Minor characters are major players
After reading an early draft of mine, a proof-reader said that my "character descriptions were spot on, being short and sharp but getting the idea across”. I puffed up, hell yeah I did - I'd been focusing on reducing fluff and making descriptions clean and clear. Once I'd deflated a little, I wanted to share my process so that maybe your characters can puff you up too.
Minor characters are the perfect place to start. As they only pop up a few times in a story and have far less ‘screen time’, you need to convey their look and voice quickly and simply without them being forgotten or insignificant. Also, by starting with the small fry, you can develop a better understanding of how to flesh out your Big Dogs.
But why are minor characters even important?
Read some Joe Abercrombie and you’ll see a perfect execution of the following:
1. Characterisation
You can reveal a lot about your protagonists in the way they perceive and treat minor characters.
A snooty high-born might treat merchants with disdain and peasants with indifference. A raging barbarian might mock or revile any sign of weakness. As well as broad character traits, this is also an opportunity to show how your protagonists is feeling in the moment, or how they might be changing. The high-born awarded new honours might be momentarily kind or generous to the same merchants and peasants.
Who we think we are is reflected by the people around us. Along with action, desires and dialogue, minor characters are another way to reflect the personalities of your protagonists.
2. Plausibility
By adding fine grain detail, you can make the background of your story and world pop, filling it with richness and texture.
Consider your own life and the strangers in it. Much as you might hate most of them, they do populate the world, bringing it to life with their ideas, efforts, conversations and beliefs. They uphold society's values, embrace trends and push change. While you might not interact with most of them, they still make up the social backdrop for your life.
By bringing these strangers into your work, you build that backdrop for your world. They can gossip, express societal values, dress, act, or in other ways show the world you've created.
Minor characters help string your story together into a tapestry so fine and interwoven that readers believe it could be real.
3. Story
The actions of strangers, or crowds of them, can sway a story, or fill in important points that progress it.
Again, think about your own life and the role strangers have played. The atmosphere created by crowds at a gig, the random offers of kindness/vitriol that made you stop and think, the surge of being pulled into a riot (just guessing).
What about the battalion that pushes through enemy lines when all is lost? The captain might be a minor character, but damn did he play a big role. Perhaps a merchant shares some gossip that puts the pieces of a mystery together, or a smith mentions the strange properties of a stone that is then used to skew a compass and wreck a ship before it can raid a port.
If the story is driven by characters, then the minor ones are holding the wheel as well.
How to make them
So that's a lot on what they can do, but how do you make them?
As they're minor, you don't need heaps for them. You can probably fit it on a post-it note:
A unique ‘voice’, or the script they’re running in the scene, made up of:
Object of desire.
What does the character want? Glory, riches, safety?Defining personality traits.
How they go about trying to get their object of desire? Cunning, violence, nagging?
Culture and background.
Where are they from? How does that influence how they look and speak, or their desires, traits, and...A marker or ‘sparkle’.
Give them something that stands out immediately - a piece of clothing, a trinket, a scar, an expression, a catch-phrase, a habit.
They don't need more than one, but it has to be significant and should link with a defining personality trait.
For example, a nervous craftsman could fumble and fidget when packing his walnut wood pipe.
Something extra
I recently listened to Merphy Napier’s interview with Joe Abercrombie, who I think does the best characters in contemporary fantasy (fanboy alert). One thing that jumped out was:
“I often find that humour’s the best way into a character. What’s their sense of humour? What do they find funny?”
So, this could be another tool to build out a character’s voice or script.
How to write them in
This is where those 3 important roles come through.
Give them a point.
The scene must further the plot, characters or worldbuilding. All three at once, ideally.Stagger descriptions of the character over an interaction, as we often notice little things about people over time rather than all at once.
Which of your protagonist's characteristics will come out in the interaction?
Think about the 6th sense - how your character interprets their experience of the minor character. Check this post for more about the 6th sense.
An example
I’ve broken down the following passage from my manuscript, Dreams of the Doom-Witch:
The sounds of progress, hammers and saws and work songs, were like a symphony.
The protagonist values progress - here, it’s being made my minor characters.
Two carpenters walked past carrying a freshly milled roofing beam and tried to kneel with their cumbersome load. Altha held up a hand for them to stop.
Shows that irrespective of how inconvenient, in this culture, inferiors must always kneel before superiors.
“Report. How’re the palisades?”
Didactic and short sentences show that the protagonist is to the point and direct. He also expects to get what he demands.
With his eyes downcast, the older of the two carpenters spoke. Altha couldn’t help but stare at the spot of scabby skin that spread from the crown of the man’s head. A balding Fen, or a sick one? Both were rare.
Again the deference for authority. It also reinforces worldbuilding that Fens typically have a natural resistance to illness and disease and have heads of thick, full hair.
“O’Younglord, the original line has been strongified, and, and the net’s up.”
The carpenter is running a script of being eager to please. Poor pronunciation shows an uneducated man.
Altha tore his eyes away from the unsettling pate to look at the pattern of ropes that had been tied from the roof of the house to the tallest stakes, creating a kind of skyward web. “That’ll keep the bastards out.”
Reaffirmation that the protagonist values the norm, health, and what’s ‘worthy’.
The carpenter nodded furiously. “The outer palisade is near done, and, and shit pits dug. The fields are clear to a hundred paces, no trees ‘tween us and the woods. Just as you wanted.” He tapped a laughable attempt at a salute with a three-fingered hand, one gone at the second knuckle.
The carpenter's need to please is evident again, as is Altha's disdain for commoners not in the military. We also learn something else of the carpenter’s appearance, and are filled in on 'off-screen' progress that has been made since the last chapter.
“Good.” Altha waved them on and they scurried off, scooting around a grinning soldier as he emerged from one Nightrider’s three red tents.
Although satisfied, Altha doesn't compliment or congratulate, because he expects to get what he wants. The carpenters scurry and scoot, showing an awkwardness brought on by the need to please Altha. The three red tents then paint a clearer image of the scene.
