Writers can be sensitive, emotionally intense, and perhaps a little stuck in our routines. We may hesitate to step out of our comfort zone, even when it comes our writing. It can lead us to taking the advice to “write what you know” too literally, making our protagonist a writer or researcher. And so, especially as we learn our craft, we tend to insert ourselves as writers into the narrative. We can make the character spend much of the narrative writing, researching, or even talking about the writing process.

In the manuscripts that come across my desk, most protagonists have one of just a handful of occupations: writer, teacher, librarian or bookseller, visual artist, or researcher. These are all things that writers either do or can envision themselves doing. I call this one the “writers writing about writers writing” problem.

We can all think of successful novels and memoirs featuring a writer. So why is the writer/researcher character a problem?

Well, first, there are good reasons why there are few reality shows about researchers and writers. Who wants to watch them writing, reading and ruminating? Writers tend to be observers. We watch others, listen in and report, so our writer characters do, too. They aren’t always active. They live too much inside their heads, thinking about problems but not acting on them.

And they, like us, tend to avoid conflict at all costs. Since the narrative is driven by conflict, that’s a real problem. When we write about writers, we often end up with passive protagonists and a wandering story that lacks narrative drive.

It's also the case that, as we research, we tend to insert ourselves into the narrative as the researching character. We write scenes where the protagonist is in the attic searching through trunks, in the library and the museum searching through archives, and on trips to the old country where they visit family homes. In other words, we put our research for the novel to the page.

But all that research is the story behind the story. It’s not the story itself. These research scenes involve a lot of exposition, explaining or telling, as the researching protagonist sits and reads letters and journals about somebody else. In other words, they are a highly passive protagonist who isn’t engaged in their own conflict.

When we insert ourselves into the narrative as the writing/researching character, we aren’t always sure who our protagonist is. We feel we need the writer to tell the story. But is it our story to tell? Or is another character the protagonist? For example, when writing from family history, we think we, the researching writers, should be the focus of the story when the story is really about grandma. If we just get out of the way, our story may well take off. 

 I ran into exactly this kind of “who is my protagonist” problem with my second novel, A Recipe for Bees. In the first draft I sent my editor, I wrote the story from the point of view of Rose, a side character, as she recounted the stories Augusta told. But, as my editor pointed out, it was Augusta’s story to tell. I rewrote that story from Augusta’s POV in six weeks and collapsed. It still went on to be short-listed for the Giller Prize, but damn, I wish I’d decided on Augusta’s POV from the start. This book was somewhat inspired by my mother and father’s marriage. In that first draft, I was inserting myself, as Rose, into the story as the listening-in character. I was holding the story at arm’s length, to keep a comfortable emotional distance. But I was also inserting myself as the researcher listening in to Augusta’s stories. The rewrite from my true protagonist’s POV made it a much, much better story.

Very often, though not always, the solution to the “writers writing about writers” problem is to give the protagonist another occupation. Consider that when you change the occupation of your protagonist, you open up new situations and new opportunities for conflict that might better serve the narrative.

We may feel we can’t write about another person’s occupation because we haven’t done that job. But all we have to do is interview people who have. That might just mean interviewing people we already know.

For example, in my novel The Atlas Keeper, the protagonist is a GIS analyst, a mapmaker. It’s not something I’ve ever done, but my husband has. So, I interviewed him and, later, asked him to review the manuscript for accuracy.

You might also consider contacting an expert in the field you’re writing about. If you’re writing about a soccer player, you can contact your local soccer league and talk to a coach or athlete. If you’re writing about an astronaut going to another planet, then contact a scientist at NASA. (I’m not kidding! Check out this resource.)

Everyone gets nervous doing, or even setting up, an interview. The writing life is all about nudging ourselves out of our comfort zone. Here's a link to my article on interviewing with more on that.