Creating Depth in Your Story World

Make it feel like your characters are talking to each other, not you

One of the easiest ways to be pulled out of a story is to be reminded it’s a story. The best books exist on the page like you’re spying on a neighbor. You get so fully immersed in their world you forget it isn’t real.

I want to show you three tips to provide this immersive feeling, and one thing to be sure to avoid, as you set about writing dialogue in particular.

1. Refer to Situations We Didn’t Witness

Give characters their own inside jokes, and then let them be. Don’t explain them. People feel real to us this way, because it proves to us that these characters have a life outside of this story. Even if it isn’t true, our brains believe it. Compare the following examples.

“This is just like that time in Seattle.” “It is! Except Amanda isn’t here.” “Thank God for that, though. Remember the thing with the waiters?”

In this, we see the life these characters are living, and how they once went to Seattle with Amanda and it — presumably — didn’t go well. Compare it to this:

“This is just like that time we were in Seattle for work and we all went to different Thai restaurants, because we didn’t realize how many there would be.” “You’re right! Except Amanda isn’t with us right now.” “Thank God for that, though. Once we all got to the same place, she hit on every waiter we saw, even when they turned her down. It was so embarrassing and you wanted to leave.”

Giving the details of what happened with Amanda and why the current situation is like that one time in Seattle ruins the flow of the dialogue here. There are two reasons this is true.

First, our imaginations have way more fun with making up what happened in Seattle than we have reading about it. Second, when we’re replaying favorite memories with the people who are there, we rarely hash out the details. They’re known, so we allude to the situation rather than state it in full. We’ll talk about this more below.

2. Provoke Questions without Answering Them

Narrative is essentially a collection of questions asked and answers provided. When working intentionally through this, it’s best to work out of order. We want a mix of the following:

• short-term questions that are answered quickly
• medium-term questions that carry us into the next chapter
• long-term questions that drive the narrative until the end
• subtext questions that may or may not get directly answered

Short-term questions are things like, “What is he going to say about that?” or “Wow, she just received terrible news. I wonder how she’s going to react.” Those curiosities drive us to the next paragraph, where, often we get answers.

Medium-term questions may be cliffhangers, or they could be subplots that get dropped and picked up again later. Maybe the last time Jack and Jill were in ceramics class, something happened between them, and we won’t see them together again until the next ceramics class. “How will they interact now that this has happened?” will have to wait for Jill to talk to her mother, walk the dog, and survive a shift at work first. Of course, if Jack shows up to the Starbucks Jill works at, we get even more surprise, even though it happens faster.

Long-term questions are the drivers of narrative. “Are they going to end up together?” “Will she steal the thingamajig from the doohickey in time to save the world?” These are the questions that won’t get answered until the climactic moment is over and the story is winding down.

Then there are the subtextual questions. These I’m defining as questions the manuscript raises but doesn’t necessarily answer. Some of the reasons to do this include:

• building out questions of backstory
• creating room for sequels or spinoffs
• giving life to secondary characters

Of course, all of these can overlap in interesting ways. If you’re writing a romance and a side character mentions she overheard information but refuses to say where, you’ve created a question about that character’s life outside the page that will make readers curious to know more. This will come in useful when you announce that she’s the main character in your next book.

For a great example from television of this sort of building out of backstory , so many of Phoebe’s lines from Friends provide backstory that she thinks is boring and one-off, but creates stories in the minds of the readers and brings her to life outside of her role among her friend group.

3. Know More than You’ll Ever Share

If you’re a worldbuilding buff like Tolkien, maybe you have a whole Silmarillion’s worth of backstory that you think is awesome. You want to use all of it.

Using all of it can result in a story with a slow pace and irrelevant detail, creating a kind of “so what?” to the story at hand.

But as the author, knowing all of it is amazing. Let’s look at an example again.

“Why does the forest just… stop… here? In Monan, forests taper out. There’s no harsh line between the trees and a desert.” “Do they not teach you ‘The Folly of Sir Xonden’ in Monan?” “Never heard of it.” “It’s, like, history lesson meets bedtime story in Rogap. Sir Xonden made a request of a faerie. One thing led to another and boom the whole forest town of Poegel was destroyed. Wasteland in minutes. Archeologists found some of the remains when I was fourteen. Anyway, two days’ walk from now, we’ll be back in the forest again. And we need to hurry. This place is quite literally cursed.”

Notice we do have some backstory on the page here, but the character speaking goes through it quickly. When you know the story well, you’ll know which details to share — which ones the character cares about, and which ones her companion will most want to know.

I won’t write out the counter example — partially because I don’t much feel like writing “The Folly of Sir Xonden” today — but imagine if she had told the whole story instead of just the parts that were relevant to her. The pacing would have slowed, and we might have lost the focus on what matters: they have to cross this wasteland, and it’s literally cursed.

However, even just having knowledge that the Rogapians knew this bedtime story, and had seen archeological evidence it’s true, brings depth and interest to their crossing of this wasteland now. It adds tension, rather than depletes from it, because the details important to the character are the ones shared rather than all of it.

Avoiding ‘As You Know, Bob’

That fantasy example brings us to what not to do: writing “as you know, Bob.” See, the conversation between the Rogapian and the Monanian wouldn’t have worked if they were both from Rogap, because there would be no need to talk about the fairy tale. They both would have heard it from the time they were young.

In that case, though, it could be tempting to write something like this, so your reader gets the update:

“It’s so weird how the forest just stops here.” “Well, you know what they say in ‘The Folly of Sir Xonden.’” “Oh, right. Sir Xonden made a request of a faerie. One thing led to another and boom the whole forest town of Poegel was destroyed. Wasteland in minutes.” “Archeologists found some of the remains when I was fourteen. Anyway, we need to hurry. This place is quite literally cursed.”

See how there’s less tension there than when the information was new to one of them? “You know” is the key problem with the example above. That’s how “As you know, Bob” got its name. Like I mentioned in point 1 above, we don’t often rehash, in detail, things the person we’re talking to already knows. Instead, it might be something like.

“This place creeps me out.” “Story’s got it right. Sir Xonden was a fool.”

Another way “As you know, Bob” can sneak into our writing is with names and relationship reminders.

“Robert, I picked up our ten-year-old daughter Brayleigh from Washington Park Elementary School this afternoon, and her nice teacher who reminds me of Kristen Chenoweth told me about how she’s not doing well in math. Remember how last night you were helping her with multiplication and she was struggling? Her teacher has recommended we talk to a tutor. I was thinking the girl I used to babysit, Sarah, who is sixteen now, would be a good choice.”

Let’s look at how many of those are things the spouse already knows. I’ve copied the text, and bolded the parts the listener doesn’t need to hear:

“Robert, I picked up our ten-year-old daughter Brayleigh from Washington Park Elementary School this afternoon, and her nice teacher who reminds me of Kristen Chenoweth told me about how she’s not doing well in math. Remember how last night you were helping her with multiplication and she was struggling? Her teacher has recommended we talk to a tutor. I was thinking the girl I used to babysit, Sarah, who is sixteen now, would be a good choice.”

If this conversation were to really happen, it would be more like:

“Ms. Polk stopped me on the way out the door today and said Brayleigh needs a math tutor. I was thinking we could bring Sarah over? What’s the going rate for tutors these days?”

How do you bring depth to your characters and your world?

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