Writing Tip of the Week
Taking Seconds
As you take your hero through his story. Or, as in my case, my hero takes me through his story, he will encounter a variety of characters. You should have him encounter a wide variety of characters. A bunch of cookie-cutter beings won’t cut it in a novel or screenplay or even a short story. Each character should have a purpose in moving the story forward or in enhancing the work in some manner such as character development, setting, or in some way important to the story. The most minor of characters should still be “real” to the reader even if in a minimalist way.
A mud-coated cowhand in an equally mud-coated duster burst into the saloon with a shout. “Injuns!”
That character has just one line, but in that one line we get an image of the time, the setting, the problem to be faced, and the emotional content associated with that problem. ?
Secondary characters don’t have to be as fully developed as your main character, but they do deserve attention. They need to be real, honest-to-God flesh and blood people with their own set of values and needs. In general, a novel has three important characters: the protagonist, the villain, and the sidekick. In complex works this triumvirate can be expanded. For example, in my Western novel Slot Canyon I have two protagonists and a villain. Each has about a third of the novel devoted to his tale. Neither has a sidekick. There is a plethora of minor characters each man encounters along the way to “The End.” This assortment of people is fleshed out enough so that in effect they move from minor characters to serve as secondary characters within their section of the work.
My mainstream novel of the early 20th century, Gabby Durango, has my main character involved with several sidekicks who come into his life, leave, and are replaced by other supporting characters. Gabby Durango has a complex plot with a couple of the secondary characters getting involved in their own adventures. Those adventures, of course, at some point advance Gabby’s storyline. I practice Writing Into The Dark (no plot) and very interesting things happen when a writer practices that wonderful technique. One of my secondary characters, a wealthy young man, had his own sidekick of sorts. While writing his storyline a very minor character briefly introduced pages earlier showed up and killed the young man. That’s WITD at work. His sidekick, his Black valet, automatically jumped into the secondary character position and stayed with the story until the end, eventually becoming the official sidekick. When you let them, characters evolve and they evolve in the most wonderful and unexpected ways.
I don’t write character sketches, preferring to let my characters reveal themselves throughout the story. My mainstream, current-day novel The Ad Club is narrated by one character, but he shares equal billing in the work with his partner – two protagonists. WITD threw me a real curve with the villain. The book is about the advertising world and how some owners are obsessed with winning ad awards. One of these types, an ad agency owner, seemed to fill the role of villain until the very end of the novel when one of the secondary characters revealed herself as the real villain of the piece. I did not see that coming! After my character revealed that to me, I looked back through the work and, sure enough, she was the villain and a true villain at that. The whole plotline was there throughout the work; I didn’t even have to go back through the novel to “fix” up any inconsistencies. She had appeared early in the work and sporadically showed up throughout. I did not realize it as I wrote those sections, but all the clues were in place. It was as surprising to me as I hope it was to the reader.
There is a danger to writing fully developed secondary characters. My thriller Desecration is about the illegal trade in Native American artifacts and it features an overweight, aging and worn police detective as the sidekick. The main character is a young, female archaeologist brought into the investigation because the police believe she can “think Indian” and help catch the serial killer who is the villain in the piece. Bit by bit each character revealed themselves to me and bit by bit the reader gets to learn more and more about the people in the novel. I believe this is an effective way to tell a story. The villain kills the portly cop before he is in turn killed by the archaeologist. My cop proved so popular with readers that I was criticized for killing him off. Of course, that level of emotional involvement is exactly what a writer shoots for. I’ve been encouraged to bring him back, which I may do sometime in a flashback novel. Now that’s a fleshed-out secondary character.
My point is that secondary characters are important to moving the story along, but also to the emotional satisfaction the reader needs. Sidekicks and other participants need to be fleshed out enough to provide that satisfaction, which helps make sure your work isn’t second rate.
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Quote of the Week:? “Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.” Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Recommended Reading: Living with a Shadow by John Stuart Watkins
Recommended Online: https://youtu.be/Tao-isgJ3JU
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