Hello, writers. Last week we talked about reminding the reader that a temporarily off-stage character exists. This week I want to bring up a related subject—characters that remain off-stage for the entire book/story/play/movie/memoir.
If you think about it, almost all stories have them. They appear in the tale as memories, influences on the protagonist’s beliefs, sources of fear, hope, inspiration or unhealed trauma. They might be dead, they might be on vacation in Scotland, they might have written a book that the protagonist constantly thumbs through for re-assurance. But they’re always there (or rather not there).
They’re a device. They’re part of the backstory. Sometimes the frontstory. You can use them to motivate a character. (Why is she driven to solve the murder? Because of what happened to Fortinbras.)
You can use them to provide information. (According to the last of Elinor’s letters, they’d drawn lots before they decided to eat the coxswain. Ralph had always told Ms. Protag that the Protag family curse was triggered whenever a full lunar eclipse occurred in July.)
You can use them to show something that you can’t show on-stage—a memory of the distant past, a scene that occurred in a place the protagonist couldn’t possibly visit. Because I write for children, I tend to use absent characters to show events would be too upsetting if they occurred on-stage. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad technique when writing for adults either.
Tonight’s challenge: Once more unto the dark tower we go. I know we’ve been to this tower twice in the last two weeks already, but writing the same scene over and over again is the very life and soul of this business. I’m tellin’ ya.
A callow youth and his/her stout companion find that their search for the Jewel of Togwogmagog had brought them, inexorably, to the lair of the dread Least Grebe. They are armed only with the Duffle Bag of Least Resistance, and they know not what dangers await them. As the two heroes approach the tower…
…your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to evoke in some way the always-off-stage character Froop. Do it in such a way that our heroes really couldn’t get into the tower without Froop’s assistance/inspiration/secret toenail trick.
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