On Writing: Minor and Background Characters

[anthrodisiac]

We already had a characters and characterisation thread, but I think this is a specific-enough topic to deserve its own thread.

In most stories, we have the main characters and recurring side characters, but what of the random dude who shows up outside a bistro, who is there to compliment the MC's ass? Or what of the one-night stand, who gets a bit more play, but is ne'er seen again after their scene? Fleeting characters, one-and-dones, blips, set pieces, some other really creative and cool names that you can pretend I added after that.

What are your approaches to these characters? Do you put a lot of thought into them, give them names, come up with backstories, whole lives, dreams that the reader will never see? Or do you dash them upon the page and let them be the utility or plot device they were created to be? How much description is warranted for a minor character, for a background character? How do you decide when to use them and how much play they get in the scene? These are but a few questions to kick us off, but as with all of these On Writing threads, feel free to discuss whatever aspects of the topic you want.

 

[Jada59]

I don’t generally give names to random people. I will usually describe them though.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Personally, I usually put a decent amount of thought into almost every character who shows up, even Unnamed Man with Dog Sitting on Bench Stunned That There's a Fox Succubus Petting His Dog. I've especially been doing this with the one-off characters who show up in my current series, which is a series of hookups and one-night stands. I've added little details, something the MC notices at their house, or a line they say that hints at some larger thread that never gets pulled. Basically, I'm adding depth to the characters by instilling in the reader questions about them and hinting at larger aspects of their lives: the red panda who's working on a script, the polar bear who has kids, but curiously no pictures of a partner, the Tasmanian devil who can't have kids, and shows a flash of pain when the subject comes up, pain quickly hidden from the MC. It adds extra dimensions without having to put in a lot of extra work going into their backstories and boring the reader with unneeded details.

I'm also doing it because I want to show that every person is a world unto themselves; strangers we meet have whole lives beyond this tangential point in time where their world intersects with ours. The MC is a blip on their journey just as much as they're a blip on his. So it's not just "ferocious Tassie devil with a breeding kink," it's ferocious Tassie devil with a breeding kink and a fairly devastating backstory, hinted at by a terse response and an oversized t-shirt she wears for a school she didn't go to. Strangers are people, too, something I think we tend to forget as we interact with faceless words on a screen, or social media posts, or silly person doing a dumb video, and this is just my way of trying to show that.

I try to take a similar approach with most of my characters when I can and it doesn't make the scene cumbersome. I put a lot of thought into who these people are, as that helps shape their reactions, even if it means I have tons and tons of backstory that will never be known by another person and perhaps creates extra work for myself, but I think it helps give these one-offs a bit more depth and a sense of personhood than if I kept their appearance in the story as strict utility.

 

[TheLobster]

We already had a characters and characterisation thread, but I think this is a specific-enough topic to deserve its own thread.

Nah, minor characters don't deserve their own thread. That's why they're minor!

 

[TheRedChamber]

In the same way that major characters for me start as a collection of reasonable motivations and typical character traits while I'm planning and then get filled out and humanized while I'm typing prose, minor characters start with a basic function (to encourage or hinder or exemplify the MC) but then I try to make them somewhat interesting when writing. I say somewhat because you dont want them overshining the MCs.

In many ways it better to make sure that you have a fully fledged and understood relationship between you MC(s) and a minor character rather than knowing every irrelevant fact about that character.

 

[CalBishForNow]

Minor characters  are allowed in stories here and it's reductive and alarmist to say they aren't. The writer just has to make sure they're hermetically sealed away from anything vaguely sexual. If an adult character has a sexual experience as a minor in their backstory, it must be described in vague terms and either not understood as such by them at the time, or treated as a serious trauma and described in vague terms, lest anyone enjoy reading about it.

 

[BeechLeaf]

I'm afraid there's almost nothing about any character, major or minor, or any location or anything else, that isn't given explicitly in what I write. My encyclopaedia is built up by noting down what I wrote; rarely do I know anything else about them. This sounds like bad policy or bad planning, and I'd like there to be a lot more. A few people have surnames I haven't revealed, or I've got a timeline with their years of birth, graduation, and first job, but in those cases it's usually from trying to fit stated ages and history.

Perhaps I should experiment with world-building for a while, then see if some inspiration from that can get me back into writing.

 

[CalBishForNow]

More seriously, maybe I should be worried about this. I was just seized by inspiration and wrote 600+ words of my favorite WIP, an interlude from the antagonist's perspective. (She'll probably be a post of her own, in a few weeks.) (And 600 words isn't a lot in some sense, but I'm away from home and doing it on my phone, so it's a hassle.)

The antagonist is a major character, but her victim in this scene isn't, or at least, isn't so far, but maybe he should be! I haven't named him yet, but I'll have to at some point, and it'll be a pain to go back later and line his details up with other characters'. Oh well, inspiration is a cruel mistress.

He dies in this scene, but maybe his backstory would be fascinating. Or tragic. He could be the hero of another story in more than one sense, i.e. he's a familiar sympathetic archetype, but he has the bad luck to be a victim putting the protagonist on the antagonist's trail rather than the protagonist himself.

And the other minor characters! The bartender facilitating their interaction, and three hapless day drinkers. The antagonist has already dismissed them as no threat. Or are they? Maybe they should have backstories too? Maybe they will notice something, and the antagonist will have to do something about them too.

Probably not. I have to stop somewhere.

 

[Bazzle]

Minor characters are normally the segue between conversation of your main characters...otherwise its is just two or three people talking at each other for 10,000 words.

You need to catalyst of the important minor characters to spin the story along?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Minor characters or cameos get a paragraph or two in my stuff, sufficient to paint their purpose in the story, but no more. They're often tropes: the pretty waitress, the woman at the table over there who looks up when he walks past. On occasion, they get a story of their own, if they strike a chord, but they're more often quick grace notes, like the wind in the trees or the shadows on the ground.

 

[sijopunk]

What are your approaches to these characters? Do you put a lot of thought into them, give them names, come up with backstories, whole lives, dreams that the reader will never see? Or do you dash them upon the page and let them be the utility or plot device they were created to be? How much description is warranted for a minor character, for a background character?

Maybe not quite that far, but I use the "iceberg technique" of going about 1 level deeper than what comes out on the page. My descriptions tend to be spartan to begin with, and so I've got to know a little bit about the character in order to pick which details to show. Most of them have at least a sentence or two about backstory.

When I have time to spend on a story, I try to imagine that the side character is on their own journey through life when the main characters' story crashes into them. That helps me pick out specific mannerisms or behaviors to include that hopefully paint as much of that picture as I can.

I like to use Quentin Tarantino side characters as the standard I strive for. His side characters tend to be vibrant and memorable. Floyd and his honeybear bong in True Romance. Captain Koons and his watch story in Pulp Fiction. Winston Wolf the fixer in Pulp Fiction.

 

[sirhugs]

I have very few minor characters in my stories.
I pretty much always name them.
I only invent enough backstory (even in my own mind) as their role requires.
I'm not usually big on physical descriptions, having read advice early in my growth that too much specificity may stand between the reader ad their imagining the fantasy that turns them on.

 

[FromManyOne]

Minor characters or cameos get a paragraph or two in my stuff, sufficient to paint their purpose in the story, but no more. They're often tropes: the pretty waitress, the woman at the table over there who looks up when he walks past. On occasion, they get a story of their own, if they strike a chord, but they're more often quick grace notes, like the wind in the trees or the shadows on the ground.

Two of my minor characters got their own starring roles in later stories. Maureen never even got on the page the first time I wrote her. I deleted that small scene from "Pranked". However, I liked my premise in creating her and she got her own duology of novelettes, "Wager" and "Winnings".

Speaking of "Pranked," Rick was a minor character in my first story here, "Coffee with Blushes". After serving my two main characters coffee, he ended up starring in a novella (along with his mom), and then the novel-length Pranked: Barbie.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My current problem is keeping minor characters minor. I've often dropped in some of my recurring universe characters as minor characters in someone else's story, but at the moment each of my minor characters starts trying to get a backstory and plot of their own.

In both cases, a one-sentence summary of the character (looks, personality, relevance to the story) really helps. And a line of dialogue.

 

[gradeajade]

sirhugs is onto something with the reader's imagination. i’d rather leave a silhouette than paint a face and ruin the mystery. sometimes the most distracting detail is a weird mole or a crooked smile. who’s the most memorable “blank” character you’ve read? the one you filled in with your own face?

 

[AG31]

My minor characters are as anonymous as possible. It's somehow important to the story that they have no backstory, only enough personality to accomplish their role of inflicting things on the MC.

 

[deathlynx]

It really depends on the size of the story. For my shorts, there usually aren't very many minor characters. Those that are there get painted in broad strokes because that's usually only what people (the MCs) see of them. The more they interact the more the audience/MCs see of them the more detail.

In my larger works, I take note of absolutely everyone! If it's just a name and a brief description that still goes in the notes file. I never know if I need a couple of random Supers to flesh out a team, or when the MCs are going to remember a favorite barista from back home.

 

[Callum_M]

I often feel my minor characters need to contribute something to the main character’s journey, even if it’s brief. I may write about the main character getting into a cab, but I won’t mention the driver unless they add something. Same with a clerk or a server or anyone.

I recently finished a draft where the two main characters go to a trivia night and I wrote one line for the trivia host. They say the name of the team the two main characters are on which one surprised the other with, and the name is meaningful to them both.

If I can’t find a way for a minor character to add something, I don’t mention them.

 

[Writer61]

Most of my minor characters have a first name and may get a brief description, but I don't spend too much time on any of them.

My private joke is that I have started to use the same name for assorted roles (chauffeurs are James, for example).

 

[BobbyBrandt]

In most of my stories, the dynamics around how a main character interacts and treats subordinate characters is one of the key descriptors of them.

In real life, we often judge people by how they treat others. Why should fictional characters in a story be judged differently?

 

[THBGato]

I feel like I cheated on this. In Forty, I used loads of real people who were active in the Bristol music scene then as my background characters. As they were real, I knew exactly how they sounded and what they would talk like. It's a trick I've often used.

 

[ClintonBrooks]

I rarely have minor characters in my stories. I am working on what may eventually become a book, and it's my first time delving into a minor character with possibly their own subplot. Wait, are they still minor at that point?

 

[FromManyOne]

I rarely have minor characters in my stories. I am working on what may eventually become a book, and it's my first time delving into a minor character with possibly their own subplot. Wait, are they still minor at that point?

I draw a line between a "minor" character (who is part of the story, but not a major focus) and a "spear carrier" (who is more of a prop).

The hostess in the restaurant who looks surprised when Glenda slaps her husband on the butt and he blushes is a spear carrier. The waitress who spontaneously joins Glenda in playfully humiliating Dennis by treating him like a little boy, including bringing a bib and a coloring place mat to the table, but then is never seen again, is a minor character.

Hmm ... now I want to write that story. Stupid plot bunnies.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

I divide mine into 'supporting' characters and minor characters.

The latter I don't worry too much about, maybe a few key physical characteristic that help establish the character (ex. gang tats on a bad guy). For supporting characters, maybe the MC's sister who he has the occasional interaction with, I flush out the background as it relates to the MC.

Frankly, it depends on my mood and the story. All too frequently, the supporting characters kidnap my imagination, and at times end up with their own stories.

More of my stories and series are slowly becoming interconnected because of it. It's a bit of a sickness. Or maybe an opportunity. Time will tell.

 

[Britva415]

I don’t do any exercises or development to flesh out characters, I just have an idea of what kind of person they are such that they serve their role in the story. My idea usually is rich enough that if someone were to ask me questions about them, beyond what I wrote on the page, I would either already know, or, I would be able to very quickly figure out the answer, based on the idea. I may have never considered it before, but, I can pretty easily access the deeper layers of the idea. Call it unconscious or pre-conscious information. It’s stuff which always was part of the idea but I didn’t think about it enough to discover the details of it.