Recycling characters…
[Note from Steve: Due to supply chain issues—my time will be in short supply as I dedicate more of it to my writing—I will reduce the number of articles posted to this blog to two in the future. Wednesdays will feature an article about reading, writing, or publishing, and Fridays will be dedicated to free short fiction, continuing the “Friday Fiction” series. Thank you for your understanding.]
In books about writing fiction (often much wordier but saying less than my own little course available as a free download), I’ve never seen this topic mentioned (my course doesn’t either, but I might include the topic in a future edition). “Who!” you say. “That’s not creating new fiction if you reuse characters.”
Wrong. Fiction writers recycle characters all the time. That’s what series do. While creating believable and interesting characters is important, more fresh material is always found in the plots and doesn’t have to exist in the characterization, except for the development of characters in time.
And why stop with series? Consider my arch-villain, Vladimir Kalinin. Books in three different series, “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco,” “Esther Brookstone Art Detective,” and “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” along with two bridge books between them, needed an evil villain (although he has some redeeming qualities in No Amber Waves of Grain, the third book in the trilogy). Ergo, he’s present, creating problems for multiple protagonists.
Because these books move along an extended timeline, you could argue that they represent one huge series, but a series generally recycles the good guys, not villains—that’s how we define series! (The same observation might make you wonder how old Vladimir lives for so long. That question begins to be answered in Full Medical, my very first novel and first book in the trilogy.)
But outside a series, should the good guys be recycled? Why not? Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden, protagonists in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, play important roles in the detective series. (I often call them cameos, but they’re really more than that. Cameos are what I give myself!) Turn-about’s fair play, so sometimes Chen and Castilblanco appear in the “Esther Brookstone” series, most notably Chen in Palettes, Patriots, and Prats.
All of this has to make sense, of course. I’ve worked hard to make that happen and like the results. You might have fun trying it as well.
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Comments are always welcome.
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Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
