In today's WRITING FROM FICTION, where I take a book I've read recently and look at it through the lens of a writer, I explore the power of the absent character.
Megan Rogers’s (InkSmiths Substack) THE HEART IS A STAR, is a gorgeously written novel, deep with insight and humour and the kind of realness that leaves you catching your breath. It tells the story of Layla, a daughter on the cusp of uncovering the secret at heart of her parents’ marriage. As she journeys, both literally and metaphorically to her dying mother, the past unravels and she must reframe everything she thought she knew about her parents and her family.
What's remarkable, is that, beyond the protagonist, Layla, the character who is perhaps the important to this story, the mother figure, is largely absent from the narrative. We meet her very late and even then, only briefly. This absence creates suspense and makes the reveal all the greater as we discover what happened only through the eyes of the protagonist, without being swayed by the presence or words of the mother herself. It also gives space for the reader to develop their own thoughts and perceptions about the mother figure.
This technique made me think of The Great Gatsby and how late we meet the character of Gatsby himself, how so much of what we learn about him is filtered through eyes of other people, and how that construct connects to the themes at the heart of the novel.
So, think about how characters can play a powerful role, not only in how they're present on the page, but also in how they're absent. Nature abhors a vacume - and so does the reader, and the gaps your reader will try to fill in will add hugely to the reading experience.
Happy writing friends, and keep reading too,
Virginia 🤍
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Virginia Macgregor is the author of five novels for adults and two for young adults. She has an MFA in Creative Writing with a specialisation in the teaching of writing. She lives with her husband, her three children, her four cats and a home full of books and coffee mugs, in New Hampshire. She can often be found writing at her In Real Life bookstore café in her local town.
