www.wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.

com
www.kmweiland.com

5 Steps to Dazzling Minor Characters

Minor characters provide the color and conflict that fill our protagonists’
worlds. Because they aren’t confined to the necessities of a character arc or
the demands of the plot, they often have the opportunity to be some of the
most exciting personalities on the page. In my own stories, many of my
favorite characters filled the role of second banana: Émile Conseiller, the
burly, bodacious Frenchman in A Man Called Outlaw; Peregrine Marek, the
cheeky indentured servant in Behold the Dawn; and Orias Tarn, the lone-wolf
Cherazii warrior caught between two impossible choices in my upcoming
fantasy Dreamers.

In order to create a cast of minor characters that can stand toe to toe with
our protagonists and broaden the thematic resonance of the story, we must
recognize each minor character—no matter how small his role in the story—as
a personality just as complete and complex as the most elaborate main
character. Everyone is the hero of his own story, and in a different version of
your historical drama, the train conductor who garners just one sentence
could have been the protagonist. (Some wildly successful books have taken a
deeper look at famous minor characters. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
featured Rochester’s mad wife from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Geoffrey
Maguire’s Wicked took a look at L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
from the Wicked Witch’s viewpoint.)

Following are five steps for creating minor characters that dazzle with color
and personality:
1. Think beyond the cliché. Instead of a taxi cab driver who navigates the
Chicago streets like a maniac, why not one who’s so timid he can barely creep
across the intersection during a light? Instead of a wide-eyed young woman
who comes to New York dreaming of acting on Broadway, why not one who
dreams of building skyscrapers?

2. Give him a unique personality. If your protagonist is playing the straight

man, you can often have fun with outrageous minor characters. Sidekicks, in
particular, often get to fill this role. But even what author Sandra Dark calls
“dead-end characters” should be brimming with unique personalities. She
writes in her article “Life After Death” (Writer’s Digest, August 2005) about
how Stephen King’s use of dead-end characters “ratchets up suspense by not
telegraphing who will survive the story.”

3. Give him a goal. Nothing brings a character to life more quickly than a
desire. If this desire can mirror your protagonist’s to strengthen the thematic
arc or oppose your protagonist’s to increase the conflict, so much the better.

4. Give him stakes. What happens if he doesn’t reach his goal? Memoirist
Melissa Hart writes in her article “What’s at stake?” (The Writer, August 2010)
that “the reader must be aware of what’s at stake for every character,” not
just the protagonist.

5. Give him an arc. If he has a goal and a stake, why not a full-blown
character arc? If you can give one or two prominent minor characters a mini
arc that either echoes or contrasts the protagonist’s, you’ll be able to deepen
the meaning and complexity of both the main character’s journey and the
thematic arc as a whole.

For every vivid minor character with whom you surround your protagonist,
you’ll be able to give readers one more reason not to put your story down.
About the Author: K.M. Weiland grew up
chasing Billy the Kid and Jesse James on
horseback through the sand hills of western
Nebraska, where she still lives. A lifelong
fan of history and the power of the written
word, she enjoys sharing both through her
novels and short stories. Visit her blogs
Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors
and AuthorCulture to read her take on the
writing life.

www.wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com
www.kmweiland.com/podcast/podcast-rss.xml
www.authorculture.blogspot.com
www.kmweiland.com