Characters in any book express their personalities in their actions, their words, their thoughts, their decisions, and their reactions. The reader – and, often, the writer – gets to know them the same way they’d get to know a new acquaintance.
A real-life new acquaintance, however, arrives in one’s life with a pre-existing life that has shaped their personality, beliefs, ideas, and knowledge. Characters can, and sometimes do, arrive onstage as a completely blank slate. This can happen either because their arrival was completely unexpected and unplanned by the author, or because the author hasn’t given them much thought beyond their function in the plot (Character B6 is going to jostle George in the market, causing George to spill his drink over Janet so that she stalks off in a huff).
When the minor character is pure plot-function – they bump into George’s shoulder, mutter “Sorry,” and hurry on, never to be seen again – the blank slate often works fine. However, if B6 is expected to show up again, or if the author wants the market scene to be a little more interesting by giving B6 an idiosyncratic reaction, B6 needs to become more than a faceless person vanishing into the crowd.
The difficulty is that the author has not any time with this new character. They’ve spent several chapters with George and Janet; they’ve written dialog and actions, possibly even alternated viewpoints. George and Janet have done things and made decisions, however minor. The author has gotten to know them a bit, even if they are not the sort of author who thinks and plans out their characters’ personalities before they start writing. This is not true of Character B6; at most, the author has only the character’s behavior at the market to go on, and there isn’t much of that.
There is no easy, guaranteed Instant Character – Just Add Adjectives (TM), but there are a couple of ways to approach developing a minor character in a hurry. The first is casting them – that is, the author picks a character they like from a favorite movie, TV show, or other novel, and decides B6 is going to be like them. This usually gives the author a pretty good idea what the character’s reaction is going to be: if the author casts C3PO, the fussy Star Wars robot, as B6, then he won’t vanish into the crowd; he’ll stop and make a fussy apology, possibly repeatedly. If the author casts Hamlet, on the other hand, B6 will probably stop and apologize politely, but he’ll be a bit too preoccupied with his own problems. If B6 is played by the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, she’ll stop and yell at George even though it was her fault she ran into him (though B6 probably won’t shout “Off with his head!”).
The main alternative is to consider what B6 could say or do that would make the scene more interesting than a bump-and-run. In this case, stopping to yell at George might be what the author starts with, and then, thinking about what kind of person would be than entitled, comes up with a personality to fit. Or the author might decide to give Janet even more to be angry about, and have B6 take one look at George and start flirting. The trick here is to go straight from “If B6 does this, it will be interesting” to “…so B6 has to be this kind of person, or have that kind of personality, because they have to be the sort of person who would do this particular interesting thing.”
A variation on the above is to have the new character perform an expected behavior in an interesting, atypical, or unusual way. B6 bumps into George, spilling her drink all over Janet, stops short and says “Sorry,” to George, then looks at Janet and shoves a fistful of twenties at her, saying “Here; buy yourself a new dress. You need one.” And then vanishes into the crowd. From B6’s actions, I now know a fair bit about what she’s like, though I don’t yet have a clue as to why she’s like that.
The biggest problem with all of the above solutions is that when a walk-on character like this develops a clear, coherent personality that the author likes (which does not necessarily mean the character is likeable, just that they’ll be interesting and fun to write), they can easily walk off with the entire rest of the plot. In fact, I think I’m going to have the B6 above – I’ve just decided her name is Charmian – hand George a card with her phone number on it before she vanishes into the crowd. She’ll make a much more interesting partner for George than Janet, at least until I figure out whether or not she’s really a villain…
“The biggest problem with all of the above solutions is that when a walk-on character like this develops a clear, coherent personality that the author likes (which does not necessarily mean the character is likeable, just that they’ll be interesting and fun to write), they can easily walk off with the entire rest of the plot.”
Along with that, when they show that much personality, readers may spend the rest of the book expecting them to return, because walk-ons don’t normally get that kind of treatment.
Which doesn’t mean writers shouldn’t do it anyway, they just need to do so while managing readers’ expectations.
I was thinking the same. How to make B6 interesting enough to jazz up the scene without signalling to the reader that B6 is someone important that they should expect to see again is a tricky balance.
That is a bear.
Usually when it happens I give up and have B6 reappear.
There was one time where a character had too much life so I killed him. He died meekly enough but the main character kept remembering him. So I made it a major part of his growing up was learning to stop thinking of this man as a horrible example and start, as a man who had done his best.
Of course, stories where every apparently-throwaway-but-extremely-memorable character or detail eventually shows up again (and turns out to be reasonably plot-important) can be really, really fun to read… That’s the impression I get from many of Diana Wynne Jones’s books – very few of the moderate-size details don’t matter, and all of the details which matter collide entertainingly with each other by the end of the book.
(But, yeah, I agree, writing a character who’s briefly convincing and interesting but who *doesn’t* steal the story is difficult. My original protagonists’ mothers keep developing much more complex, fun-to-write personalities than their children; I suspect that means I should persuade their children to be more interesting, or ditch their stories completely and write from their mothers’ perspectives.)
“Beware of Really Neat People your characters meet—they may want a book of their own, and if they do, should be tossed right out of your novel as usurpers.”
—C. J. Cherryh
Unless you’re looking for a sequel hook. . . .
I am, in fact, pondering which characters can reprise as villains. (The sequels, like the original books, need a lot of villains.)
I don’t have this problem. Which isn’t the same as ‘I am doing this right.’ :/ I ruthlessly bend walk-on characters so that their quirks forward the plot or illuminate the setting, preferably in some interesting way. Like the old guy who tipped off the police when he *didn’t* call in with his daily paranoid report about a criminal conspiracy. Or the amusement park attendant on a planet where the native inhabitants considered *swimming* to be an extreme sport and who was shocked when the human protagonist just jumped into the sounding well. Without the usual safety harness. Into water that was *over her head.*
What I have trouble with is remembering to include characters who are background or scenery: Other shoppers in a shopping scene, other patrons in a tavern, restaurant, or country-club dining room, people on the streets, etc.
All this might be connected to my extreme need for names. I sometimes can write about “the cop” or “the store clerk” if his role is limited enough and the other characters don’t learn his name. I *cannot* write about character B6 (unless he is literally Baron BeeSix, on a planet where robots and AIs make up the nobility and humans and other bio-forms are commoners). For me, forward progress comes to a complete standstill until I determine the character’s name.