Writing Wednesday: Minor Characters

Working through my last revision of the WIP, I was working hard to make sure that my minor characters felt like more than just window dressing. Some tips:

1. Give your minor characters a history. Just a paragraph of them saying who they are and how they came to the place they are at can do wonders.

2. If minor characters are going to die, make some part of it unexpected. You don't need them to be heroic at every moment. Make their death original and unique.

3. Minor characters should not just help the main character in his/her quest. They have their own goals, and as the writer, you need to let minor characters occasionally take over the plot. It may not last for long, but let us see what they would do if they were the main characters.

4. A few physical details can help us distinguish one minor character from another. But be careful of making distinctions that are twee. Don't give each minor character a tick or a certain recognizable phrase. And don't make each one from a different race.

5, Write fuller histories of minor characters, but then cut them out. They don't often belong in the pages of the book you are writing, but a hint of the larger picture can be a wonderful thing.

6. Let your minor characters argue with the main character. Let us see that the main character has flaws and that there are other sides to the story.

7. Give a minor character a gift, a penchant for beauty or some artistic skill. It can tell us a lot about a character to know what they find beautiful even in the worst of circumstances. It also tells us about the world.

8. Love your minor characters enough that you feel like you could write a whole other novel about what their version of events is, or about what happened to them before and after the novel itself.