When incidental characters hijack your muse...

[mildlyaroused]

Do other authors sometimes find themselves becoming affectionate towards an incidental character, to the point where you extend their role in your story (or even give them their own story)?

I oftentimes find myself falling in love with an interesting side character, and I end up giving them a larger part to play in my narrative. I think it's a combination of my side characters being eccentric, as well as being a change of pace from the main plot; I feel compelled to tell their stories. I'd love to hear about instances when this has happened to other authors.

Just this morning, I was writing my novel, and I became inspired by a character from the protagonist's past: Edie. Here's a little excerpt (a first draft, mind you).

[omitted]

I can get away with this, because my novels are always meandering affairs. But I think it works most of the time, if it fits the philosophy of your story. Listen to your attention-seeking incidental characters!!

 

[Bramblethorn]

Quite often. I've told this one before, but one of my stories has a concert scene where the protag's friends introduce several of their other friends to her. I had it mind that one of them was going to play a larger role in the story, and for the others I just pulled names out of the air, never expecting to use them again.

Then for various reasons I decided not to go with the one I'd originally had in mind, so I was looking at those other throwaway names. One of them was "Lucy", and I realised I'd already mentioned a significant "Lucy" character in a previous story, with both of those being set in present-day Melbourne.

Not that Melbourne is too small a town to have two different people named Lucy, but the coincidence was annoying me until I entertained the thought of "what if it's the same Lucy?" In the previous story, Lucy had only been mentioned in a negative light - that one begins with the ex mopey and sad because Lucy had broken up with her in order to move to the UK for work. It seemed like an interesting challenge to take the same Lucy and show a different side to her. One thing led to another and she ended up being a major character and love interest.

OTOH, in the same story I had another incidental character develop a strong personality...and then I had to cut them drastically, because the part of the story involving that character just wasn't working. Minor characters are eligible for promotion if they have something to add, but it needs to fit in the story as a whole.

 

[StillStunned]

The Three Aspects, in "One Orgasm At A Time", and particularly Satisfaction. I won't say they hijacked the story, but the definitely stole the show.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Do other authors sometimes find themselves becoming affectionate towards an incidental character, to the point where you extend their role in your story (or even give them their own story)?

I oftentimes find myself falling in love with an interesting side character, and I end up giving them a larger part to play in my narrative. I think it's a combination of my side characters being eccentric, as well as being a change of pace from the main plot; I feel compelled to tell their stories. I'd love to hear about instances when this has happened to other authors.

Just this morning, I was writing my novel, and I became inspired by a character from the protagonist's past: Edie. Here's a little excerpt (a first draft, mind you).

I can get away with this, because my novels are always meandering affairs. But I think it works most of the time, if it fits the philosophy of your story. Listen to your attention-seeking incidental characters!!

I do this all the time.
I don't start with an end point in mind.
I will get inspiration for the start of a story. Maybe as small as an overheard conversation.
As I tap away on the computer, the story, and the characters start to emerge.
There's been a few times where what was supposed to be a walk in role becomes one of the main characters just because I love there evolving role.
Of course it means the story takes a sharp right turn and suddenly I'm writing an entirely different story...
I love bumping into my characters. Finding out about their history and who they are.

Cagivagurl

 

[RejectReality]

Blackhawk Hall was supposed to be a story about Christi and Mindblind. Arilee was just supposed to be a proxy for the reader introducing them.

She took over the whole story.

 

[AchtungNight]

I’ve had to give numerous supporting characters their own stories. It can be fun.

 

[Cagivagurl]

For me, it's letting the characters drive the story....
I am merely the conduit through which they take root and blossom.
There's always a story within the story if you can just find it.
As the characters divulge their true selves. Another layer of the saga gets stripped away and light shines through the glistening waters.
The real protagonists reveal themselves. Heroes become villains, enemies become lovers.
We are really only seeyer's who reveal to readers what we predict.

Cagivagurl

 

[lovecraft68]

I created a character within a series that was only supposed to appear in a stand alone Halloween story featuring the characters visiting a fetish club owned by a reputed witch.

The witch wouldn't leave my head, I was fascinated by her as if she were someone I met in real life and didn't exist in my head. I couldn't help fleshing her out more and more. I brought her back in the finale of the series where she had a very different tone. Going from frolicky sexy witch to dark, powerful, and when need be murderous, character. I told her back story in that finale, but it wasn't enough.

I'm now on book four of an erotic horror series featuring her as the lead.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Do other authors sometimes find themselves becoming affectionate towards an incidental character, to the point where you extend their role in your story (or even give them their own story)?

Constantly.

Amelia and Alex from Rope and Veil have a cameo in The Floating World. The waitress Lizzie from my Adam and Ruby stories gets a story of her own in a Desiderare. Ruby appears in my LA noir Mickey Spillane tribute.

Clio's mother, who gets a tiny part in the autobiographical Memory and Loss, appears in an important scene in the second Amelia chapter, with Clio's daughter (the real Clio had a son).

Characters who appeared suddenly in a story and continue on include Juliette from The Madelyn Chapters, Jilly in The Hyacinth House.

It's fair to say most of my stories have an interconnection with others.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

Early on in my writing I discovered that NPCs develop a life of their own. My third offering (All Of Us Fit In Our Places) was a monster. I started writing about two people mentioned in the other pieces I had written, and then more and more characters started to muscle their way into the narrative. The story sprawled - and then sprawled some more. Eventually I managed to tidy it up enough to get to a conclusion, but it's still nagging at me. I've written the first part of a two-parter that is kind of standalone (but features some of the same characters) and I am struggling to write the second because I have at least 30k words of scenes that sit alongside the story and I don't want to waste them!
I'm crying out for an editor to beat some sense into me (and someone has volunteered) so hopefully I will become more disciplined in future!

 

[Duleigh]

Do other authors sometimes find themselves becoming affectionate towards an incidental character, to the point where you extend their role in your story (or even give them their own story)?

With me it happens all the time. I let it roll because I'm not writing a historical re-creation, or a text book. Most of my books are recorded daydreams. Min Zhong Sun was intended to be a very minor character that was inspired by a friend and she's slowly talking over my MC's business. My MC promised his wife to semi-retire but Min is going to need her own story if she wants a romantic entanglement. She finds out the hard way that her boss is off the market.

 

[Dark_Logan_]

All the time

One of my minor characters was only suppposed to be in one passing chapter following a brief introduction …he’s now at the height of his own story arc/volume with 10 of 12 chapters written

 

[Publius68]

How about when your readers fall in love with or otherwise get obsessed with throwaway characters? Readers can get quite whiny.
My whole sequel series Alistaire Too was entirely a collection of stories about what happened with characters that were just world-building filler in the first series.

 

[KeithD]

I wrote a series of six thrillers, spanning a twenty-five-year period, under contract in the 1990s, starting off with a female American archeologist protagonist on a Mediterranean island. A local police detective entered the first book, becoming what was to be an incidental irritant to her and her boyfriend. They were married in book two and solving mysteries together. By book four they had two children but were divorced. They were back together and married again by book six. He inadvertently had become as much the protagonist in the series as she was.

In the same series, I killed off an incidental character, which enraged my mother to the extent that, in the next book, I had to devise a plausible reason why she hadn't died (but I killed her again at the end of that book). Similarly, there was a cantankerous old Englishman I tried killing several times in the series before he was willing to die.

 

[THBGato]

Oh God yes, all the time.

My longest story yet (Eve & Lucy) grew out of me really liking a side character in Love is a Place. That was totally accidental, as was the fact that one of the main characters in Love is a Place briefly appeared in an earlier story.

Now I'm planning a little more and am seeding my stories with potential future protagonists on the side. I may not write them all, but this way I get to try them out a little and see which ones I like. Thirty, my most recent, had two potential future protagonists among the side characters.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Mine do it all the time. Richie (in my Geek Pride story Conference Collaboration) was meant to be a minor character in I Say Ass...Again, but insisted on getting involved in the Educating Laura series, shagging the protagonist from my Smoking Hot series, and then became the centre of A Tale of Two Christmases.

A mere throwaway name turned into the narrator of Wheelchair Bound?, and that couple ended up in other stories. See profile for more repeated use of characters.

Basically I'm too lazy to make up new characters except when they turn up in my brain. Then I just try to figure out who else they know when and what stories they have to tell.

 

[Bazzle]

I wrote about smoking paradise island. It was meant to be all about this couple and their process of assimilation into a strange smoke filled world. https://literotica.com/s/smoking-paradise-island

The characters I created then needed legs, more depth, so I had to write origins stories. They were just meant to be the person the couple were interacting with. Not a story.

https://literotica.com/s/smoking-paradise-origins-marion
https://literotica.com/s/smoking-paradise-origins-martha
https://literotica.com/s/smoking-paradise-origins-tanya

These characters become more important IN subsequent stories!

Hey ho.

B

 

[intim8]

I'd love to hear about instances when this has happened to other authors.

In my Aces series, which is filled with walk-on women, two really did that for me: Jennifer and Lisa. Unfortunately, aside from one orphaned chapter centering on Jennifer, I haven't (yet?) taken her character where it has the potential to go. On the other hand, Lisa became a central figure in the plot going forward.

Both of them were intended to be merely interesting dalliances for the MC, but they took on life of their own.

At least one commenter asked after Jennifer, hoping she would return.

 

[intim8]

I'm just today pantsing a back story for my hard SF WIP, and one of the characters is starting to do that, literally an hour or two ago. She's fabulously wealthy, has two Masters degrees from this planet's equivalent of MIT and Stanford rolled into one. Exotic physics and 4-D Spacetime Engineering (jump portals and the like). Plus a degree in Pre (Space) Colonial Literature - the lit of our time.

And she brags about being able to suck a golf ball through a garden hose, then explains the mathematics of why that is actually impossible.

I'm just starting to think she is going to make a great antagonist, the "mole" placed in the crew of this upcoming mission to a lost colony.

 

[MelissaBaby]

When I began my series, Mary and Alvin, I set a rule for myself that I would only use the POV of the two title characters, but there was a lot of reader interest in some of the supporting characters, so eventually, I gave that up, and four other characters each took the protagonist role in their own chapters.

Isabel was a supporting character in The Adventures of Ranger Ramona. I really enjoyed writing her, and when another character said "I want to be her when I grow up" it got me wondering, how did this woman become such a wild, eccentric character. So, I wrote a prequel telling her story. It felt like a vanity project for my own enjoyment, but it won a Reader's Choice Award!

 

[Cagivagurl]

I have written series stories with many chapters. Which was more about breaking down the story into readable size.
However, once I am finished with a story it's gone forever.
Characters from past stories never pop up in later different stories.
I never even read them.
Once written and submitted. They're gone.... Never to be seen or heard from again.
But... There's always a but.... When I'm tapping away on the keys... Insignificant characters change...
I think to myself. "Hmmm, I like that, and the character grows, takes a larger role. The story shifts....
It's what I love most about fiction... We can go wherever we want. Say whatever pops into our heads.
It doesn't rely on truth... If we say it, then it's right... Worlds appear where people never live.
Cagivagurl

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Not really, no. Technically the guy in Babylon's Curse is a side character(ish) from a wip I couldn't get moving, but I don't count that.

 

[Ren_eh]

Never having written a story that included the LSA (US Literary Security Agency) or Spiel Marshals, there have been times when some of my supporting characters have hijacked a story. Often forcing the main characters to do things that were not anticipated or in their normative character. But, so far, all of those characters have "enjoyed the crazy ride" . . . at least by the end of the story. So, they were still publishable.

 

[Writer61]

Do other authors sometimes find themselves becoming affectionate towards an incidental character, to the point where you extend their role in your story (or even give them their own story)?

Yes, the latter.

My only completed series is based around a secondary character in an, as yet unpublished, standalone story. The one I am working on at the moment has generated potential leads for two other series, possibly even a third.