Define The Relationship

**** Sorry for all the acronyms.

***** Point-of-View, and this asterisk system is getting out of hand.