Minor Characters You Can't Stop Thinking About

[PennyThompson]

A couple of times!

Brittneigh and Eighmey from Life Drawing for Developing Artists started as throwaway joke characters for one scene, and ended up getting their own silly 750-word romance.

Darlene and Marianne from Vocational Awe started as cynical and burned out foils for the MC, but my beta reader @Nynah pointed out that they were obviously in love with each other, and she was obviously right so I had to go back and flesh them out and give them some emotional closure by the end of the story

 

[Areala-chan]

@Areala-chan when are you writing Beth's spin off?

I haven't been called out like this since middle school.

No cap.

You: detention. Now.

 

[RetroFan]

I'm not sure if its the same thing, but I've often had fun with minor, non-erotic characters in my stories.

As one example in my story 'Cindy's Close Encounter' which is set in 1959 there is an elderly spinster English teacher Miss Thorpe who has been teaching at the town's high school since before the First World War and who rides a tricycle to work every day, the strict disciplinarian making English a dismal experience for generations of the Connecticut town's teens.

She is also a self-appointed moral guardian of the town and gives the school principal - himself a strict, conservative and humourless man who looks like President Eisenhower - a hard time about the apparent lack of morals and standards among young people in 1950s America, worrying that the band might play rock and roll music at the upcoming Halloween dance. She especially worries about music by a certain young man named 'Alvin Priestley', who according to her is a terrible influence on teenagers. She reminds the long-suffering principal that when he was a student at the school she gave him a detention back in 1914 for driving his brother's Model T Ford too fast in the school's parking lot, and is so critical of the principal going to dance halls to dance the Charleston back in the 1920s and for allowing his own daughters to engage in swing-dancing as teenagers in the 1940s that she decides he cannot be trusted to maintain standards, and decides to attend the dance herself to keep a watch for any sin and immorality, despite not being one of the supervising teachers on the night. She also rebuffs the Principal when he attempts to call her by her given name of 'Nancy', snapping that 'familiarity breeds contempt'.

Miss Thorpe meets her end on Halloween night when the aliens abduct her in her flying saucer and take her away to feed their larvae on the Jovian moon Europa, but her disappearance is covered up by authorities who advise that Miss Thorpe went to Santa Barbara at short notice to visit her sister who had been taken ill after a fall, and when she fails to return stating that she chose to remain living in California. The main protagonists uncover the truth by going to the town's cemetery, where it is discovered that Miss Thorpe had only one sister who has been dead since 1903...

I've had fun with other characters like this too, for example Mark's religious zealot mother in my story 'Mandy Makes a Man of Mark' which is set in 1964 is worried about the effect of modern music upon young people, especially a popular group from Liverpool, England called 'The Insects'.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Miners not minors.

Aaaand I was waiting for that one too. Anthy gold star

 

[anthrodisiac]

Pickaxes, sweat, coal, singing, and a lot of sex in the dark underground, whether that is in fantasy or contemporary times with machinery. Muscle mommies are expected here.

Found a plot rabbit hole, everyone! Who wants to join in on the hunt?

Plot Bunny Pens welcomes any and all bunbuns spawned from this endeavour!

Especially if they involve muscle mommies

 

[anthrodisiac]

I created a deaf woman called Hailey as part of my Community Pool anthology series. She was a main character in one story, but it was told from the point of view of a fellow student who was crushing on her (a guy called Logan). Hailey has since appeared in a few other stories as a supporting character.

I’d really like to write an origin story for her, and how she became so sexually confident. And I’d like to do it first person from her perspective. But I find the idea of getting into the head of a deaf person without it being either inaccurate or insensitive desperately challenging.

I agree with @ElectricBlue that doing research is a good idea. Disabilities make you see the world differently (speaking from far more experience than I'd like ), and that's especially true for someone who is blind or deaf. While we're very much like people without disabilities in a lot of ways, there are subtleties that you're right to be wary about. It's perfectly doable though, so please, don't let that stop you

As long as you approach it from a place of empathy and humanism, I have little doubt you can do it. Your autism story was handled wonderfully, so it's clear you already know how to approach non-normative characters with consideration. (Autism's also my people, I'm ecclectic like that ).

 

[anthrodisiac]

I have a couple friends, a shark and a dolphin and I know quite a lot about them. They've for sure hooked up, but now I'm starting to wonder if they're actively dating... Maybe I'm not finished with them yet.

...I'll see myself out.

 

[THBGato]

My entire ouevre is based around the premise of "which minor character hasn't had her own story yet?"

 

[anthrodisiac]

My entire ouevre is based around the premise of "which minor character hasn't had her own story yet?"

I always appreciate authors who have detailed, interconnected worlds, where characters flit between stories, sometimes the focus, sometime on the periphery. It's fun to see a first-person POV MC as a side or minor character in a different story, seeing them in a different light.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I've been creating a fictional world revolving around an uber-toxic alpha-Chad (charming as hell, of course, so he has a harem of women throwing themselves at him) with extensive stories for six of the main minor characters: one (the frame narrator) is a loser dude whose sex life consists entirely of prostitutes; one is asexual but romantically lesbian (loser dude fantasizes about her); two of them are hetero hotties who can't resist hate-fucking each other; the fifth and sixth are a trans woman and her bi lover, happily married.

 

[FrancesScott]

I agree with @ElectricBlue that doing research is a good idea. Disabilities make you see the world differently (speaking from far more experience than I'd like ), and that's especially true for someone who is blind or deaf. While we're very much like people without disabilities in a lot of ways, there are subtleties that you're right to be wary about. It's perfectly doable though, so please, don't let that stop you

As long as you approach it from a place of empathy and humanism, I have little doubt you can do it. Your autism story was handled wonderfully, so it's clear you already know how to approach non-normative characters with consideration. (Autism's also my people, I'm ecclectic like that ).

That’s helpful. Thank you.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Oh yes. From my Group Sex story Lust in Bloom, the housekeeper Cora is bold, lusty BBW from New Orleans. The young MMC was terribly enamored with her and so was I. A spin off with the two of them is a certainty at some point.

 

[SkyBubble]

I love minor characters. I'm of the firm belief that even the most minor characters should be fleshed out and treated as a real person, no matter how brief their appearance — someone who exists outside the scope of the story, with a whole life beyond the interaction.

I agree with you, and another writer here asked to borrow one of my secondary characters for LitCon.

 

[Djmac1031]

I had a minor character in The Seduction Of Darkness that started the story as a nameless redheaded Succubus giving a blowjob to the Dark Lord Asmodeus when the main character, the She-Demon Cozbi, walks in to ask him a favor.

By the end of the story she turned out to be Annej, spy for the Queen Of Hell, Lucy Morningstar.

She goes on to appear again in Between Angels And Demons as a supporting player with an actual character and story arc. Then again. appears in The Devil's Sting as part of an ensemble cast and plays a pretty important part.

I'm currently working on a solo staring role story for her, although it's kinda stalled at the moment.

Oh, and I named her after one of my most popular characters, Jenna from The Jenna Arrangement series.

Annej = Jenna backwards.

 

[Djmac1031]

Miners not minors.

totally heard Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest

 

[crookedletter]

I play a little game with myself where I like to lift characters from one story and place them into others. Not so you'd notice, probably, unless you're looking for it. And even then, some of them are in stories I haven't even finished/published yet.

As an example, there's a bartender in my story Honeybee that is not on the page very long. She doesn't even get a name. But she shows up in an April Fools story I'm working on (that I'm increasingly unlikely to finish in time to actually be in the contest). She's not the main character there either -- though she might get her own story one day. (And she does have a name now.)

I have another story I may or may not post sometime where, when casting about for a female character it occurred to me that Dani, a sort of throwaway character from All Inclusive, might do nicely.

I just wrote a line in a different WIP where the main character gets a text from his friend Zack who, though I don't make it explicit, is in my mind the main character from Honeybee. I ended up cutting a line from Honeybee in which Zack has a memory that involves his friend Adam, the main male character from Days of Summer.

The upshot really is I think of my characters as sort of an expanding casting pool. Individual stories might not have anything to do with each other, but they draw from that same pool. A character might walk into one story and right back out again, having barely played a part, but they live in that world now, and might very well show up again.

It's a fun game. Even if I'm the only one who knows I'm playing it.

 

[old_prof]

I think minor or side characters are some of the most fun. I write mostly novels and novellas now, and my first 21 stories were all in the same series; between that I spend a lot of time developing a wider range of characters.

Like @NuclearFairy, @ElectricBlue and others, side characters make good starting points for their own stories.

In my original series, a side character named Michelle (very minor in the early stories) recounts the phone call she had with her mother when she came out of the closet. The phonecall became the starting point of my novells A New Life, all told from teh mother's viewpoint, who also comes out of the closet, leaving her husband and her comfortable life as a trophy wife.

I now routinely cross-populate stories with minor characters; the divorce lawyer in A New Life also is the divorce lawyer in my romance The Vault. That couple makes a cameo in my first novel Blunt Force Drama, as does Marty, a supporting character in my original series.

I don't know if it counts as a minor character, but there was a very undeveloped MC in a mediocre short story of mine called The Dolls. My novel Friendly Advice became the back story of her and a supporting character in Dolls. It's funny, because those two characters span what I think are my best written and worst written pieces.

Recently, I've wanted to write a story about Lizzie, the girlfriend of Michelle, herself a minor character. I do have an upcoming story planned focused on the two of them, but Lizzie has had a much larger part in my last two stories in that universe. I really like that character. Thinking about it now, I might try to see if I can come up with an interesting story for Eleanor, the best friend of my FMC in my sci-fi novel The Cliff.

 

[Djmac1031]

I now routinely cross-populate stories with minor characters; the divorce lawyer in A New Life also is the divorce lawyer in my romance The Vault. That couple makes a cameo in my first novel Blunt Force Drama, as does Marty, a supporting character in my original series.

oh I do stuff like that all the time. Example, in my Jenna series, she needed an accountant. And I remembered the dad from my Caring For Carrie stories was an accountant.

So she wound up using him, and I took it a step further in that it turns out accountant dad was a friend of Jenna's father and his accountant as well, and that Jenna and Carrie knew each other growing up.

 

[Djmac1031]

Oh and can a location be considered a character?

There's this bar called Sharkey's thats appeared in numerous stories. Many of my characters frequent it.

Ive had this idea in the back of my head that it's more than just a bar, that its some kind of nexus between story worlds and can be in multiple locations at once.

Or maybe it was just a cool name so I use it a lot

 

[anthrodisiac]

Oh and can a location be considered a character?

There's the bar called Sharkey's thats appeared in numerous stories. Many of my characters frequent it.

Ive had this idea in the back of my head that it's more than just a bar, that its some kind of nexus between story worlds and can be in multiple locations at once.

Or maybe it was just a cool name so I use it a lot

Definitely have never done anything like that.

Nope. Not ever. Definitely not several times.

 

[SkyBubble]

She's not exactly minor, but Amanda, a supporting character in my new story, pretty much jumps off the page at you, to the point that someone asked to use her for LitCon.

The receptionist in that story is so "minor" that she started as just a plot device; she developed to the point that I'd hire her. She's efficient, professional, and empathetic. And a very good salesperson.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oh and can a location be considered a character?

There's this bar called Sharkey's thats appeared in numerous stories. Many of my characters frequent it.

Ive had this idea in the back of my head that it's more than just a bar, that its some kind of nexus between story worlds and can be in multiple locations at once.

Or maybe it was just a cool name so I use it a lot

Some of my cafés function like that, both with the waitress or barista and the booth by the window looking out over the square. It's quite obvious to me that they're portals - or partitions, as another author described them, long ago.

There's often a beautiful silver haired older women at the adjacent table who overhears a conversation. She's Alexandra, from my first long shaggy dog story, which moves backwards and forwards in time.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Oh and can a location be considered a character?

There's this bar called Sharkey's thats appeared in numerous stories. Many of my characters frequent it.

Ive had this idea in the back of my head that it's more than just a bar, that its some kind of nexus between story worlds and can be in multiple locations at once.

Or maybe it was just a cool name so I use it a lot

I'm currently doing that with a tech company, that connects two different series I'm working on, both touching technology. Once I decided to use the same company, I started thinking about which characters will interact.

Initially I did it because I hate coming up with company names