So, I'm deep into the editing my WIP (third-draft-ish. Starting in on fourth this weekend after notes from a freelance editor) and I have an issue. One of the characters, who drives one of the subplots, hasn't been sticking for a lot of people. At the very least she needs work, and keeping her in does bulk up the novel. She can be distracting and her subplot feels extraneous to the narrative at times. That said, she's there to play a pretty big role (mirroring the protagonist's development by becoming one of the villain's sycophants rather than rebelling), she's the only character with a steeply negative character arc, I'm going to NEED her in place for the sequel (which yes, I'm starting on.), and on top of that she's just one of my favorites. For me she's the most emotional storyline because she starts in the same spot as the protag, and you root for her, and then instead of being a hero she sells her soul for the sake of advancement, which for me is devastating. I'm trying to find the line between "I think this is a darling I may have to kill off" and, "no, actually I need to make this better to get the point across." Should I approach the next draft on the premise that she needs to go away, or should I mark her down for even more development to try and make that plotline work for readers like it does for me?
Well not kill her so much as re-write it without her. Debating whether I NEED need her - but I have a lot of plans for her and she has a purpose. I may look at both options and assess what the book looks like with her and without her.
Might be worth reducing her role, whilst still keeping her in. Sow the seeds, but subtly. If she's going to play a big role later on, I wouldn't take her out entirely.
Yep, yep... I had the same problem. My advice? Kill her. Now. Don't waste another draft. I wasted the better part of a year trying to make one of my characters more relevant, and all it did was fuck up the characters around him and bury me deeper into a world of shit. All the other characters who had important roles and arcs had to make compensate for the other's presence. Not good. Not good at all. It would have been so easy to fix this early on. Now? Now I hate myself. Granted, I don't anything about your character or story so free to disregard. But if you've got an inkling, and your editor and beta-readers have similar inklings, there's a good chance they're on to something. I understand the sequel conundrum, but if book 1 is a dud than book 2 is irrelevant. Just my two cents.
If the rest of the characters are awesome and the story is tight, your readers will never know you scratched one character, so at the very least it sounds like removing her won't make the end product worse. However, if you enjoy writing her, have plans for her, and feel bad about losing her, maybe you just have to take the risk...? If your beta readers haven't felt like she's redundant, you could keep her around and just do your best to make her fit in. I usually remove characters that feel like they don't fit in and then just write him or her into another story...
Yeah, Emma's not redundant, just extraneous in that her storyline doesn't tie neatly into what's already a large cast. Her only real connection to the main character is that she and the MC are perceived as the two "rising stars" at the news network - one via loyalty to an an increasingly off-the-rails boss and the other by rebelling against said boss. That and she's the roommate of another character who does tie in a lot stronger (the boss lady's secretary) - and I tell a lot of the secretary's story through Emma's POV because I don't want the reader to realize that the secretary is having second thoughts about her own loyalties until the end. The original goal was to set up the secretary as a highly unsympathetic character and Emma as a highly sympathetic character, so that the reader thought that Emma was going to eventually rebel, and instead pull the fakeout at the end where Emma makes the decision to join the dark side and evil secretary sees the light. But I don't have that right now in that the secretary becomes too sympathetic to early, and Emma's plotline doesn't get enough attention to develop her all the way or connect her directly to the story. I'lll probably leave her in for now, but look at what it would take to yank her out - the hardest part of that would be disentangling her from her roommate.
She sounds like 'that guy' who is suppose to be on your side but does more damage then the antag. I had to minimize a similar character and he was washed out of the picture for an unforgivable error. He is still available to bring back and forgive if I need him.
Well sir, you can't really kill 'em off, due to being important to the MC. On the other hand, they can be killed off to affect the MCs psyche for the sequel. Kinda like mental chess you are playing here. Which major pieces are you willing to sacrifice for the goal of a checkmate?
