The Writing-Practice Journal

Fiction - Using the Same Characters in Different Stories

In the planning stage of a story, most writers do not include the same character and even the same type of a character, even though creating a good quirky character is a job and an already created one can be unproblematic. This is because writers write for the challenge of creating original work, and if they cannot face that challenge properly, their writing does not make sense to them.

If so, why do we find the same character in several books or in series of books in the writings of the most noted authors, then?

This is because the practice of using the same protagonist, antagonist, or even a secondary character can be very successful with character driven stories. The author, after creating the character, lives with him for a long time, and that character becomes somewhat of a friend who haunts the author, telling him he has so much more to say. In addition, the author may want to show the change in a special character over a longer period of time than one or two stories can allow.

Let us take as an example a twenty-first century character, Odd Thomas, who has appeared in successive books of the very popular novelist, Dean Koontz. When the reader is first introduced to him, Odd Thomas is a twenty-one year old short-order cook. What is odd about Odd Thomas is that, being psychic, he sees ghosts. Driven by his sixth sense and disturbed by the atrocity of events, Odd Thomas brings the murders and the mysteries to light and seeks peace at the end of each novel. Because Odd Thomas is a good but quirky person and has something otherworldly about him, he entertains the reader and possibly the writer as well. What's more, since the other characters in Dean Koontz’s books are so perfectly drawn, this one familiar character does not bore the reader.

Another reason to use the same character in successive stories has to do with the reader’s feelings. Especially in mystery stories, when the readers are fond of a detective, they see that detective not only as the solver of the mystery, but also as the witness to their reading and the friend with whom they have shared other exciting mysteries. A few examples for this type of detectives are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, Tim Dorsey’s Detective Mahoney, and Leslie Charteris’s Simon Templar, better known as The Saint.

On the negative side, sometimes, the writer finds out that the character he so lovingly created cannot go through major changes after a few stories in a row. Although the character may still show some deep-seated problems, he has everything worked out in the earlier stories already. Therefore, the writer downgrades the character to a steadfast one who needs other troublemaker characters to pep up the story at hand. If the other characters cannot do the job, then the writer and his stories are in trouble.

A writer must never forget that the reader’s attention is the most important thing to capture and keep. Sometimes, out of sloth or greed, the writer uses the same character with the same psychological traits but with different physical ones. Although the writer may give the character a different name and change a few things about him, the character and the stories can lose their readers easily, since readers are quick to catch on to the writers’ shortcomings especially when the writers are not being true to their craft.

To avoid the downfall from such a practice, a writer needs to perfect his character drawing skills. Then, even if he decides to keep his favorite character inside several stories in a row, he can surround him with other remarkable characters that can spice up and carry his stories.