Let's Talk About: Minor Character Development
âCreating one interesting character is hard enough â but when it comes to writing a whole novel or series of books, you have to create dozens of them. How can you keep your supporting cast from seeming like cookie-cutter people? Thereâs no easy answer, but a few tricks might help you create minor characters who donât feel too minor.â [x]
10 Secrets to Creating Unforgettable Supporting Characters
Give them at lease one defining characteristic. ââŚlots of people have one or two habits that you notice the first time you meet them, that stand out in your mind even after you learn more about them.â
Give them an origin story. ââŚYour main character doesnât necessarily need an origin story, because youâve got the whole book to explain who he/she is and what he/she is about. But a supporting character? You get a paragraph or five, to explain the formative experience that made her become the person she is, and possibly how she got whatever skills or powers she possesses.â
Make sure they talk in a distinctive fashion. "âŚyou still have to make sure your characters donât all talk the same. Some of them talk in nothing but short sentences, others in nothing but long, rolling statements full of subordinate clauses and random digressions. Or you might have a character who always follows one long sentence with three short ones.â "âŚOne dirty shortcut is to hear the voice of a particular actor or famous person in your head, as one character talks.â
Avoid making them paragons of virtue, or authorial stand-ins. ââŚPeople who have no flaws are automatically boring, and thus forgettable.â ââŚAny character who has foibles, or bad habits, or destructive urges, will always stand out more than one who is pure and wonderful in all ways. And nobody will believe that youâve chosen to identify yourself, as the author, with someone whoâs so messed up. (Because of course, you are a perfect human being, with no flaws of your own.)â
Anchor them to a particular place. ââŚA huge part of making a supporting character âpopâ is placing her somewhere. Give her a haunt â some place she hangs out a lot. A tavern, a bar, an engine room, a barracks, a dog track, wherever. It works both ways â by anchoring a character in a particular location, you make both the character and the location feel more real.â
Introduce them twice â the first time in the background, the second in the foreground. ââŚYou mention a character in passing: âAnd Crazy Harriet was there too, chewing on her catweed like always.â And you say more about them. And then later, the next time we see that character, you give more information or detail, like where she scores her catweed from. The reader will barely remember that you mentioned the character the first time â but itâs in the back of the readerâs mind, and thereâs a little âpingâ of identification.â
Focus on what they mean to your protagonists ââŚWhat does this minor character mean to your hero? What role does he fulfill? What does your hero want or need from Randolph the Grifter? If you know what your hero finds memorable about Randolph, then youâre a long ways towards finding what your readers will remember, too.â
Give them an arc â or the illusion of one. ââŚÂ You can create the appearance of an arc by establishing that a character feels a particular way â and then, a couple hundred pages later, you mention that now the character feels a different way.â ââŚA minor character who changes in some way is automatically more interesting than one who remains constantâŚâ
The more minor the character, the more caricature-like they may have to be. ââŚThis one is debatable â you may be a deft enough author that you can create a hundred characters, all of whom are fully fleshed out, well-rounded human beings with full inner lives.â ââŚsome writing styles simply canât support or abide cartoony minor characters. But for your third ensign, who appears for a grand total of two pages, on page 147 and page 398, you may have to go for cartoony if you want him to live in the readerâs mind as anything other than a piece of scenery.â
Decide which supporting characters youâll allow to be forgettable after all. ââŚAnd this is probably inevitable. You only have so much energy, and your readers only have so much mental space. Plus, if 100 supporting characters are all vivid and colorful and people your readers want to go bowling with, then your story runs the risk of seeming overwritten and garish.Sometimes you need to resign yourself to the notion that some characters are going to be extras, or that theyâre literally going to fulfill a plot function without having any personality to speak of. Itâs a major sacrifice theyâre making, subsuming their personality for the sake of the major playersâ glory.â
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