Back
on the first day of Writing a Novel: First Draft, course instructor Paddy
O’Reilly asked us to jot down what we considered to be our strengths and
weaknesses as a writer. My list looked
like something like this:
Strengths
– main characters, ideas, prose
Weaknesses
– structure, secondary characters (particularly male characters)
So I
knew from the beginning that my minor characters were causing major problems
for me. But even with this knowledge, Toni
Jordan’s session on secondary characters halfway through the course caught me
off-guard. I’d known enough to avoid clichés, but I was still surprised by how
much I was getting wrong.
Here
are a few things I have learned about writing secondary characters:
A
character (let’s call him Pete) cannot appear simply for the convenience of
plot. Pete has to feel like a real
person no matter how minor his part. Pete
requires just as much love, attention and backstory as the protagonist (let’s
call her Amelia). Pete is a checkout
operator who appears in one small scene.
He hands Amelia the wrong amount of change so she, not realising until
it’s too late, doesn’t have enough money to catch the bus home, thereby forcing
her to walk home through the park where she meets that kooky guy who infuriates
her but also makes her laugh despite her stupid life. Amelia’s story has moved on from Pete, but
wait. Why did Pete hand Amelia the wrong
change?
Because
Pete has a life too.
Prior
to Amelia coming through his checkout, Pete checked his schedule for the
following week. He noticed his boss (Sharon)
had once again rostered him on for a shift he’s told her a thousand times he
can’t do because he has a class for his Applied Science Uni course at that time. He knows he is going to have to confront
Sharon during his break. On top of that
he has a bruised hand from his weekend Lacrosse game and he’s worried about his
mother who’s ill and losing weight and doctors can’t seem to figure out what is
wrong with her.
Is
any of this backstory written into the main story? Not in so many words, but it’s there in the
way Pete scans Amelia’s cat food twice and shakes his head at himself while he
reverses the transaction. It’s there in
the way he casts a worried glance at Sharon over by the service desk as he dips
his thumb awkwardly in the wrong slot of the till. It’s there in the way he fails to remember to
check the change before handing it to Amelia.
And
what if Pete speaks? How will he
sound? He may only have one line, but
his line must stick to the rules of all dialogue. It must be distinctive. It must reveal character. It must drive the story forward. It must contain subtext. Perhaps when he scans the cat food twice he
mutters, ‘Today sucks.’ To which Amelia replies, ‘Doesn’t every day?’ Pete’s line is distinctive – he doesn’t speak
in the same way as Amelia does in the rest of the book; his line reveals character
– his youth and attitude; it drives the story forward in that Amelia reveals
her current outlook on life and foreshadows the change about to occur; and it
contains subtext – there is a whole paragraph of unspoken backstory in that one
line of dialogue.
Further
on in the story, Amelia arrives home after meeting Kooky Guy and we are
introduced to two further minor characters.
Amelia’s mother, Margaret, and sister, Eleanor. Margaret and Eleanor are alike in many ways:
they prefer rock music, enjoy getting their hands dirty in the garden, and are
both loud and opinionated. Polar
opposites to Amelia, who likes classical music, arts and crafts, and doesn’t
bother expressing opinions because anything she believes will be wrong in the
eyes of Margaret and Eleanor. However,
despite Margaret and Eleanor’s similarities, each character must bring out a
different emotion in Amelia. Margaret
might bring out a hidden stubborn streak in Amelia. Eleanor on the other hand might invoke envy because
of her closeness with Margaret. If both characters
were pressing the same button on Amelia, one of them would have to go. At the
same time, minor characters that interact also need to bring out different
emotions in each other. A good book is a
tangled web of emotional interaction.
Just
as your main character requires a consistency gap between what they show on the
surface (words) and what is going on underneath (deeds), so do your minor
characters. Eleanor for example might be
loud and opinionated on the surface, but she may struggle internally with the thought
of hurting people with her honest opinions.
Minor
characters are a lot of work, but when they are given the love and attention
they deserve, they will give back in the form of a rich and emotionally
satisfying story.
