Your Setting Needs To Be a Character in Your Story

Too often when we write we focus exclusively on our cast of characters, and what they're doing. However, we sometimes forget that for the story to really stick in the minds of the audience, it needs to have a setting. And not just any setting, but a vibrant setting that feels like it's part of the unfolding drama the audience is watching. Because without a strong setting, a story is like a sandwich without bread; messy, and unappealing.

Where is this place? And why is our story unfolding here?

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Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

Where The Hell is This Story Happening?

To illustrate this week's point, I want to tell a story about something I was asked to edit as a freelancer many years ago. I won't mention the title of the work, nor the name of the client (and it's entirely possible it was never even published), but I feel that one of the major mistakes this author made drives home this point.

The plot of this book was not at all uncommon. We had a kid from the suburbs who was on the cusp of turning 18, and hoping to flee an abusive situation. He ran away to the big city, and while he was there wound up on the streets. He met an older man with a penchant for taking care of strays, and the two of them formed a relationship.

We all know how this story goes.

There were a lot of things wrong with the nuts and bolts of this story when I got it, but one that I drew a big, red circle around was that it was never made clear what city our suburban teen was running away to, or what part of the country (there were enough earmarks to trig that this was America) he had grown up in. Even accounting for the fact that there was a truly cold winter in later chapters, that didn't narrow anything down. This still could have been New York, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Seattle, or even L.A. if it was a particularly bad year for the weather.

But every, single one of the cities I mentioned (to say nothing of places like London, Paris, Belfast, etc.) would have their own personalities, history, architecture, and setup to inform the story. Everything from the layout of the city, to what kinds of public transportation exist, the sorts of social services one can find, neighborhood cultures, and just the way people talk will be radically different from one place to another. And, for this particular example, the suburbs of these cities also have their own histories, personalities, etc. that should be a part of the character's makeup, to say nothing of the story itself.

Now, including those elements would have fixed one problem with this project, but it would have been a sizable, and obvious one. Because it's not enough to just say there are cars on the street, or tall buildings around you... that's a light sketch. Your audience needs you to paint the picture for them so they can really get immersed in this tale you're trying to tell.

And this goes double if you're story is set in a fantastical realm, or in the sci-fi future... because in those situations you can't even draw on the assumption that your audience may have visited a place like where you're story is set, or at least seen one on TV.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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Writing Rational Characters (Notes From Windy Con)

With all the things that have happened since mid-November, I haven't yet had a chance to touch on some of the pearls of wisdom I brought back from this year's Windy Con. In particular, though, I wanted to share some of the really good points that were made at my last panel of the convention, which was titled Writing Rational Characters. Because it sounds simple... but there was a lot that got covered in the 1-hour time limit we had.

Some of it was depressing, but we soldiered through it.

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What Makes a Rational Character?

While there were a lot of things brought up in the early part of the panel (Ayn Rand's name got thrown around, for example), we all reached a mutually agreed-on definition of rationality when it comes to characters in fiction. In short, a rational character is someone who, using the information and resources they have access to, takes sensible steps to achieve their goals.

Note that the goals of a character don't have to be rational... merely their efforts and actions for reaching those goals.

For example, a character might have the absolutely batshit goal of destroying all life on the world. This goal might be because they are a servant of the god of death and they hope to usher in their lord's victory, or because they believe that pointless suffering of billions can be ended by allowing all of them to ascend to a deserved afterlife as martyrs, but their goal is still the annihilation of all life. That doesn't make them irrational, as a character, as long as they take sensible steps toward actually achieving this goal, and reaching their victory condition.

It does probably make them the villain of your story, though.

Lessons From Reality

A topic that we kept circling back to on the panel was that people, by and large, aren't rational beings. We hold a lot of beliefs that don't make sense, we act out of pure emotion, or we can end up believing some truly out-there nonsense.

This is where we get to that, "according to the information they have," caveat that was mentioned earlier. Of course, "the information they allow themselves to believe," might be a better way to put it.

We had to account for some kind of variable, after all.

Let's take a look at some real-life villains for a moment. The fossil fuel industry has known for about a century or more than their product is causing problems with the environment. They also know that their product is limited in supply, and that even if everything else was going well, it will run out. Knowing this, it seems like the smart move, the rational move, for those who run these companies would be to transition to green, renewable sources of energy. This preserves the planet they live on, it acts as a good PR move, but it does something else as well; it sets them up as the new source of energy that they can literally make forever, turning it into the closest thing to an infinite money machine.

Yet for decade after decade, these companies didn't do that. Instead they spent buckets of cash on disinformation campaigns, on political lobbying, and on suppressing competition. Looking at the big picture, this seems like highly irrational behavior. However, just as with characters in our stories, we need to ask what information characters have, and what they allow themselves to have.

Take our Captain Planet villains. Are they indifferent to the harm their industry and product does, because they're going to be dead long before that bill comes due? Have they bought into their own propaganda, simply not believing any of what scientists say? Do they see a disconnect between that disaster and their job, since they only look at sales figures, or marketing, and thus they're insulated from it? Have they been trained so completely by their own culture to view competition and success in business as the ultimate goal that they simply do not see anything outside of bigger profits, bigger numbers, and who's winning in the stock market?

These things don't make a character inherently irrational. However, for the audience to recognize them as acting rationally, they also need at least a little insight into the character's views and perspectives. The same is true of characters who believe ridiculous conspiracy theories, or who suffer from religious delusions; their actions might seem monstrous, unhinged, or counterintuitive, but the audience needs to know what the character's framework is in order to decide whether or not they're rational.

Characters Aren't Required To Be Rational

The conclusion I reached, and which I felt was important to mention in the panel, is that characters don't have to be rational. Whether we're talking about villains like the Joker, or the shock troopers of a hate mob in your detective story, individuals aren't required to have a cogent set of beliefs that make sense to other people.

However, stories are generally supposed to be cleaner, and more orderly, than reality. Because there are hundreds of examples from our real-world history that would have readers rolling their eyes if they showed up in novels instead of textbooks. While rational characters are certainly a concern, you also need to ask what makes for the best story, what is going to feel like it fits within the conventions of this genre, and what actually follows the plot you laid out.

So I want to end this article with the same piece of advice I ended the panel with. Random chance can always make things harder for your characters, but it should never fix things. So as long as irrational actions, thoughts, and beliefs actively make things more difficult, you're on the right track!

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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The Danger of Cat's Paw Characters

The phrase cat's paw, according to Merriam-Webster, refers to an old fable where a monkey uses a cat's paw to get chestnuts out of a fire without putting himself at risk. More colloquially, though, the phrase refers to a person who is used (often without their knowledge, or duplicitously) as a tool by another person.

Nicely done... and all according to my plan.

While characters being used as cat's paws within a story is fairly common place, I'm using the term "cat's paw character" differently in this circumstance. When I say it, I'm referring to a character that you, as the author, are using as a kind of sleight of hand to disguise the actions of another character who is usually seen as the real protagonist of the story. Typically the cat's paw character acts as the point of view character, or as the narrator, allowing you to keep your story's real protagonist mysterious and in the shadows, while still giving your audience tantalizing glimpses of their skills, powers, and prowess without ruining the mystery too much.

It's a tried-and-true storytelling method, but you need to be careful that your cat's paw character is still an actual character that people like, and want to follow since they're stuck with that character for the duration of the story.

The Good Doctor, and Setting an Example

It's elementary, really.

One of the most famous examples for what I would dub a cat's paw character is everyone's favorite medical narrator Dr. John Watson. We read the stories (or listen to the radio shows, or watch the movies) to see what Sherlock Holmes is doing, but Watson is our chronicler. He's the one whose perspective we follow, and it is because we see things from his perspective that the mystery of the story can be drawn out. If we were seeing things from Sherlock's perspective, the whole sordid affair would be explained within the first three paragraphs, and then it would all be over but the shouting.

The thing that Conan Doyle does that a lot of authors forget to do, however, is he makes Watson a character. He has his own life, his own timeline, and his own, unique way of speaking and looking at things. Over the course of the cases we come to learn just as much about Watson as we do about Sherlock.

Cat's paw characters are particularly useful for drawing out the drama of a story, and for allowing a mysterious character to keep their methods to themselves without giving the audience spoilers. Whether it's Holmes with his unique investigations, or Nero Wolfe sending Archie Goodwin out to confirm his theories, they have all the answers between their ears... but if they just told us what was happening then there wouldn't be a story worth reading. Or, at the very least, it would give the game away too soon to maintain audience interest.

A cat's paw can be a very useful thing for making sure your audience gets exactly as much information as you want them to have, and from a particular perspective. However, if you're going to seat your audience in another character's POV, remember to make sure they still have a comfortable and enjoyable seat. Otherwise they might not actually reach the end of the story you're trying to tell.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Preventing Characters From Becoming Caricatures

A little while ago I was reading a short story whose simple premise was that an abusive husband is paranoid his wife is going to kill him. As their honeymoon car trip developed more and more problems, and his temper flared, he grew more and more aggressive toward her. The purpose of his actions, in this case, was to create the story's central conflict, and to set him up as the character we were supposed to dislike, and want to see punished.

The problem was... well, he wasn't a character. He was a caricature of an abusive spouse, and that drained the drama and tension from the story.

Woman, didn't I tell you to bring me a beer 2.5 seconds ago?

This story could really have been unnerving if we were allowed to see the slow boil of the husband's rage, and watch the effect it had on his wife. If we could have seen her wince back, or watched her demeanor change, showing us without telling that she had moved into pleasing mode to avoid troubles. Maybe even rubbing at a place that had been hurt before on her arm, or her neck. It could have quickly established the dynamic and history of their relationship, making the reader wonder if this was going to be a flare-up, or if she was going to be able to defuse this bomb before it went off.

Instead of all of that, though, we simply got a guy who swaggered when he walked, talked like a time traveler from the 1940s (it was ostensibly set in the modern day, though it was hard to tell that for a fact), and who threatened his wife openly and clearly in a way that was... well, which kind of underscored how shallow the character was. The story didn't have our husband struggle with his temper, trying to keep himself under control, or making excuses about how it wasn't really his fault. We learned nothing else about him, either, so his sole defining characteristic was, "Dickbag wife beater." But they're on their honeymoon... what else did he have to offer? Why is she with him? Who is he the other 99% of the time when he isn't taking his frustrations out on his spouse?

We'll never know... but it got me thinking on the difference between character, and caricature, and how it so often gets lost in the mix.

Seeing Things in One Dimension

If you've ever seen a caricature artist at work, you'll realize that a lot of the art style is deciding what their subject's most noticeable feature is, and making that the centerpiece of the image. Obama is shown as a cartoon with huge ears, for example, and Jay Leno's portraits tend to be three-quarters chin. Whatever stands out, that's the feature that gets exaggerated until it becomes the single dimension that everything else in the image is hung off of.

You see what I mean.

The issue with caricatures in writing is that the one feature you wanted the character to have (in this case making it clear this guy beats his wife, and that he should be despised for that) ends up subsuming the whole character... and it brings down everything around it. Because it's a shallow portrayal, and having a shallow character in an otherwise fully-rendered world is the equivalent of having Bugs Bunny walking on set while the crew is shooting Casablanca; it's a jarring flat note in an otherwise rich song.

And if there's more than one caricature, then you have a bunch of flat notes that's going to ruin whatever piece you were trying to compose.

Caricatures come in a thousand different forms, and when they get particularly crass they can turn into rather awful stereotypes. From the gang members in the bar fight who all had their pants sagging and their gold chains out, to the greedy pawnbroker with the big nose and the small spectacles, to the bottle blonde with the tight sweater and the unfocused expression, these aren't really characters... they're caricatures.

Digging Deeper

The best way to avoid turning your characters into caricatures is to dig deeper. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut, and it's particularly dirty work.

So, better start digging.

The best thing you can do in this situation is to ask yourself what other aspects of this character matter? What other dimensions are there to them that the audience would see, even if it's only in passing? What can you do to avoid this character being just one note?

Let's go back to the bar fight scene I mentioned in passing earlier. Before the action, you've got your gang of stereotypical hoods in the bar. They look the part (tattoos, flashy jewelry, maybe a shot of a chrome pistol or two), but what can you add to these characters? Do we see that one of them has a quote from Banquo on his wrist, making the audience wonder what this shooter's relationship is to MacBeth's second-in-command in the Shakespeare play? Do we overhear one of the others talking on the phone to his kids, sharing an earnest moment that lets us know there are people that depend on the money he brings home? Is the heated conversation between two of the younger members over anime trivia, showing they have a life outside of gang life?

Every single one of those instances adds touches of character, and suggests depths that lay beneath the surface to these people. We've seen them in what amounts to their work attire, but we've caught glimpses of who they are beyond that. Enough to make us curious, and perhaps enough to add poignancy to one (or several) of them getting wounded or killed in the violence that's about to happen.

The More We See Someone, The More Depth They Need

One of the most common push backs I hear against adding more depth and nuance is people who argue, "Oh, so I'm supposed to know the whole life story of the waiter in scene two who takes their drinks, and then we never see again?"

No, and to even suggest that's somehow a requirement is ludicrous. However, it's important to challenge yourself to add at least two facets to any character you took the time to give actual lines to in your book. And the more time we spend with a character, the more depth you need to add as we get to know them.

Perhaps if you're still here by Chapter 7 I will tell you my name.

If your private detective is just ordering a drink from a bartender, we don't need to really know anything about him; he's just there as a background player to make sure your character has a scotch in his hand when the time is right. But if they start making conversation, well, now the bartender has lines. Even if he's not an important character, he's part of the tapestry now. If he's a witness, or someone who has information that proves helpful, then that means we should find out a little more about him each time. For example, we might have just thought of him as a big guy working a bar and busting heads when things get rowdy. But when we see him again in chapter 6 he's reading a romance novel. Maybe he mentions he picked up books again while he was doing time, and now he's just trying to keep up on the habit.

And so on, and so forth. Anytime we come back to a character, we learn a little more about them, and you need to pull back the curtain just a little more on who they are as well as what they're adding to the story.

However, there is a risk that comes with characters we see a lot; they might become caricatures through a process known as Flanderization. Named for the Simpsons' Ned Flanders, it refers to how a character slowly has their various traits stripped away, until all that's left behind is their single, core trait blown up to ridiculous, one-dimensional proportions. Much like how Homer's neighbor started off as a considerate man, all-around great dad, and guy who actually went to church, but eventually had most of that other stuff stripped away in favor of the ultra-Christian thing.

Creating and maintaining character depth isn't easy, but it's a habit. And like any other habit, it requires working until it becomes a reflex. Once you're there, maintaining it is a cinch.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Character Appearance and Personality: Tips For Showing Instead of Telling

I try to talk a lot about inclusion here on my blog, firstly because I want to help people avoid making writing mistakes, and secondly because it's a smart move on your part to make sure you keep your potential audience as wide as possible. And though this is a topic I've touched on before in posts like How To Write A Strong Female Character, there are just certain mistakes that a lot of writers keep making when they try to bring characters onto the page when they don't share a lived experience with them.

But... what is she WEARING?

If you haven't read the guest post 5 Mistakes Male Authors Make When Writing Female Characters, I highly recommend you do so. It has invaluable information in it for a lot of us out there. Today, though, I want to focus on one of the mistakes this article mentioned that crops up a lot when it comes to female characters written by men in general, but it's a mistake that shows up a lot when the author has no experience to rely on when bringing a character across that I see a lot.

Using someone's appearance to imply their personality.

Books and Covers

As Savannah Cordova points out in the above article, this is an age-old trick used by men who have trouble writing women; they simply describe the character looking a certain way, and use that description to imply who she is as a person so save time and effort. Whether it's her wild mane of raven hair, or the glint of mischief in her eyes, or the defiant way she folds her arms; all of this is meant to convey who she is in an instant. This trick goes back at least as far as the pulps and short story magazines, where authors didn't have the page space to waste on big exposition or establishing shots, because they had plot to get to.

A specter in black, with a grim expression and a devil's fire in his eyes.

But if you stop and think about it, this trick is both really lazy, and sort of creepy. Most of us have literally been taught our entire lives not to judge people based on the way they look, and manipulating your audience to do that can come across as creepy. Especially when they catch you doing it, and get annoyed that your manipulation is so obvious.

Showing Is Facts In Action

A lot of writers who rely on this lazy trick defend it by saying they're showing the audience who someone is instead of telling them... but really, you're not. You're just pointing at an object at rest, and using description to lead the audience to a certain conclusion. That's just telling disguised as showing, and you're not doing yourself any favors. In fact, it's actually a lot easier to just dispense with the complicated subterfuge, and focus on really showing your audience who a character is.

All right, boys, show 'em we mean business!

You need your audience to judge your characters by their actions, instead of by their appearance. To that end, if you want to establish a character is a certain way, you need to show them acting that way to confirm that it's actually who they are. That way it's not just hearsay; we have evidence to back up our knowledge.

As an example, don't describe a woman's business attire and end it there; show how she conducts herself. Does she have a firm handshake and eye contact? Does she walk with confidence, overriding objections smoothly during negotiations? Is she aggressive, or stoic? If we see her later does she conduct herself the same way she does when she's at the office, or is the persona we've witnessed part of the face she wears for business? Or is the only thing that changes her choice of more sensible shoes and a leather jacket instead of a blazer?

The same is true for almost any aspect of a character. If you want to establish they're strong, show them lifting something heavy with ease. If you want to let us know they're a capable fighter, show them get into a scrape with someone. If you need the audience to know this character is smart, showing them doing something that requires them using their intelligence (playing chess is a favorite, as is hacking into computers, or talking about quantum physics before realizing no one else in the room can understand them).

What you should not do is just use inflammatory adjectives to get your point across; show your characters doing things, and present them as objectively as you can. A little flavor here and there is good for your prose, but make sure you're not using it in place of presenting your audience with facts to draw their conclusions from.

The Deductive Approach

There is an alternative approach to always showing your characters in action, but it's something that needs to be handled very carefully. Because you can sprinkle hints into a character's description to give your audience clues about who they are, and what they're like, but the key is that these hints need to be facts about the character, and the deductive implications of those facts.

It's elementary, really...

If you've ever read a Sherlock Holmes story, then you've seen how Conan Doyle laid this all out for the reader. Holmes takes the facts of a situation, and then deduces meaning from them. You don't have to get as intricate as the great detective, but you do need to follow the same kind of logic.

As an example, say you're meeting a character for the first time. He's dressed in an expensive suit and seems friendly, but what do the details about him in this scene say? Well, the college ring on his hand says West Point, so we can deduce where he went to school. His palm is calloused despite his expensive clothes, the pattern implying that he practices regularly with handguns. A Texan drawl tells us where he grew up, or at least where he's lived long enough to acquire an accent. The scent of cigars tells us he's a smoker, the particular odor saying they're mid-range in price, and the faintness implying it's not a regular indulgence.

Now, we haven't seen this character actually do anything, but each of these little clues has given us a bit of insight about who he might be behind the tie, and it fleshes him out. I talked about this over on my gaming blog in the entry Do Clothes Make The Adventurer, as well, if you're looking for more examples for how to imply a character's history through these little details. Generally speaking, though, you're looking for things like tattoos, cultural markings, voice tics, scars, and even tan lines, and providing context for the reader to help them draw the right conclusions. It takes work, and it's a tough habit to get used to, but it's a great deal less problematic than just using leading descriptions and hoping your audience goes along with the railroading.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

How to Stop Your "Everyman" Character From Becoming a Clueless Dipshit

Let's open this entry by talking about Ghostbusters. It's a classic movie, and it's become part of our cultural mythology (along with a television favorite around this time of the year). Three individuals who are both scientists and paranormal experts get together, prove the existence of life after death, and then build unlicensed, unregulated nuclear reactors to power wildly inaccurate ray weapons to permanently imprison the souls of the dead who are burdening the living.

But what about that fourth guy? You know, the one who was different from everyone else.

You know, the guy with no degree.

Winston Zeddemore was notable because, in addition to being the only black member of the team, he was originally intended to be the most intelligent and highly educated of the four-man spirit-catching crew according to commentary. So why the sudden drop in IQ points to make Winston the equivalent of an amateur exterminator getting illegal on-the-job-training? Because he was the everyman character the audience was supposed to both identify with, and to whom important plot points could be explained in short, simple words.

The Danger of "The Everyman"

The idea that your book should have a character who acts as the touchstone for the audience isn't new. It isn't even a bad idea. In fact, the bigger and more unlike our reality a story's setting is, the more these characters may be necessary in order to give readers some shorthand on this new world. Bilbo Baggins had no special qualifications, but got swept up in a madcap adventure out into a world he didn't know, and which readers discover along with him. Richard Mayhew is just an average Londoner with a job and a girlfriend, but when he stops to rescue the Lady Door, he becomes an unwilling member of the world of London Below, and his struggles to understand the world educate the reader on what sort of mess Richard has gotten into. Even Harry Potter, despite his status as an underaged plot device, was experiencing a fantastic world he'd never suspected existed, bringing the audience along on a tour in his wake.

"What are those things?" How the hell should I know? It's only chapter three!

The risk with using the everyman character is that it's easy to take a wrong step and turn him from someone the audience can understand and identify with, into a bumbling moron who becomes a parody of what he's supposed to be. In short, he ceases to be a character at all, and becomes a sounding board to clue the reader in to exposition. Once readers realize that's what's happening they'll begin to dislike the character. If it goes on for too long, they'll stop reading altogether.

How To Avoid The Devolution of The Everyman

The first and most important step you can take is to make sure your everyman character is still a character. He or she should have definable characteristics, a complete past, and a lifetime worth of learned experiences and emotional reactions. These characters don't simply show the readers the world of the story, but they have to react to the experiences they're being put through in believable ways based on who they are.

It was right around then that Watson got sick of his roommate's shit.

Take Dr. Watson, for example. He's a surgeon, a soldier, a capable man, and a veteran of a terrible conflict. Despite his intellect, though, he isn't a crime solver. Watson makes an ideal everyman because he observes what's happening, but still has personal agency. He lacks the knowledge and expertise of Sherlock Holmes, but that doesn't make him stupid or incapable. The world doesn't turn around Watson, or really around Holmes, and they have lives that are hinted at beyond the pages of their stories.

Because of this you never roll your eyes at Watson. Sure, you're probably more interested in what Holmes is doing, but you accept Watson is a real person, and you don't really question the fact that he's the one we're seeing this story through. After all, if we were seeing it through Holmes's perspective, the mystery would be over in two pages, and very little of the logic would make sense to us.

And now, here's a brief list of do-nots you should carefully consider for your exposition ciphers:

- Don't turn your everyman into a five-year-old who asks constant questions about everything. Conversation is a great way to avoid an exposition dump, but if you overuse it readers will get bored.

- Don't make your everyman just a pair of eyes. The character isn't just there to observe; the everyman needs to be an active participant in the story. It's what makes Michael Corvin in Underworld particularly dull.

- Don't be lazy with why your everyman is involved. Chosen ones like Neo and Potter work on occasion, but that deus ex machina has very limited mileage. A personal connection to someone in the cast, a stake in the outcome, or just getting caught in a crossfire will invest the audience significantly more in a character yanked into a situation he or she is unfamiliar with, possibly in a world that character doesn't belong in.

Lastly, Consider Eliminating This Character

Let's go back to the interesting bit of trivia at the beginning. Would Ghostbusters actually be a worse movie if Winston had three doctorates, and was attracted to the operation out of genuine scientific curiosity instead of being some random dude who needed a job and was willing to take risks? That will vary based on opinion, but was there anything complicated enough in the film that absolutely required someone to act as a translator for the audience?

Ghosts are complicated shit, yo.

More often than not, you don't need a character in your book expressly to translate things for your audience. Even if your main character is a special forces werewolf called to a secret meeting with shape-shifting clan chiefs, you should be able to clue the reader in on the nuances of power structure and rank based on the way characters act and speak to one another. If your lead is an alchemist mixing up a magic potion, just make with the magic. We don't need a clueless apprentice standing by and asking for the cliff notes about how the process works.

At the end of the day, you need to understand the story you want to tell, and what you need from your cast in order to execute that story. If you want to keep a little mystery, like with Holmes or Hercules Poirot stories, then you'll need someone else to tell the tale in order to keep the audience guessing until the big reveal at the end. However, if you want to write a story about a vampire mercenary who is part of a greater, secret world containing monsters of myth and legend, maybe you should trust your readers to pick up what you're laying down without the need of a plucky sidekick to ask for clarification.

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