Characters & Storytelling
Trana Mae Simmons
Published author/editor/acquisition reader
(Client list includes Alice Borchardt, Anne Rice's sister and author of DRAGON QUEEN, 10/01/01, starred Publisher's Weekly Review)

So you've gone through a zillion mental gymnastics and your manuscript is alive with all sorts of great cyber-technology, a wealth of techno-babble, and you've built a world that is futuristic-fantastic. The writing glows, and all your friends are in awe of your brilliant mind. You've got a wonderful manuscript, which is going to take the sci-fi readership by storm, as well as the honchos out in Los Angeles. It's the next Star Wars, or maybe ET.

What about your characters? Before you get too involved in all your mental gymnastics and high-tech gadgets, remember: a story is, in the end, about characters. All the gadgets in the world—or a future world—won't help your book if the readers don't care about the characters who populate that world. This is their world—their story—and everything else is background for whatever conflict you've set them out to overcome. Readers read because the characters catch them and they have a deep desire to know what happens to them. That's what keeps them flipping pages, not a desire to see what new gadget or animal hybrid the writer has come up with next. Movie-goers spend ticket prices because there is a wonderful story on the screen, a story about characters they can relate to, characters they care about, characters they want to see triumph in the end. Sure, all the weird gadgets in the book and all the special effects on the screen are great—but sci-fi readers and audiences expect this. They expect an alternate world, but a believable one, a world in which they can suspend their belief in reality. This is their due and what draws them to the genre to begin with. But what they're looking for is story, and no if's, and's or but's about it, story is about characters.

Even more important, if you want to see your book in print on that bookstore shelf someday, your name plastered on the cover, editors are first and foremost looking for authors who are storytellers. One of the most significant pieces of advice you will ever be given is that there are thousands of writers out there, but storytellers are few and far between. Writers who have mastered the craft of storytelling understand that their characters are the most meaningful part of their story, no matter what the genre. Once you understand that, you're well on the rocky path toward publication.