Character Is the Rightful King (Queen)

The character is the king. The character is the queen regnant. The character is royalty. Everything else in the high court of fiction comes second, part of the noble and commoner class of what makes a tale work.

Setting is important, of course, but settings mean little when there are no characters to live within them.

In my Orchestrylus Odyssey novels, the world is a sort of character, but it doesn’t come alive without the beings that inhabit it. It’s a fantastic place, with auroras that rain down full flower blossoms and petals—a place without moons that keeps the tides in check. The world is seven spheres in an array, with a winged sphere at the end of the array where the being that created the world allegedly lives. There’s a magic system based upon the rules of music, mixed with chromatic colors representing different emotions. Color and music make the world come alive, painting it into a canvas of pure imagination.

But what good does any of that do if the characters aren’t taking center stage?

Character is the headliner, while the rest of the story—things like plot—are the opening acts.

The characters are supposed to be people, supposed to be alive and inviting the reader, watcher, or player to take part in every step of their journey.

The main character might go through the hero’s journey archetypal plot, while the rest of the cast might play supporting roles to support that growth and change. Or perhaps every character is a main character. The cast might be an ensemble.

But it needs to be interconnected with every other side of the story. Not only that, but character relationships need to mix with other character relationships throughout the narrative.

How does side character B get along with side character L? Is there a romantic side to the relationship?

Does the shopkeeper get his instruments from character Y’s company? Is it a shady company intermixed with the politics of a crime family made up of aristocratic scumbags?

Will book eleven flesh out the continental politics of that side-plot bickering between two nations that almost had a peace agreement?

How might character seven resolve their family issues with character seventy-six?

The main character has motivations and desires, yet why not flesh out what the person who lives in the third house from the inn might want? Even if it’s something only you know as the author.

Creating a world like this makes everything feel alive and fresh. Sure, the reader might not get every hint that you drop, but that doesn’t take away from the intensive world-building occurring over the course of the novel or series.

We are the gods of our creations, unchained from time and space. We plan things out to resolve them, choosing which pinch point leads to what main plot thread—or which character suffers the most from said plot thread—then branch the story out into multiple new directions to explore.

Without character, though, all of this becomes impossible.

Maybe every time the characters camp out in the field, they might have little conversations that flesh them out a bit more. Something about a favorite memory, or a new method of swordplay that hadn’t occurred to their master all those years ago.

I’m not saying you must know every character's blood type, or even what they’ll be wearing in book seventeen. But the more characters are molded into something resembling a real person, the more they come alive to the reader, with or without all the details you, as the author, know.

Sometimes it’s best to forget the character sketches and explore who they are. There’s no right way. If you don’t know what the tritagonist’s favorite food is by chapter fifteen, that doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out along the way. Leave room for discovery.

Finding out is half the fun.

Whether you find out before putting one letter to the page or after having written thousands of letters, that’s up to you.

But the character is monarch in a novel. Not plot, not setting, not story beat, but a person, like you and me.

Let the character reign over the kingdom of your ideas.

Because when the right king rules, the kingdom flourishes.