Condor – San Diego’s annual science fiction convention, held Feb. 26-28 – hosted a number of writing panels. Leading off Friday at noon, “One of Your Crucial Characters Isn’t Working: What Do You Do?” featured  horror author Tamara Thorne, fantasy author Kevin Gerard, science fiction author Jane Fancher, screenwriter Art Holcomb, and science fiction author Dani Kollin.

The panelists discussed their own work and the challenges they have faced with problematic characters. One of the interesting issues that came up was secondary characters vs. main characters. A panelist pointed out that sometimes the secondary characters are more interesting, both to the writer and to the reader, because they are mysterious. We know a lot about the main character, not so much about the “man in black.” The challenge is creating the same (or ideally higher) level of interest in someone we know much more about.

Another point of discussion: sometimes authors get enamored of one of their characters and feel that this character adds something to the story. But in reality the character is diluting the story, either by taking attention and roles away from other characters or simply by being unnecessary. It can take an outside perspective of a critical reader to point this out if the writer can’t see it for himself. Basically, story trumps character.

Some key points:

“Sometimes your character is in the wrong story. You are trying to make your character do things instead of listening to that.” – Art Holcomb

“What do you want to say? Sometimes people reach a point and stop. You need to keep writing past there.” – Art Holcomb

“Look at your character archetypes. You can see what’s missing, what is duplicated.” – Jane Fancher