In this week’s episode, Crys and JP talk all about writing memorable characters. They discuss side characters, main characters, and their methods to creating both.
Show Notes
8 Steps to Side Characters: How to Craft Supporting Roles with Intention, Purpose, and Power by Sacha Black
How to Write Manga: Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Paterson
Story or Die by Lisa Cron
Transcript
Crys: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Write Away Podcast. It is August 5th, 2021, as we are recording this. I am Crys Cain with my cohost
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: How’s it going, JP?
JP: Oh, it is going fantastic.
Crys: Yeah. Like this is week two or three of hotel life?
JP: In a row, this is week two. I think I’ve been at this location a total of six weeks. But I’m done. I’m done this week. Yeah. Then I have somewhere else I need to go in a month and a half, but whatever I’m almost done here. So that will be fun.
But yeah, let’s see, this week, I think last week I mentioned that it was going well, but then the last couple of days writing was dragging because I was basically doing writing in the morning and the evening, and I was giving myself like no time to recoup.
So I calmed myself down a little bit, which was great. And then I actually wrote down the list of things that I wanted to complete because I have now expanded to a lot of things that I want to do. And that has helped me focus a little bit more. So this week has been going well. I’ve been progressing along in editing land. So it’s fun.
How about you?
Crys: I’ve been getting writing done on the romance. My co-writer has had some personal setback. She hasn’t been able to get to the work, so it’s extending. We’d hoped to be done by today, we need to be done in about four or five days. I know that when she gets under deadline though, she crank stuff out. So I’m just keeping on.
And most of my time at eight hour plus days has been working on the van. And yesterday my mom gave me her old Fitbit, and in the afternoon I had 6,000 steps because I put it on at one o’clock in the afternoon and had 6,400 steps in. And now we can compete in steps, JP.
JP: Don’t tell me that cause I’ll compete.
Crys: I know you will.
And the van, she’s ready. There’s still a few things we need to fix, like minor things and major things. There’s something going on with the solar/battery system that I’m just going to have to negotiate on the road. And we do have other power options to save our butts as we go. But yeah, today we pack and put stuff in her and take off this afternoon.
JP: Yeah. And then I get to see you soon.
Crys: Yes. Friday or Saturday. Let’s begin! Oh, no, I guess the summer of JP and Crys has already began because we saw each other last month, we will see each other this month, and then again for the next two months.
JP: Yeah, I can’t wait. I’m just going to party.
Crys: Yeah. Like we party, very calmly with much nerdiness.
JP: Very accurate. Party as in we will sit there and let everyone else go crazy while we just chill.
Crys: Yes. I want to say congratulations to our dear friend Sacha Black, whose latest book on writing came out this week. And it is what inspired this week’s topic which is: How Do You Make Memorable Characters. And Sacha’s book, which we’ll have in the show notes is, 8 Steps To Side Characters: How to Craft Supporting Roles with Intention, Purpose, and Power. One of the fun things I got to do this week is do an Instagram Live with Sacha, where we talked about how I write characters. And JP of course, as the supportive friend, popped in and was like, Hey, maybe we should do an episode since our brains are already rolling on characters is excellent.
I like this. JP, how do you create memorable characters?
Where do you want to start?
JP: So I think for me, and you’ve mentioned this before, so I think we both have this and it’s in our minds. But when I create characters, I always start with what was their story before they ran into the main protagonist or before the storyline. Because I want to know that these characters existed before the book.
And so I will do everything I can to be like, what was the moment in their history, whether it’s happened yet or will happen, that has been a defining moment for them and try to make it as distant from the main story as I can, just tell myself that they lived a life before the character. I think that’s like for me mentally, that’s how I can prepare myself for at least secondary and tertiary characters.
It becomes a little bit more difficult when you’re talking about like fourth, like one-off scene characters, trying to give them a life. But I still think that the biggest thing for me is they had a life before they showed up on the page. So just know what that is, and that makes them more memorable to me.
How about you?
Crys: Are we particularly talking about side characters or all characters?
JP: I think all characters. So even then, even with the main character, like they lived a life before chapter one. And they either will or won’t live a life at the end of the book. But knowing that this is just a snapshot is important to me to make sure that all characters are flushed out.
Crys: I start with relationships.
So I, it’s interesting, for some people the character name comes very early on and that defines for them what and who the character is. And that’s secondary or even tertiary for me. When I started figuring out my fantasy characters, I started with the characters. And this will cross over a little bit into how I generate story ideas as well, because the characters are where I often start.
And I wrote down all the kinds of stories and relationships I really liked exploring and brainstormed, had a bunch of notes, and then I figured out who my core team was. And I wrote down just titles and my original group of characters that I thought I was going to write about. But the princess, and street rat, bodyguard, the rogue.
And I write notes about how I think those roles might interact. And then I get into my main character and figure out what it is they want, who they are. The order I figure things out in differs, but the main thing that is important to me, and this is something we’ve talked about a lot, is figuring out that lie they believe or their emotional wound. Once I know that, then I basically know what directions I want to take that character, no matter what external events happen. And then everyone who is close to her, either as a friend or as an antagonist, then is going to reflect some aspect of that for her. And as far as memorable, so it’s important to me to have the emotional or the lie that they believe for every character who matters. And matters is a wibbly wobbly word. But I don’t necessarily need all of her siblings lies. But even if her dad only appears in the first, I dunno, five chapters of a book, he might, depending on the influence it has to her.
So how memorable the characters have to be, depend on how important they are to my main character for me.
JP: That makes a ton of sense.
Crys: And then memorable. Yes. They have to absolutely have something important to them outside of the main character. Otherwise they are just pawns because we connect with characters who love something.
One of the things that makes them memorable is that they have something that they are both known to love that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with their profession or the things they need to do. If there’s just something that they love outside of all that, that everybody knows they love. And then they have a secret thing that they like to do.
And it may not even be like that they try to keep it a secret. It’s unknown. It’s not necessarily a secret, it’s unknown. Another thing they love to do. And so like my body guard character, it is known that he likes to fight, train, compete. They know that if they want to get him going, they challenge him to a competition. That gives your characters ways to interact with him.
And also our characters, they’re like, oh, I know what that characters gonna do, because they know that he loves this. Unknown is he likes gardening and smoking of his own garden. And that’s another memorable thing. It’s somewhat unexpected. And so when people find out, a bright spot of an unknown something.
JP: And I think in my co-writer piece, our main three group character, like our main group of characters, we have established like the brainiac of the group. So every time they run into a conundrum it’s known that this one character is likely the one that’s going to think out the plan, who’s going to overthink the plan even because he’s anxious about having to do anything that may cause him harm or may cause others harm.
Then we have a brutish character, meaning she will just butt heads with everyone that she potentially can do, because she just is very confrontational. And that’s just her personality. As long as they’re like true to that character piece that makes them very memorable on the page. Because like, whenever an event happens, you’re like, oh, I know who’s going to approach it in this method. Oh, I’m thinking this character is going to do this. And then they either play through with it or they support your expectation. But they still follow that character note, that character personality.
So I think that’s another thing too, is like establishing a list of things that they will and won’t do when they hit certain situations and just knowing to stay true to that. I feel like if you make a character that will basically do everything across the board and doesn’t have these kinds of like pinch points or moments where they’re not willing to do something, regardless of if you need them to do it for a scene, you’re going to have a slider character because you need to have those dynamics in place.
Crys: Yeah. I was thinking of like the subverting expectations element and I think often that will tie into whatever the emotional wound is, but not necessarily. The character idea that popped into my head was a woman who is very antagonistic towards men.
Everyone knows that if a man disagrees with her or gets snippy, she will cut him down. But her weakness is single fathers who love their kids because her dad was the only man that she ever thought was worth anything. He took care of her. And so there’s a single dad who loves his kid and he gets snippy and defensive for his kid, she’s on his side, 100 percent.
JP: Yeah. And flushing that out on the page, that may look like this character is not fitting to their normal MO, but then you learn about why that one piece is carved out and makes them unique, makes them special. And that just makes it all the more memorable, because then you’re like, oh, I know this person even deeper because they have these three dimensions to them that doesn’t make them always what I expect.
Crys: Absolutely. One of the things Sacha asked me in our Instagram Live was, what’s one tip you have for creating a better side characters? And prepared, she sends out the questions ahead of time so that we have time to think about them, and I was really glad she did that because this wasn’t something that I realized consciously was an opinion I had. But particularly with side characters, but all characters, they need to have an opinion about the other characters that they’re interacting with. How this works with side characters is they always need to have an opinion about your main character or the things your main character is doing.
They may not know them well enough to have an opinion about person, but they may have an opinion about whatever actions are causing them to interact on the page. Even your nameless signposts. And what I mean by signposts is someone who is supposed to say, oh, “the thief went that way.” If you only have a person, a nameless person, whose job is to go, “the thief went that way,” you’re losing an opportunity to deepen the reader’s view of your main character. If they have the least bit of opinion, like either like you’re a crazy person or you’re scary or whatever, that adds to the view of your main character. And you can do that in one to two sentences, never mention a name, and embrace that opportunity to deepen your character instead of just having a sign.
JP: Yeah, no, I love that idea. Because when I listened to that on the Instagram Live, I was like, that’s perfect. Because if you have enough reason to add a person to your narrative, they should have an opinion about the main character that is going through the story, just because it adds more depth to them, regardless of if they show up for two seconds.
I also really like, we’ve talked about this before, but mirrors as a reference for how to write side characters or supporting cast, or even an opposing cast, and the concept that each character reflects the main character in some way or another. A reflection of a good characteristic or like an opposing or a subversion of one of their characteristics.
So what I mean by this is like your best friend character can basically be an example of your main character if they had gone a different path, but a positive path so that you can still see that positive reflection in them. And then their villains can be the opposing.
So if they went a different choice, made a different path. And I just really like the concept of thinking about it in terms of mirrors. And that almost reflects real life in one way or another, because the friends that we make tend to have a lot of the characteristics that we have, like you and I, we have a lot of the same characteristics, but we’re both very different people.
And so I think viewing your narrative in terms of mirrors also is very reflective of like how we, as people, garner our friendships and how we also find antagonists.
Crys: Yeah, just thinking, using us as character examples, clearly we both love writing. We’re really invested in diversity and representation, and we’re both from the US, but you have higher values of stability than I do.
And that changes so much in our daily lives and the choices we make.
JP: Yeah. Although I do enjoy that you are just everywhere.
I think sure, I have that stability aspect, but you have this aspect of adventuring that is something that like I strive or want to have. And so I’d like to live vicariously through you. And then there’s also just a modem success, because when we did our first interview and we talked about how you basically went from homeless to writing, like I could never imagine doing that, but you did. And that just makes me realize that there are other things that people can do and it wakens up or moves a piece of me to be like, Ooh, I can attempt to do that. So it’s a way that your characteristics, I can internalize and try to change who I am as a person, which is exactly what characters do in novels.
And it’s exactly what people do in life. So, perfect. Yeah.
Crys: In turn, I pick your brain on stability systems and we incorporate them into our lives in the way they make sense for us.
I do you want to circle back to the, every character needs an opinion, and say that this works even for groups. Now, not every individual in a group needs to have an opinion, but the group often forms as a global kind of character. I’m particularly thinking crowds, mobs, all this, everyone watching a baseball game stadium. The crowd could stand in as a global character, or you can have two groups, two crowds within a crowd that are opposing. You don’t have to have every individual of thousands have an opinion.
JP: Yeah, I think it has to be that sort of dynamic way of approaching it because it depends on what your character is because I think a character can be a mob of people and not the individuals. So definitely a good thing to note.
Crys: And I’d be really interested if there’s any writers out there who really view their setting as a character as well. How you negotiate the settings relationships with your characters?
Cause my setting and descriptions are pretty weak. That’s something that I have to hit on a pass through a second or third time. But I know that some people that’s one of their strengths.
JP: That’s a fun way to think of it. Cause I know that when I write setting is very important for the atmosphere I want to tell. And I sometimes give it life in the sense of it being a character, but I’ve never really considered it like character in that terms. So I might incorporate that.
Crys: But your tarot short story, I think if you gave it a future pass and said, okay, the castle is a character, what does that change? That would be fascinating.
The other thing I wanted to hit up as far as these elements of relationships between characters and the importance between main characters and supporting characters or antagonists characters, is that all of these things work when you have a large cast, where you have several main characters. It’s simply whoever the main character is in the scene or the section that you are writing becomes the main character for these relationships.
So you might have someone who is like the main character over the entire series. I’m thinking of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time where Rand al Thor is the main character, but all of the people in his group are the main characters at different times in the story. And so at those points, Rand al Thor sometimes becomes the supporting character and he has opinions about those characters. It all meshes together in those kinds of stories, but you don’t have to be like stressing out about who’s the main character, but the scene is about this person, he doesn’t even appear. That’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on your main character.
JP: I think that’s also, it’s a really long series, so anyone that’s listening, but it’s a really good example too, because there are a few chapters with some of the other cast as they are hundreds of miles away from the main character. And they definitely have opinions about that main character. And you get to see that on the page and you get to see them either talking about the main character or explicitly doing their own thing, because they are their own fleshed out characters and they need to perform their own tasks. And so I think it’s a really good example because even if you don’t write those scenes where those characters are at the forefront of the scene, I think it’s a good example as a novel to see that characters can be doing other things that aren’t always in proximity to your main character and just having that in mind. Because they definitely will touch on other characters doing other things and pieces getting shifted on the chess board as they continue down their journey.
Crys: I do want to touch briefly on, because this came to my mind as we were talking about these super large character cast, characters who don’t have strong opinions. And Merry and Pippin come to mind from Lord of the Rings.
I would say that they don’t particularly have strong opinions about much, but they do have opinions. They express them in emotions. They love Frodo. They love Sam. They are slightly terrified of Gandalf, but most of the time, they’re like, he’s going to save us. They have an opinion about what he does. Like he saves people, he protects us, until they get a little scared, and I think they’re a little scared of him in general. Terrifying, but cool. And so you don’t have to have like a super deep opinion from your side characters to your main characters for their relationship to both be deep and memorable.
JP: Yeah, I think those characters are very carefree in their approach to life. And to also they’re very malleable in their opinions, which I think is another important thing is you can have a strong opinion about something, but every time that something brushes up against that opinion, you’re either going to double down on that opinion or you’re going to loosen up on that opinion.
So you may have like at the start of a novel, I may be a side character that absolutely hates the main character, thinks they’re a jerk, thinks they’re the worst person in the world. And as the story progresses and the more that I’m in each scene, I may see that main character is doing things, they’re changing their character, and my opinion about them is going to be a conflict every time that I’m in that scene, every time that I’m seeing this character grow. And my opinion may be 180 degrees different by the end of the story.
Crys: Yeah, I think about their connection to Frodo. And at the beginning, they’re like, he’s one of us. And then they’re like, oh, he’s maybe a little different. And also he’s important. And then you wrap around to the end and they are still holding onto this idea, he’s one of us. Until, and I’m sorry if I spoiled Lord of the Rings for you, this is your own fault. When Frodo goes to leave on the ship, that is when their belief that he is the same as them is challenged and changed.
And we feel that so much more because it is a deep opinion that they’re not aware of. Maybe it’s more that they’re not aware of their opinions. And because of the depth and the consistency that particular belief they had or opinion they had goes throughout the entire series until the very end makes that goodbye very memorable, and the growth they have all gone through very memorable.
JP: Yeah. And if you take that in contrast to the relationship of Frodo and Sam, their opinions of each other kind of grow quickly. Sam sees what Frodo is struggling and going through. He is way closer to him, so he can see how he has changed as a person.
But you have Merry and Pippin who almost reflect this old world throughout the piece, throughout the works and they still hold onto this belief about Frodo as his original state. And it isn’t until they have to confront the fact that it’s basically like death until they meet, they see Frodo basically dying, is the moment that they then have to change their opinion because he’s not the same person.
Crys: Yeah. And I feel like we’re going a little off in the weeds, but it’s so fun to have these discussions. So you’re going to have to put up with us. I just had this thought that it’s really interesting that, because I feel like besides being the steadfast stalwart character who never shifts in his loyalty, versus Frodo, who’s constantly plagued by indecision and questions of rightness and wrongness.
Samwise knows what he’s about. He knows what he’s going to do. Really strong mirror there. And Frodo is never meant to become Samwise, but he learns through him. And Sam is the oldest and Frodo’s the youngest. And I think that what we see a lot through their journey together is Frodo being the youngest and being selfish and immature, even though he is saddled with responsibility.
But he takes it on in a naive way. I think all hobbits are naive in the beginning and they lose that naivety. But Samwise just has this belief that if he believes hard enough, long enough, and supports, that things will get back to normal somehow. And that notion is disabused somewhat when they get back to the Shire and everything’s a mess, but I think it’s really hard for him when they get to the end and he realizes that nothing he could do could save everything.
JP: Yeah, he was very much in the caregiver role. And so thinking about depressing, sad things, it’s basically like a hospice nurse at the end of the story. Like he’s not there to change the outcome. He was just there to support as much as he could and to learn from what was to come.
Crys: Oh, it’s been 16 years since I’ve had a good Tolkien dig in. We’d stimulate this endlessly in high school. Good stuff.
Anything else that we’ve forgotten that you’d like to add? We didn’t go into quirks. We didn’t go into any of that. If you read Sacha’s book, or listen to any of her Instagram Lives, where she starts is with the quirk. But it’s her fascination with the odd thing that person does that makes her fall in love with them. That’s where Sacha starts. So I definitely recommend checking the book out and seeing another perspective.
For me, it’s all about the relationship. Like how do they interact with each other? And the relationships make the characters memorable. Because for me, someone in isolation is rarely interesting.
Not never, but rarely.
JP: Yeah. And it’s funny that you mentioned that because I think that’s where my coauthor starts is with quirks and mannerisms. And then I think I go the route of what was their life before. And then for me, another big one is like their voice, because like I have to hear them what they sound like in my head, which sounds crazy, but I know a lot of other people do it. So whatever. But it’s just imagining what their dialogue looks like, imagining how they sound, because those two characters that I had mentioned before in my supporting cast, the knowledgeable one is also just a very small framed person, very mousy in one sense or another. So they may not speak up all the time, but when they do it’s important.
And then for the other character, like she’s very brutish. So she’s going to have some punchy words to say. She’s probably going to swear more. But it’s thinking about those dialogue pieces that really get me attached to the character and let me know the direction that they’re going to go.
Crys: Yeah. I’m going to go write now. That’s the hallmark of a good craft discussion is it makes you want to go write.
What is our question for our listeners this week? What is it that interests them? What’s the spark for their characters? How do they get started? And how do they create memorability? But I really want to know what sparks the character for you.
Thank you so much for joining us this week. Next week will be our book club episode. We are discussing How to Write Manga: Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Paterson. Our next book club, which we will be recording September 8th. Oh, my birthday! Will be Story or Die by Lisa Cron.
So if you would like to join us for the live discussion, you can join our Patreon, which we’ll link in the show notes. As well as get access to all of our extra episodes, including our Year of Tarot, where we prepare for each month with the tarot spread we did at the beginning of the year. Thank you so much for joining us this week.
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