Skip to main content

Side Characters


I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert in creating side-characters. I think those that I've created have worked well in my stories and part of that comes from a bit of a sixth sense. So, I wouldn't take any of this advice as anything but the ramblings of a person trying to figure it out on their own as well.

But, like every part of writing, creating a good side character is about asking a lot of questions.

What would be interesting? What purpose would they fill? What would their life be like without the conflict of the main character? How would they add to the conflict? How will they aid in the conflict? 

I mean, a lot of it is instinctual. For the fantasy book I'm working on, the main trio of heroes are the way they are so that they can have different abilities and perspectives. Each of them is from a different spot on the map so they all have a different way of looking at things. And they don't always agree with each other. Having conflict between the side characters and the main characters is important, I think. They need to be able to challenge them a little bit, and they need to be able to smack them around and tell them when they're screwing up.

I think it helps to make them drastically different from the main character. In that fantasy, the lead is a young shieldmaiden who received her sword too soon. Her traveling and fighting companion is a much older dwarf. They're physically different, she's lithe and tall, he's short and stout (as dwarves are wont to be), and where she's hesitant but optimistic, he's surly and pessimistic. They need to be able to have personality traits that play off of each other.

Side characters can't be cartoons, either. So often I read books where I hate the side characters because they are nothing but a bundle of quirks. Quirks do not make a good side character. They need to feel every bit as part of the natural world you're building as anything. And they need to play a part in the story. Think about how useful Artoo and Threepio are to the story. There's no question that they're side characters (though, arguably, they're our main POV characters), but having them there matters. You couldn't get the victory over the Empire without Threepio's translation skills and Artoo's technical acumen. You couldn't get there without Chewie's brute force and piloting skills, either, or Obi-Wan Kenobi's mastery of the Force and sacrifice. Every meaningful side character in Star Wars matters.

These character traits are all archetypes Joseph Campbell spoke of in all of his research, and it would do you well to learn about how to use the sword master or the classic rogue or any one of these things to help build a side character.

But the most important thing is that they're important to the story and not just an add-on. Some of these characters will appear in your work organically. People have friends that orbit their lives, that's why there are always friends in movies and books. They're natural. But what circumstances lead people to be together? Too often I'll see stories and movies that suffer from that classic roleplaying game trope. "We have no idea why any of these people are in a tavern together, but they're all here and ready to go an adventure, so they will." Characters might seem just added on because the writer needed comic relief or a cannon fodder for when things get messy. You need to motivate these characters every bit as much as your main character. Otherwise, they'll just be limp and feel tacked on. And you never want that for your reader.

--

As a reminder: Please join my short story Patreon here. Your contributions to the Patreon help me write more like this. When I hit 50 patrons, everyone will get a copy of Lost at the Con.

The Aeronaut and Escape Vector are still out and still need your purchases and reviews. If nothing else, they can use you telling people about them. If you want signed copies, visit the shop here on this page. 

Also! here's the full list of "rules and guidelines" I've been collecting over my years of studying writing advice and process. 

 As far as my work outside of all this: There's a lot of great stuff on Big Shiny Robot! and Full of Sith for you.


 And please, please, please don't forget to check out any of my books, drop reviews of them on Amazon or Goodreads, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 Schedule

It's time for another year of Salt Lake Comic Con and another hectic schedule for me. But! that doesn't mean it's not a helluva lot of fun. I hope you're able to join me at any of these panels. Especially if you like Star Wars. And please, please, please come to my signing and visit. Get some books signed. I'd love that enormously. Here is my Thursday schedule: Everything here is a highlight. That first panel about behind the scenes of the prequels is with Pablo Hidalgo and I'll be asking him questions about what it was like to be there on set for most of the prequels. Then I'll be asking questions of Michael Biehn, who I've been a fan of since I was a little kid. Aliens and Terminator were favorites. If you want to ask him a question, please hit me up on Twitter with it. I will ask it at the panel. And you don't want to miss Fauxthentic History's Infinity Gauntlet live episode. It's going to be soooo good. Here is Friday: ...

The End of an Era and a New Beginning

It's been a long time coming, but I think an upgrade to my web presence was long overdue. I began this blog in 2005 and it's served me well over the last 13 years. My goal in those early days was to write a short story every month. Back then, that was the only writing I was doing. This website, then called "Bryan's Short Story Corner," got me into a regular writing habit. One that I still maintain today. I hoped it would help me get eyeballs on my words and, looking back at some of those early short stories, I shouldn't have wanted any of those eyeballs looking. Today, my Patreon fills that void. There is a dedicated group of supporters there that help subsidize my ability to write short stories on the regular. After I started publishing books, this blog morphed into a place to talk about my projects and writing and it worked well enough for that for a long time. But now I have Twitter and Medium for those functions and they have much cleaner and easi...

Anatomy of a Scene: All the President's Men

All the President's Men is one of those perfect movies. Based on a stunning true story with a brilliant screenplay from William Goldman (we've already gone through one of his scenes here with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ), it's a movie that brings all of the elements of character, plot, and drama together in a way that makes me really love and admire it.  The scene I want to go through is one that comes during a particularly trying time in the film. For those unaware, this film tells the tale of Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who cracked the Watergate story. And now, looking back on it, it all feels like one big victory, but it was marked by a number of defeats.  This is them reporting to their skeptical editor, Ben Bradlee (played brilliantly by Jason Robards) about where their investigation is at. Immediately preceding Woodward and Bernstein walking in, a salesman is trying to sell Bradlee on features his papers doe...