Make Them All Unforgettable Characters, by Josh Stallings

Q: How much air time do you give to secondary characters? Have any threatened to take over a book?

A: I give them as much time as they need to be fully there. A paragraph, a chapter, I don’t have a formula. The tension between narrative drive and character exploration comes down to personal taste. I can feel when editing when I come to a section that’s off the main story if I want to blow past it, it means it needs work, either to cut it down or make it sing. 

I’m dancing around the question becau...