Minor Characters You Can't Stop Thinking About

[anthrodisiac]

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. Despite that, a lot of the time they're given very little thought as the story progresses to more important things, and more impactful events and characters come into focus. However, sometimes these minor characters are so interesting that you want to chase them down and learn as much as you can about them.

I have one like that at the moment from a chapter of my current series. For being a few hundreds words, she came to life so vividly that I think about her more than some of my more important side characters:

A lone raccoon sat a couple spots over, wearing a sleeveless black crop top and dark, high-waisted jeans with a small crossbody bag across her ample chest. Her cream-and-black ringed tail curled around her wide hips, her plush fur giving her a bit of a curvy, huggable, shapely figure. She had a glass of dark beer in one hand, swiping on her phone in the other, looking bored.

I strolled over to the woman, taking the seat beside her. Her gaze flicked my way for a second, dark eyes glittering within the black mask of fur on her face. “Hey there.”

“‘Sup, hume?” She controlled scrolling on her phone, but her tail uncoiled, flicking behind her.

“What’re you drinking?” I figured it’d be a good placeholder while my brain scrambled to find some way to seem interesting and not at all anxious as all get out.

“Chocolate stout.” She set down her phone and turned toward me, nose twitching as she appraised me. “So, what’s up?”

“Oh, you know, just figured I’d, um, talk to you?” I kicked myself for making it a question.

“We’re talkin’.” She leaned forward a bit and whispered, “What’re we talkin’ ‘bout?” Her tail caressed my leg as she leaned in, her hand briefly brushing my knee before she pulled back and tapped at her phone, seeming to lose interest.

“You, uh, I like your outfit.” At least I didn’t make it a question this time. But she was giving me majorly conflicting signals, and quite frankly, I sucked at this whole thing, so I really wasn’t able to come up with much better.

“Look, hume, why don’cha just lay out where this is goin’, hmm?” A note of irritation crept into her voice, but tinged with amusement as she turned back toward me, taking a sip of her beer. “You wondering if I’m DTF?”

Before I could answer, she held out a paw, waving me off. “Flirt game sucks, hume. Game over. Weo-weo-weo-whah-whah,” she said, making the Pac-man death noise. “Come back when you got more quarters.”

Do you have any minor characters, either in your own work or someone else's, that you think about a lot and want to learn more about them?

 

[THBGato]

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

 

[NuclearFairy]

I might've written a string of short stories about one of them. O.O

And have other short story ideas in mind for others.

 

[MrPixel]

Minor characters? I thought we weren't allowed to write about anybody under 18. I guess 19- and 20-year-olds are still minors.

With that over with...

I can think of a couple of minor characters who started out ancillary to the core but became featured, one so prominent that the currently final chapter of the series is all about her (mis)adventures. It's one of my top-10 rated stories.

 

[IsenRae]

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. Despite that, a lot of the time they're given very little thought as the story progresses to more important things, and more impactful events and characters come into focus. However, sometimes these minor characters are so interesting that you want to chase them down and learn as much as you can about them.

I have one like that at the moment from a chapter of my current series. For being a few hundreds words, she came to life so vividly that I think about her more than some of my more important side characters:



Do you have any minor characters, either in your own work or someone else's, that you think about a lot and want to learn more about them?

I love this!

As a reader I love when minor characters feel like they have a life outside the scene. As a writer sometimes I obsess over the minor ones. Occasionally that minor character ends up playing a much bigger role because i just cannot let go.

 

[BeechLeaf]

One of mine (in my main writing, not on this site) suddenly appeared after many years. She was just a throwaway - a tattooist who attended to my main character in an intimate place. My character thought about that in later years, wondered whether the experience had ever affected her. Fast forward about ten tears and this throwaway character had moved nearby, walking in the same park... Hullo, don't I know you from somewhere? They've now become close friends, and I haven't yet caught up with writing that, I'm just thinking it.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Minor characters? I thought we weren't allow to write about anybody under 18. I guess 19- and 20-year-olds are still minors.

I was wondering who would make that joke first. Congrats! Gold star

 

[TheLobster]

What is this? Sir, some of us write porn, and we’re already too hard-pressed to flesh out even the major characters to think about the minor ones!

 

[anthrodisiac]

What is this? Sir, some of us write porn, and we’re already too hard-pressed to flesh out even the major characters to think about the minor ones!

It's madness, I tell you, madness!

 

[BeechLeaf]

Heh heh... hard pressed... flesh out...

When I'm lying alone in my bed, I can think of so much explicit and naughty contact between Anna and Isabel.

But when I try to turn it into narrative consistent with my canon, it is much harder. Minor character Isabel could become friendly with Anna, but I have to flesh her out, give her time to think, wonder what Isabel's been doing in the recent years. (I know of a recent failed marriage, but that's not enough to show what's she's now capable of.) Anna's just lost her major relationship and is looking for someone new, but Isabel's straight, but could this be...? I have no idea what will happen. I don't know how to push things forward. But this is really a very minor character suddenly becoming potentially a star player. I don't know!!

(The electric charge between me and Anna is very strong. I can't just get into her head. She is not accommodating, she does not let me in.)

 

[ElectricBlue]

Do you have any minor characters, either in your own work or someone else's, that you think about a lot and want to learn more about them?

My minor characters in stories regularly get stories of their own.

I've occasionally gone looking for some sort of visualising software, to draw an interconnect diagram of the way all of my stories join up. There wouldn't be many that stand completely alone, by themselves.

On of my vaguely aspirational things to do, is to put all of the women my Adam character meets, as my most bedded MC, all together in one room, and somehow try to write the outcome.

I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do that, though, because that would be one hell of a lot of oestrogen in one place. Even contemplating the dynamics is scary. I'm seeing the daggers in their eyes already, as they check out each other, their looks, their figures, where they fit into the whole scheme of things.

"Wait, what, he likes small titted blondes?"

Bobbie looked at Ruby's statuesque figure and her raven black hair. She grinned. "Yah. And I can see there's a lot to like about you!"

Over in a corner, Antony started chatting to Jesse. "Thank god you're here. I thought I'd be the only guy."

 

[ElectricBlue]

But when I try to turn it into narrative consistent with my canon, it is much harder. Minor character Isabel could become friendly with Anna, but I have to flesh her out, give her time to think, wonder what Isabel's been doing in the recent years. (I know of a recent failed marriage, but that's not enough to show what's she's now capable of.) Anna's just lost her major relationship and is looking for someone new, but Isabel's straight, but could this be...? I have no idea what will happen. I don't know how to push things forward. But this is really a very minor character suddenly becoming potentially a star player. I don't know!!

(The electric charge between me and Anna is very strong. I can't just get into her head. She is not accommodating, she does not let me in.)

My advice, don't sweat the back story, you don't need that to make a new story work.

I dealt with this in a story, swiftly:

She'd toy with me and I'd indulge her, and so we got on. We were at the point where we'd take turns texting or phoning Lizzie at the café to put out the reservation sign on our table, once or twice a week, or once every week or two. We were never regular, busy lives and all that. I didn't ask Ruby about her life, she didn't ask me about mine.

Problem solved.

Lizzie, incidentally, got her own chapter. She's a side character in the first two Adam and Ruby chapters, then fronts the third chapter as the female lead.

 

[anthrodisiac]

But when I try to turn it into narrative consistent with my canon, it is much harder. Minor character Isabel could become friendly with Anna, but I have to flesh her out, give her time to think, wonder what Isabel's been doing in the recent years. (I know of a recent failed marriage, but that's not enough to show what's she's now capable of.) Anna's just lost her major relationship and is looking for someone new, but Isabel's straight, but could this be...? I have no idea what will happen. I don't know how to push things forward. But this is really a very minor character suddenly becoming potentially a star player. I don't know!!

(The electric charge between me and Anna is very strong. I can't just get into her head. She is not accommodating, she does not let me in.)

@ElectricBlue gave you some solid advice on how to handle this. Another way you can approach it is by writing snippets of just Isabel by herself to help you get into her head a bit more. Not necessarily doing anything crazy, you can try slice of life stuff. Since you can imagine her and Anna together pretty easily, see if you can't write some scenes where Isabel notices something that indicates she might be into women.

You can also just write the scene with her and Anna, not worrying about backstory or how they got there, just write the scene. From there, you have it established and written down and you can build out from there, figuring out how they got there.

 

[NotWise]

I have one side character that makes me think about her: DeeDee Durant in No Brand on My Pony.

She's an older confidant of the female protagonist. I've often wanted to write her story, but I feel like it would be tragic.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You can also just write the scene with her and Anna, not worrying about backstory or how they got there, just write the scene. From there, you have it established and written down and you can build out from there, figuring out how they got there.

Or, just write where they're going. How they got where where they are doesn't really matter, it's what goes forward, that counts.

When you meet someone new, do you get their whole back story? No, you don't. It arrives in bits and pieces, only where it's relevant, and only if you ask.

I reckon people get too hung up on things being sequential, as if there's only one outcome. Any one of my stories could be a sliding door (a movie reference which is probably meaningless to a bunch of the young uns here), where there's a completely different story, waiting to be told.

I suspect I'm waiting for my next story to arrive, having just finished one - a little longer than my more recent pieces, but written quickly. I'm also in the change of season, and waiting for the world outside to get on with it.

 

[FrancesScott]

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.

 

[Zootonius]

In my Professor Aunt series, I introduced a mother and son who were in an already established incestuous relationship. I became so fascinated myself in what was a casual yet shocking relationship that I wrote one offshoot about them. I regret not developing them further.

 

[Statius]

I am currently working on a stand alone story of two minor walk on characters from my Analea series, beyond that I've thought a great deal about others from other stories I've written and how their 'lives' may have shaken out, but the likely hood of those being written are nil.

I knew almost from the moment I created the second of these minor walk on characters that they'd do well in a story of their own, so it's most satisfying bringing that together and watching how they interact together, quite fun.

 

[ElectricBlue]

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.

All the more reason to do it.

One of my most successful stories here was written about a woman with paraplegia, who meets an able bodied man. The latter was based on me, the former, completely from my imagination. That's not wholly true - she shared the same building as me, and we were often in the same lift down to the street. The description at the beginning is of her, but other than that inspiration, Amelia is a fictional character, and one of my best.

Someone wrote this:

Gorgeous
by Anonymous user on 03/11/2016
I am a wheelchair user. You have a great sense of what it means. She is beautifully seen, strong and vulnerable. I have never thought to include my disability in my writing, but you inspire me to. I will write and post. Thank you.

As a writer, that's when I knew I'd "arrived".

Do some homework so you don't get something basic fundamentally wrong, but other than that, you already know how to write living breathing people.

 

[FrancesScott]

All the more reason to do it.

One of my most successful stories here was written about a woman with paraplegia, who meets an able bodied man. The latter was based on me, the former, completely from my imagination. That's not wholly true - she shared the same building as me, and we were often in the same lift down to the street. The description at the beginning is of her, but other than that inspiration, Amelia is a fictional character, and one of my best.

Someone wrote this:

As a writer, that's when I knew I'd "arrived".

Do some homework so you don't get something basic fundamentally wrong, but other than that, you already know how to write living breathing people.

I will think about this. I appreciate the encouragement, thank you.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I can't think of any. My major characters steal the show.

Unless we're talking about the pirate captain of my D&D campaign, because my whole group agrees she's the real protagonist of the game.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Many of my minor characters end up with their own stories or barge into another one.

It's like a huge soap opera in my head, I tell you.

 

[Two21B]

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

No cap.

 

[alohadave]

Minor characters? I thought we weren't allowed to write about anybody under 18. I guess 19- and 20-year-olds are still minors.

Miners not minors.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Miners not minors.

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?