One of the mental rabbit trails I found myself going down recently was considering where characters fall on the Underdog/Everyman/Superman spectrum and how that affects the story being told.

In general, characters — and particularly main characters/protagonists — fall along a spectrum. At one end are Underdogs, those who are weaker or less powerful than your average person. This would be the Cinderella type character in the “rags” stage where they’re essentially powerless. Audiences are encouraged to sympathize with or pity the Underdog and cheer for them as they try to rise above their situation, against all the odds.

In the middle is the Everyman or Average Joe, the person who’s at about the same level of power and ability as the average person. This is the girl/boy next door character, a staple of the romantic comedy. Audiences are encouraged to relate to or identify with this character. If a character is referred to as “relatable,” they’re probably an Everyman.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Superman, the person who’s more powerful than the average person. Most superheroes would be considered Superman characters (in one case, literally), but it’s not just about superpowers. The power could also be political or social status or great wealth, or it could involve high-level skills from intense training or experience. James Bond is a Superman character, along with kings and presidents. This is an aspirational character audiences are encouraged to admire and look up to.

Usually, this is all relative based on context. In a world where few people have magical powers, even an inept wizard would be a Superman, but in a setting where everyone’s magical, the inept wizard would be an Underdog. In superhero team-up movies, the scale may shift so that among people with superhuman powers there are some farther to the “Superman” end and some that count as Underdogs within that group. A character may also shift position as the context around him changes. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is an Everyman while he’s in the Shire. He doesn’t have special skills, power, or authority, but he’s also not at the bottom of society and needing to rise up. But once his quest begins, he becomes an Underdog. He’s smaller than most of the people around him, he doesn’t have the kind of training or special skills that others around him have, he’s mostly ignorant of the world he’s dealing with, and he’s up against an enemy with great power and resources.

Characters can move around on the spectrum. In fact, the story’s more interesting if the character does move around a bit. In a lot of superhero origin stories, the hero may start as an Underdog—like Peter Parker or Steve Rogers—until something happens to give them superpowers so they become a Superman. A character like Peter Parker may have a slower move toward Superman status because it takes him so long to adjust to having powers, figuring out what to do with them, and learning to use them without causing a disaster, so they may be an Underdog or Everyman who can do cool stuff. Or a character like Steve Rogers can simultaneously be both a Superman and an Underdog. Pre-Captain America Steve may be an asthmatic 90-pound weakling, but he’s already a Superman inside—smarter, nobler, and braver than the average person. He’s an Underdog because no one takes him seriously, but when he gets superpowers he doesn’t really change. He just gets a body to match his spirit.

Characters can move down, too. Whenever Superman is exposed to kryptonite, he temporarily becomes an Everyman or even an Underdog as he has to struggle to deal with situations without his usual strengths. Or there’s the common sports story arc, starting with the athlete at the top of his game until he gets injured and becomes an Underdog and has to fight to rise again.

I started thinking about all this when I started my rewatch of the Star Wars movies and shows and found myself analyzing yet again the issues with The Phantom Menace. One thing I realized is that all the main characters are clustered around the Superman end of the spectrum, without a lot of movement. As a Jedi Master, Qui Gon is at the far Superman end. Obi Wan is just a bit behind him, as an apprentice. Padme is a queen with political power, so she’s well past everyman, even if she’s not as far down as the Jedi with their powers. Anakin may be a kid and a slave when he’s introduced, but we don’t see the slavery affecting him that much onscreen. Instead, we hear all about how he’s more powerful with the Force than even Yoda, he’s the best at building and fixing things, and he’s the only human who can compete and win at pod racing. He’s definitely in the Superman area and doesn’t have much room to level up. The only Underdog in the main cast is Jar-Jar, the comic relief. You end up with a not very interesting story if everyone’s a Superman and they’re mostly static. It doesn’t even feel like they shift the curve so that within the Superman area there are Underdogs and Everymen. Anakin is constantly presented as too awesome to be an Underdog, even if he whines about not getting his due.

Contrast that with the original movie. Luke Skywalker is introduced at the Underdog side of Everyman. We don’t yet know that he might have any special powers or abilities. He’s young, inexperienced, and naive, and he’s entirely unprepared for the adventure he finds himself on. During the course of the movie, he learns enough and does enough to gradually move to the Superman side of Everyman, then during the course of the rest of the trilogy he levels up toward Superman. Meanwhile, we have Leia on the Superman end of the spectrum (as a princess and rebel leader), though she becomes something of an Underdog for a while when she’s a prisoner where her status doesn’t help her and she loses everything. Han starts just on the Superman side of Everyman, since he has great skills as a pilot and owns a spaceship, then he moves up a bit when he learns to be less selfish and becomes a hero.

Now I find myself looking at my own casts to see how they stack up, though it’s complicated by context in a lot of my books. The wizards in the Enchanted, Inc. series may have magical powers, but they exist in different parts of the scale compared to each other, and things may change when they’re away from work. Katie’s an Underdog in some ways but is considered a Superman by some of the wizards because she can do things they can’t.

This week, while I’m between drafts on a book and letting it rest before I do the final proof (so it’ll feel more fresh and I won’t be reading what I expect to be there), I’ve dug out an old book that’s been backburnered for a while. I love the story, but I’ve never been happy with the ending. I’ve gone through about four wildly different versions of an ending and haven’t been satisfied with any of them.

I reread the whole book again, and I think I’ve figured out part of the problem, so I’ve outlined an ending that might work. Now I’m doing something I haven’t tried before that I may end up adding to my regular process. I’m writing summaries of the whole book from the perspective of each of the viewpoint characters. I’m starting with the backstory leading up to the story, then writing the events of the story from their point of view, as well as things they’re doing in scenes that aren’t in the book (like what they’re doing when the story is showing a different character) and their perspective on scenes that are told in another character’s point of view.

This is my way of testing the character arc to see how it flows when I’m not shifting perspective or going to a different part of the action, but it’s giving me ideas for what’s going on with these characters that I can then incorporate into the parts that are in the book. It’s also showing me where things get repetitive, like when a character keeps having similar realizations or when events are nearly the same in different parts of the book.

I think I may try this for my next book, but before I start writing it. This forces me to go into more detail than an outline does, so I can’t get away with handwaving “and then stuff happens,” and it’s a lot easier to rewrite and rewrite a few paragraphs of a summary when it’s not working than it is to rewrite several chapters (or a whole book). There’s still room to discover things along the way and change plans, but I also discover a lot of stuff while I’m doing this kind of work.

I need to write out the parts of my process and what I’ve figured out works for me so I can remember it for the next book.

It’s my favorite kind of writing weather today, cool and rainy, but above freezing. That means most of the snow is finally being washed away. My yard is almost entirely green again, and much of the snow on the north-facing lawns across the street is going. It’s a good day to drink tea and curl up in my chair to scribble in a notebook. I’ve got bread rising to bake this afternoon. Now it’s time to create.

I recently saw a quote about how you never really learn to write a novel. You learn to write this novel. Each one is different. Some are easier, some are harder, even when you have something like 30 books under your belt.

But you can hone your process along the way and figure out things that usually work for you and things that definitely don’t work. Some of that may change as you get into different phases of your career.

For instance, there’s the advice that it’s best to write the whole book before you start revising it. That makes sense on some levels. It’s especially important for your first book because that tendency to try to make chapter one perfect before moving on has stalled out way too many writers who end up never finishing a book. It doesn’t make much sense to fine-tune and perfect the early part of the book until you see how the whole book comes out and know whether that part will have to be rewritten.

On the other hand, there’s no point in plowing ahead when you feel like you’ve taken a wrong turn. If you keep writing on the wrong path, you’ll just have to rewrite everything. You might as well go back to where you feel the problem is and figure it out before you move forward. My general rule is that you backtrack to fix plot, not details. If you just need to pull a Bill and Ted and go back to put a trash can there for when you need it later, you can leave yourself a note. That’s why I like using Scrivener for writing — it’s quick and easy to find the scene that needs fixing, and there’s a space for notes on the scene, so as soon as you realize you’re going to need that garbage can, you can go to the scene where you need to set it up and write a note saying “put garbage can here,” then go back to writing as though the can has been there all along. You definitely don’t want to go back to make the words pretty, since the words are likely to change.

I generally find that my process involves writing a scene, then that night realizing what I did wrong and how the scene could be better, maybe some stuff I forgot to include. The next day, I start my writing session with revising the previous day’s writing to fix it and add the stuff I forgot. That gives me momentum to plow ahead.

Based on the book I’m working on now, I think I’m going to add a mid-book review to my process. At around the midpoint, I need to review what I’ve already written, since by that time there are a lot of versions in my head and I’m not sure what’s actually in the book. There’s what I thought of when I was outlining, there’s the initial scene, and there’s the “oops, I did it wrong” rewrite. I often drift far from my outline. It’s hard to write the end of the book when you aren’t sure what’s in the beginning, so it’s a good idea to go back and reread it all. That reread may reveal things that need to be fixed. In straying from the outline, did I forget to include some critical elements? Have I been meandering and writing whole scenes that lend nothing to the story? Do I have too many scenes that are essentially the same thing happening over and over? Is the plot even working? Fixing all this stuff at the midpoint means the ending goes more smoothly.

In the current book, I’ve realized that a different character is the protagonist for one of the story lines, so I’m rewriting to make him a viewpoint character. I can’t adequately tell that story from someone else’s perspective. As soon as I went back through the various story outline models looking at it that way, all the story beats clicked into place and I figured out how the ending should go. That’s a good sign.

So now instead of getting near the end and realizing I have no idea what’s going to happen, I think I’m going to plan to review when I get to a particular spot in the story. I’ll build that into my timeline so I won’t feel like doing that is putting me behind. That should also make my production schedule more realistic. If I need less time than I plan for, I can get a head start on the next project or work in another project in between (or take time off!). It’s a lot harder to adjust when I need more time than I planned for.

I hit my target word count for Rydding Village book 3, but I’m only at about 2/4 of the way through the story, and I’m not entirely sure what should happen next. I checked my outline notes, and it turns out that the ending I had planned was based on an entirely different middle (and was pretty vague). It seems I veered into an unexpected direction along the way.

So now I’m regrouping by rereading the book up to this point, since I couldn’t remember what I’d planned vs. what I actually wrote and I need to base the end on what’s actually in the book. It turns out that I seem to have written this book in a kind of daze because I don’t remember writing a lot of this — and it’s only been a month since I started writing.

For instance, in chapter 20 I wrote a scene that involved the viewpoint character trying to figure out who a person was and getting her first impression of that character, since I didn’t think the viewpoint character had encountered this person before. But in chapter 4 there was a whole scene of her being formally introduced to this person.

I also seem to have changed my mind a few times along the way, going back and forth about what a character’s attitude toward a particular topic should be.

Then there are the amusing typos. Some of them come across like I was doing dictation and the transcription software misread what I was saying, like the word “end” for what should have been “inn.” I guess I was transcribing the story coming out of my brain and glitched. Some of them are clearly me hitting the wrong key adjacent to the key I was aiming for or missing a key, but somehow it still makes a real word that makes sense in the sentence while drastically changing the meaning of the sentence. I’m fixing these things as I find them to avoid future confusion even though this pass is meant to be just reading to refresh my memory, but I’m going to have to be really careful when editing because this isn’t something an editor is likely to catch if the editor doesn’t know what I meant to say. It looks like a reasonable sentence if you don’t know what I was trying to say.

Rereading the book is helping me clarify character arcs that will lead to an ending. It’s also helping me check pacing. It takes so much longer to write a book than it does to read one, and it often takes a lot longer to write a fast-paced scene than a slower one, so what feels like it might be dragging might be the most intense scene to read.

I hope to finish rereading today, do some thinking over the weekend, then finish this draft next week. I’m not sure about my release strategy. I might be falling into the holiday rush if I try to publish later this year, so I may give myself a little breathing room for thinking and revising and publish early next year. Things always seem to end up taking a lot longer than I planned.

I’m in big writing mode, about a third of the way through Rydding Village book 3, which means I don’t have a lot of brainpower for much else. It’s been so long since I’ve doing this kind of serious writing, back early in the year, before the move. Since then, I’ve mostly been editing and revising, proofreading, and all the business stuff. It feels so good to be back in the mode of seeing a story unfold. I’ve plotted this book, but I’m still discovering fun things along the way as I write.

The weather’s even cooperated, giving me some good rainy days, which are good for writing. I don’t really have an office in my current home. The living room, kitchen, dining room, and office are all one big room. I set up a little sliver of space between the living room area and the kitchen/dining room area, with a laptop stand and a desk chair facing a window. I can sit there to write and look out the window at some trees. One handy thing about everything being one room is that snacks and drinks are easy to get to. In my old house, I had to go down the stairs to get to the kitchen instead of taking a few steps.

When it’s not raining, I take the laptop stand to the back porch and sit outside to work, though I’m likely to get distracted by the antics of the squirrels, especially now, when they’re running around with acorns and nuts in their mouths, looking for places to hide them. If I’m sitting really still other than my fingers moving on the keyboard, they seem to forget I’m there and will run across the porch, sometimes even under my chair, which startles me. There’s nothing like having a squirrel run under your chair and between your feet to jolt you out of your writing flow.

Writing these books makes me want all the tea, which is another nice thing about having my office essentially in the kitchen. I can get up to make a pot of tea, write a little while the kettle boils, then write a little more while the tea steeps.

Now, back to the writing!

My analysis of Anastasia made me think about my romance “formula,” especially since I’m currently revising a book with a romantic arc, so I’ve been analyzing that story.

By formula, I mean boiling it down to the very basics. To have a romantic story, you need to have a reason for the characters to get together. There has to be some kind of attraction or interest somewhere along the way or there’s not much of a romance. And you need to have something keeping them apart, at least temporarily, or else there’s not much of a story. If the characters just meet, like each other, and get together, that’s great for real life but not a good story. What kind of attraction and conflict you have depends on the kind of story you’re telling.

The conflict can come in a variety of ways:
Internal to the characters — one or both characters have some kind of internal issue that keeps them from being up for any relationship, and they have to get past this in order to get together with anyone, no matter how attracted or interested they are. This is where you get the “I’ve been hurt before and don’t want to risk my heart again” story, as in the guy in Leap Year, or the “chasing the wrong person because of a wonky idea of what love really is” story, as in Stardust, where Tristan (in the movie) is obsessed with the local mean girl, which keeps him from being able to see that Yvaine may be the right person for him. Or it’s the person who’s focused on the wrong goal, such as Flynn/Eugene in Tangled, who has to figure out that his life of crime isn’t going to make him happy if he’s alone. The Beast in Beauty and the Beast has to get his act together and find his inner humanity before he can love and be loved.

Between the characters — there’s something that puts the characters at odds with each other. They may belong to different factions so they see each other as enemies or they may have a personality clash. This one is a big reason why I don’t generally get my love stories from romance novels, since this is a big focus of the romance genre. When I was trying to write romances, I kept hearing “if he’s a firefighter, make her an arsonist” from editors. They wanted CONFLICT. My issue with that is that if the conflict is so big, why would they even bother? If I meet someone I hate, I move on and find someone I don’t hate. This sometimes requires contrivance to keep them in proximity long enough for them to fall in love.

It can work, though. This is what Pride and Prejudice is all about. They have a big personality clash because they make incorrect assumptions about each other. I think the trick to making this kind of thing work is making the conflict something they can move past by growing and changing or getting to know each other better. If it’s just a basic personality clash, it’s harder to believe in the relationship working out in the long run. Why be with someone who just annoys you and sees the world in a totally different way than you do? I find it hard to believe that a firefighter would ever be happy with an arsonist. Even if she realized the error of her ways and changed, would he be able to get past the fact that her actions had put his colleagues in danger by creating fires they had to fight? He’d want her to face justice. For the same reasons, I have a hard time with enemies-to-lovers stories, unless it’s someone who’s been brought up in an enemy culture without knowing better, and once they learn the truth or get to know someone from the other side they choose to change sides — like the princess in Willow.

The outside world/circumstances against the characters — even if they don’t have internal issues they have to get over and even if they don’t have conflicts with each other, there’s something in their circumstances keeping the characters from being able to be together. This would be your Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story type of situation, where they’re from opposing factions but don’t really have any issues with each other. It’s just all the people in their lives who are tearing them apart. Or there’s something like The Terminator, where they don’t really clash, but they can’t be happy together while a killer robot from the future is relentlessly pursuing them. I used this in my Rebels series, where the rules of society mean they can’t be together — so for them to be together, they have to change society. On the lighter side, this is the conflict in While You Were Sleeping. They get along great and seem to be made for each other. The thing keeping them apart is the fact that everyone thinks she’s engaged to his brother. Remove that obstacle, and they’re fine. This is the kind of conflict we often see when there’s a love story in some other kind of story, where they gradually fall in love along the way as they do other stuff, and it’s the other stuff keeping them from just being together. Once the quest is done and they’re out of danger, then they can explore a relationship.

It’s pretty common for there to be a combination of these in a story. They may start at odds with each other, then overcome their differences as they go through stuff, but then they still have external stuff keeping them apart and personal issues they need to deal with. The interpersonal conflict can be caused by the personal issues. Think Tangled — her issue is that she’s being gaslit in an abusive relationship with her captor who’s pretending to be her mother and she needs to find her independence. His issue is that he’s compensating for being a poor orphan by stealing to get enough money to be comfortable and being loyal only to himself. He dislikes her because she’s forcing him to escort her to the celebration, so he’s trying to make things as unpleasant as possible so she’ll give up, which puts them at odds. They get over the interpersonal conflict as they get to know each other and find themselves dealing with the external issue of the guards and his former allies coming after them. Then they both have to get past their personal issues to prevail against her “mother.”

The other side of the equation is the attraction, and I think that’s where a lot of stories fall flat because the writers are so busy building up the conflict that they forget about why they might want to be together other than that they’re both attractive. The stronger the conflict, the deeper the attraction needs to be because they need to have a reason to push past the conflict, and too many romances don’t deal with that well or focus on the physical attraction — the “I hate him, but my traitorous body can’t resist him” thing.

That’s where I think Anastasia didn’t work. There was all that bickering, then he saw her in a nice dress and it was love. Why did he come to love her enough that he was willing to give up everything so she could be happy? We never saw any reason why she loved him, other than her later learning that he didn’t take the reward. That’s nice, but it’s not something to base a relationship on. This was why I liked While You Were Sleeping, on the other hand. We got some nice conversations in which we saw that they had shared values and interests, and they encouraged each other to pursue their dreams.

In the thing I’m working on, I know what brings them together, but I’m not sure I’ve shown it through their actions, so I’m trying to come up with scenes that illustrate their growing bond.