Grappling with Two Character Types
By Sophie Masson | December 15, 2023 |
Illustration by Lorena Carrington.
There’s a character in a novel I’m writing at the moment who, despite having passed on some time before the beginning of the action, haunts the story. Not in the literal way of a ghost story, but their memory and influence shapes a good deal of what one of the main characters does, which has ripple effects on other characters and on the narrative itself. This shadow character is key to the story but not a main character as such. It’s not an easy one to write, because their actions in the past can seem incomprehensible and even abhorrent at times. Yet, in order for the main character to progress in their own life, they need to come to terms with those actions, to understand and possibly to forgive them.
Developing a shadow character who isn’t particularly sympathetic and who only appears through the eyes of others remembering them, never speaking for themselves, has been quite a tricky task. How a) do you make them seem fully rounded, and b) how do you avoid readers disliking them so much they lose patience with the story itself?
I knew that I must not let my own feelings about their behavior taint my portrayal of them. I had to be as objective as possible whilst also conveying the very real effect the shadow character’s actions had on different people’s lives. I had to subtly indicate possible reasons for why the shadow character behaved as they did, yet not make it too obvious, either. It’s not necessary to turn them into a more likable character, but at the same time they need to be at least relatable so readers don’t completely write them off. It’s quite a balancing act—but so far, it’s working!
On the other side of the coin to the enigmatic shadow is another important type of character whose inner thoughts and feelings readers are not privy to, except through the reactions of the main characters. Like the shadow, they aren’t main characters, but they are also very important, key to the development of the story. And, as in the case of the shadow, you only see their inner selves reflected through the eyes of others. But unlike the shadow, they are highly attractive. And they can speak for themselves, because they are physically present, not shadows at all. In fact, hearing their voices whilst seeing them purely through the eyes of one of your main characters can enhance their presence and appeal, sometimes so strongly, especially in the case of a love interest, that it feels as though you are being swept away in that powerful feeling yourself.
But in the development of a highly attractive character like that, you also have to stay objective, whilst completely conveying the strong effect that person is having on your main character. It’s not necessary to create gratuitous flaws in such a character to nuance their appeal, but the reader also needs to feel that they are relatable human beings with their own understandable imperfections. It’s another kind of balancing act—yet a most enjoyable one, which also seems to be working!
I’d love to hear about your own experiences, as writers and/or readers, regarding these types of characters. As a writer, how did you deal with the challenge of portraying them? And as a reader, how did you respond to this kind of character?
Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in France and Australia, Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of over 70 books for children, young adults and adults. Her latest books include Sydney under Attack (children’s historical novel, Scholastic Australia, 2022) A Hundred Words for Butterfly (adult novella, ES-Press, 2022) and Cock-a-doodle-doo (children’s picture book, (illustrated by Kathy Creamer, little Pink Dog Books, 2022). In 2019, Sophie received an AM (Member, General Division) award in the Order of Australia honours list.
Here’s the opening line from “Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri.
“After her mother’s death, Ruma’s father retired from the pharmaceutical company where he had worked for many decades and began traveling in Europe, a continent he’d never seen.”
It’s a really long story of approximately 19,000 words and 57 book pages but it does feel like a short story, not a novella, despite its length. The first few paragraphs of the story speak of the travels of Ruma’s father but the story really gets going in the fourth paragraph with the following lines.
“In August her father would be going away again, to Prague. But first he was coming to spend a week with Ruma and see the house she and Adam had bought on the Eastside of Seattle. They’d moved from Brooklyn in the spring, for Adam’s job. It was her father who suggested the visit, calling Ruma as she was making dinner in her new kitchen, surprising her. After her mother’s death it was Ruma who assumed the duty of speaking to her father every evening, asking how his day had gone.”
The rest of the story is about Ruma’s father staying in her home and the mother is mentioned 83 times in the story and occasionally makes an appearance in backstory or flashback. The mother is definitely a major character in the story even though she’s dead and is almost never onstage, so to speak.
Yes, she certainly sounds like a powerful shadow character!
I meant to mention in my comment that the mother is mentioned on 32 of the story’s 57 pages.
My MC’s late grandmother figures large in my story. As the MC grows and learns new things, her grandmother’s mythical image becomes tarnished. I leaned heavily for this on experience with folks in my own childhood. I love the idea of a young person coming to terms with grounded truths about the past that eventually help them move forward. Wonderful post, Sophie. Much to think about!
Thanks, Susan, glad you liked it. Yes, I think showing the past and its effect through a shadow character really works well to highlight main character development and understanding.
Sophie, this has happened in my novel BOUND as well. My MC’s deceased mother plays an important role in when the story people wonder what she might’ve done, etc. She’s almost a saint. But not quite… in the follow-up story, more of her youth will be revealed. I’m having fun with it. It is interesting to portray a character who cannot come to their own defense. You are having fun too. Thanks for sharing your insights.
That’s absolutely true, Vijaya, about having fun portraying that kind of character! You get to see them merging slowly from other people’s memories and insights without having them explain themselves. And that’s a challenge too, but a really good one!
I hadn’t put the term to it when I was writing it, but there was a shadow character in my novel The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water–a friend from the past who shows up only in the MC’s recollections and the current conversations of on-screen characters, but who is the reason the story exists at all. Nice to have a name for that type of character!
I am always a fan of close POV that allows you to see the other characters only through the lens of the protagonist (since that is how all of us experience our world, right?). The challenge I will have with the novel I will start drafting next year is that I have chosen two POV characters (one male, the other female) to tell a story that involves five primary characters. So three of those five people will have dialogue, but we won’t exactly get their points of view. Two of those three are people whose motivations and actions sometimes seem extreme, silly, calculated, and selfish. And one of those non-POV characters is the one without whom everyone else involved would have had a better life with less tragedy and grief in it.
So my big challenge is how to present especially that one character in a sympathetic light (which is made more difficult because I really don’t care for this person at all). And did I mention that all five of these characters are real people from history whose actions and attitudes are well-documented and really can’t be changed? Should be a fun and interesting year of writing ahead!
Wow, that does sound like quite the challenge, Erin, but as you say, fun and interesting! It is indeed difficult when you keep having reactions against a character that you know is important to the story and has to be there, but that you would hate to have in your own life :-) Good luck with it, hope it all goes really well.
This doesn’t seem so strange, Sophie. One of my early–and so far unpublished–novels was actually subtitled “A Ghost in …” and I gave the name of the city. In a sense, there is no real ghost in the story, but the main characters are all hauling at least one ghost around, the youthful versions of themselves. The MC’s wife is dead, and you could make a case that it’s his fault. Ghost. The MC and his unwelcome “best friend” are both faded rock musicians, and neither of them can enjoy the present. Ghosts. The primary antagonist, the dead wife’s criminally insane brother, is actually hiding in the foundations of the MC’s house. Sounds like a ghost to me. Almost nobody in the story is operating in the present. Damn. The more I think about it, the more I realize I should sit back down with that mess, and make typing noises. I ghosted that book.
One approach you might take is to see this character as a haunting flashback that appears at key moments. Each moment is quick, but focuses on a key item your P is trying to solve. That flashback to the haunting character deals with just one issue — the issue at hand. These constant flashbacks would leave you with a growing composite of the character. Showing some terrible sides, then maybe some under appreciated sides.