Eighteen months ago, I started practicing karate. It’s a great workout, but the main reason I train is that I want to be a formidable older person. If someone tries to steal my bag or deny my senior discount at Denny’s, I’ll be able to respond with a quick roundhouse kick to the solar plexus. By laying the foundation now, I’ll be a heel when I’m 65.
But the best thing about learning karate when you’re a woman in your 40s is that people don’t automatically expect it. If you’re just a casual acquaintance, you won’t know that I’m working toward my black belt. And by the time you’re collecting Social Security, the possibility won’t even cross your mind. Unless you try to steal my bag.
In life, most people become more complex as we get to know them. This should also be true of characters in children’s books. At a conference recently, Lyron Bennett, editor of Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, called it “the slow reveal.” It means giving your characters enough varied qualities that some can be held back until they are called for in the plot.
Slow reveal is especially important when writing a series. If JK Rowling had allowed Harry Potter to reach his full power as a wizard in Book 1, would fans have waited nine years and six more books to find out if he finally defeated you-know-who? But just as important is planting the seeds early on for who you want your character to become. From the very beginning, readers saw potential in Harry, and Rowling allowed greatness to come out of Harry when he least expected it. Those qualities grew along with Harry as the series developed.
You also don’t want to give away everything at once in stand-alone books. Picture books and easy readers, with fewer words and simple plots, work best with characters who have a surprise or two up their sleeves. In Peggy Parish’s classic easy read, Amelia Bedelia, the girl sees that Amelia is doing a poor job on her first day as a housekeeper because she doesn’t understand the list her employer left her. But even before she Amelia starts on the list, she makes a lemon meringue pie. What the reader doesn’t know is that Amelia makes the best cakes in the world, which eventually saves her job at the end of the book.
Doling out your protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses keeps the tension tense in a novel. In Gary Paulsen’s beloved Hatchet (ages 11-14), city boy Brian is stranded in the Canadian wilderness after his plane crashes, killing the pilot. Neither Brian nor the reader knows if he has what it takes to survive on his own. Can you figure out how to start a fire? Yes, quite by accident. Can you fish? Eventually. Kill and cook a bird? How about surviving a moose attack or weathering a tornado? Brian evolves from reacting to his situation and finding solutions to taking control of his situation with care. But nothing Brian does is out of character. Although he must teach himself to live in the wild, he draws on bits of information he learned from watching TV or at school, and the reserves of strength he had at all times.
Even if you’re writing a single title, make your children’s book characters complex enough to live through multiple books, just in case. Fans loved Brian so much that they persuaded Paulsen to use the character in various other wilderness adventures. Picture book series (like Mo Willem’s Pigeon books) or easy-to-read series like Amelia Bedelia usually grow because the protagonist’s quirks are open-ended and fun enough that readers don’t mind exploring them over and over again. in different circumstances.
Slow reveal works particularly well on mysteries. In this genre, readers gradually get to know the victim (perhaps an honor student who is discovered to be running an Internet business selling test answers) and the villain (who may seem like a nice guy at the beginning of the book). Now, how about a first-person narrator in any genre that seems normal and likable early on, but becomes less reliable as the story unfolds? Read Robert Cormier’s timeless young adult I Am the Cheese for a masterful example of a shifting reality from the first person. If you prefer a broader perspective, try Avi’s Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel for ages 11-14, which looks at an incident from multiple viewpoints, gradually separating fact from fiction. So when you first bring your characters to life, don’t stop too soon. Add layers that can be exposed later. These surprises will keep readers captivated, whether you’re writing about a boy wizard, a demanding pigeon, or a ninja granny.
