When you write a book, you’re only ever showing the important bits. Seems obvious, right? The boring stuff, the stuff that isn’t intimately bound in the narrative, the stuff that doesn’t just leap off the page, or drive home some essential truth about your characters or the world they live in, you leave out*. But it’s still there, in a way.

What you see on the page is a result of winnowing out a hell of a lot of material. Some of it great, some of it exciting to write, but they’re ultimately scenes*, and situations that didn’t serve the story. The thing is, even though they’re gone, they still sit beneath the story, submerged, they’re the nine-tenths of the iceberg – the research, the history, the backstory – that give the bit the reader sees the extra weight.

Like Aunt Teagan in my Death Works books.

Now, Aunt Teagan is mentioned in passing in the books. She lives in the UK (St Austell, don’t you know). She’s a staunch Black Sheep, she never wanted to take up the family business of Pomping, has a massive chip on her shoulder, and she was supposed to be in Managing Death, but she didn’t work. And then, she was supposed to be in the Business of Death, and yet again, she didn’t work.

Which may sound like I don’t like her, but that couldn’t be furthest from the truth. She’s strong, loves her family very much, and is hyper-critical (in a very direct very fascinating to watch way). She may well be one of my favourite characters ever, but every time I started to use her, she’d dominate the scene, the rest of my poor characters would glance at their watches (or hide) and the story would just stop.

A character like that either deserves their own story, or you need to cut them out. Sometimes they’ll take you strange places, and you’ll realise that they’re actually necessary, even pivotal to the plot. Other times they just suck all the narrative energy into themselves like a great big black hole and you know that by leaving them in there you’re actually damaging the story, and not doing justice to the character either.

Oh, how I wanted to use Aunt Teagan, to share with you her penchant for ridiculous hats that she somehow manages to make look dignified. Her absolute refusal to be impressed by anything that Steven does – and this guy is Death – because she believes he should have gotten a sensible job. And the way that she faces down the villain of the piece stares at him eye-to-eye and saves Steven’s life.

All of it I cut away, because it just didn’t work. But it’s still there, in the way that Steve thinks about his family, in his staunch loyalty to his friends – I know that a lot of the time, Steven when faced with a tough decision will ask himself just what Aunt Teagan would do. They don’t get on, but her stern, disapproving glare is one of the things that keeps him from going too far off the rails – doesn’t work always, there’s a fair bit of rebellion in Steve.

Aunt Teagan’s an important part of Steve’s life, a very important part. She might get a scene or two sometime in the future, but even if she doesn’t. Aunt Teagan is there in the “Iceberg of Story”** that you never really see. But ,without her, these books just wouldn’t float.

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*say, like brushing your teeth¹, unless the bathroom is covered in blood, then it gets a little interesting.

¹ I mean, dental hygiene is important, but on a compelling narrative level, not so much²

² hmm, I think I remember a teeth brushing scene in book one…

**if you can have a Tree of Tales, why not an Iceberg of Story? I bet you they hang out and talk shop – possibly with the Tea Towel¹ of Denouement.

¹Aunt Teagan collects tea towels by the way, of famous British beheadings (you should see the one she has of Lord Walter Hungerford).