Minor Characters

Barely at all usually! I'll know their name and what they are there to do in the story, maybe a couple of other facts about them, and then tend to let them develop on the page. I've had some great results with this, but then I like some flexibility in my novel plans.

Well, let's see. For my main characters, I have extensive background and personality information. For the minor characters, well...

Jarl: MC's eccentric uncle. Deceased. That's about it.
Madison: MC's mom. Has no purpose in life beyond being MC's mom.
Calen: Only purpose in the novel is to be found dead.
Hui: Nervous, scatterbrained Chinese scientist.
Peon: Some random redshirt. Appears, gives exposition, dies.
Labor: Random redshirt's sister. Gets even less development.
Melissa: Super-Soldier assassin. She kills people for a living. Let's just call her a ninja and move on.
Vera: Crazy dominatrix AI.
Boston: Company man who exists for exposition and comic relief as he complains about the use of genericized trademarks.

So... yeah. As you see, my minor characters are pretty flat and one-note all in all, but then, they're not supposed to be much else. The law of conservation of detail and all that. If any of them wound up more important than I'm anticipating, then they'd get more development.

Title: Breaking Light
Goal: Finishing this novel. (Probably be 100k-120k at this rate.)
Sanity level: Do you even need to ask?

For me, characters make or break a story. You could have a fantastic plot but if your characters are underdeveloped then the story feels like it's lacking a lot...in my opinion, anyway. Thus, I always have detailed characters, even the minor ones. They might not start out as detailed, but by the time I've introduced them I at least know how they think, why they do what they do (their motives for their actions), how they'd react to major plots points, and their background stories; sometimes I've even written out family lines and so forth if it's at all important to the character.

Just because you don't see the character that much doesn't mean they're not a living and breathing entity who has just as much thought and reasoning as your main character. Having well fleshed out characters always leads to more believable characters so why not flesh out your minor ones, too?

Think of it this way, you see random people every day on the street, in stores and so forth. They all have their own intricate lives even though you might not know the details of them. So, just because you're not going to reveal the details of minor characters in the story doesn't mean you shouldn't know them yourself. Details help you write characters and help you understand how they act.

Though, this also depends on your writing style. I generally flesh out my characters long before I flesh out my plot, I sort of just let the plot flow through the actions and ideas of the characters as my characters are, more or less, extensions of my mind who have their own very concrete personalities. I lead them down the path of the plot but how they get there and what they do along the way to major plot points is really up to them.
If you don't write this way and like having vague characters who flesh themselves out through the plot and story then that's great and I say just make a character and go with them.

I'm just a very character-detailed writer and reader. To me, there's nothing worse than a two-dimensional character. Good characters make even the most boring of plots readable, and even enjoyable.

Re-read my post and I don't think I clarified this: I don't, however, flesh out my minor characters as much and as detailed as my mains. I just flesh them out so that they are believable people with thoughts, motives, families (is applicable), etc. Some of my most favorite characters to write for have been minor characters. You just need to make sure that if they're there to be minor and have no purpose or reason to be a major character you don't cling to them and make them major even though you may love them. Self control! LOL

I'm with AKWolf here, especially on the self control part! It probably comes from DMing too many Roleplay games where minor characters is nearly all you do, but I tend to develop them quite well. Not always before hand, though. Sometimes they arrive as only a vague thought and turn out interesting enough for me to dive deeper in what they can be!

I think it's important to have more than just a role in the story for minor characters. Often, just giving them a peculiarity (strange goal, funny nervous habit, etc.) will turn a generic NPC into a much more believable characters. If you don't want to spend too much time on them (or if you don't have that time) just remember as you write that Minors have a life outside of your MC, and that it should reflect on their attitude and role in the story.

The characters that are minor in one story are usually planned to have their own story at some point. So take my main male character Corbin for this year's Nano. In the book I'm working on at the moment, he's a minor character, but now he's gonna be the main. None of the characters are really minor to me as they come as whole people. Which is rather annoying cause Corbin can't shut up at the moment and I've forbidden myself to start early just to keep him entertained.

~ Ri
NaNo 2007 ~ Untitled (lost :( )
NaNo 2008 ~ Darkness' Light (won!)

I've got two "levels" of minor characters. There are secondary characters, who aren't quite at the level of a main character, but have an important role in the story. In the story for November, that's the main characters parents. I know their names, appearance and personalities. I know nearly as much about them as I do the main characters, in fact. They're going to be showing up a lot, so I need to know them well, so I can write them consistantly.

Then I have minor characters who only show up for a scene or two. For them, I have a list of names and a bunch of pictures. If I need a character, I match a name to an image and insert them into the story in the role I need filling. I do no planning beforehand, since I don't know how many of them I'll need until I write the story. Sometimes, when I can get away with it, these people don't even have names. I do this because I have no self control when it comes to characters. If I flesh out a character, they want a story about them. I'm going to have enough trouble keeping track of all my characters this year. Fleshing out my minor/single scene characters would make me crazy.

___

That's exactly what I was going to say! I only know my minor characters' names, and can picture a little bit of what they look like, and an idea of their personalities, but I'll let the details kind of come out as I'm writing. One of my minor characters might become a main chartacter for a little while, so I might have to plan him out in a little more detail.

"This corn is like an angel."

Sometimes I don't even know their name until I write them. Other times I plan them out a bit. It depends on whether the minor character's history is an important part of the story or not.

-=- Jay -=-

My minor characters get virtually no planning - you might find out one or two things about them and that's it. On the whole, they're all very unremarkable, almost stereotypes, barely one-dimensional. It's not real, but then this is fiction. Their role in the story is to sit in the sidelines and make up the numbers. The main characters are of course fully living, breathing people (or at least, they are to me during November), and the secondary characters are somewhere in between. I hate minor characters who jump up and down shouting "hey, look at me, I'm an individual." If you're a minor character in my book you're not, so live with it :)

In terms of numbers - and I think this is easy to get wrong - being mathematical I'd probably have something like a fibonacci sequence or something :) But I had 3 main characters last year, maybe 3-4 minor characters with a hint of character development (and one of those I had to push down a bit because she was getting too big for her boots) and maybe 6-8 others who were marginally more than scenery (all of those had names, and that felt like too many names). I don't like too many characters to have to worry about :( Although, I may have missed a trick here, because obviously if minor characters are allowed their own subplots, that can add thousands of words ...

I think the problem is that if a character is really minor, I don't want to bore the reader by writing about him or her; and if it isn't written in the book, to my mind, it doesn't exist. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, characters in fiction are only what is written about them.

Tom

I think therefore I am pretentious.

Sometimes my minor characters are my best characters. Probably because they are flat and don't need to be developed. I usually take a stereotype or "type of character" (I do satire) and work from there. Currently, my location is a maritime small town, so most characters are very blue collar. So I take a stereotypical fisherman give him a name like Omar and let his character do the talking.
This is one thing that comes easy for me, so I guess I'm not very good at explaining it so it doesn't sound half-effort. Essentually, though, my minor characters are used just as a foil for a main character. I need someone to add realism to add texture and realism to a strongheaded Diner Owner, so I add a few fishermen like I explained above. I need someone to take the innocence away from the high schooler avoids intimacy, I create her a stereo typical nerdy boss who went to high school with her uncle (he skipped a few grades and her uncle failed a few) at her new afterschool job who thinks she's pretty and ended up kiss her. Really these people don't change at all. After the high schooler quits her job, her boss never really shows up inthe story again. If he does later, it is to display humor or add depth to the town rather than give him more story.

Sorry if the explaining was a little weak. Kind of hard to explain.

My minor characters are almost always my best--they have a habit of moving in and setting up shop with their own arcs. This year's NaNo, for me, is about a minor character from last November. And I think that really does tie in to letting them grow organically and develop in response to circumstances actually occurring on the page. Main characters tend to have more difficulty making it out of a feverish tangle of outlines and "things to include".

2003: Plywood Violin
2004: The Star, The Bird, The Clock
2007: Dogwood
2008: Glass Catfish

I'm with hmltwin - secondary characters get planning, really minor characters don't. If I need a bunch of minor characters to fill out a scene, at a party, say, I tend to use my friends (who are always badgering me for cameos in the novel) - but I like to screw around with them a bit, giving them characteristics opposite to their real ones, or changing guys into girls, stuff like that. After all, these characters only crop up once or twice and are absolutely not important, so I figure I may as well have fun with them!

NaNo '06 -- 50k
NaNo '07 -- 50k

I don't plan minor characters. Sometimes they don't even get a name.

My MC(s) have more indepth info on them overall, but I still take time to put effort into my mCs as well.

For me, writing a story needs some background info and that includes all characters. Even if the peep is very minor I like having some extra info on hand so I don't mess up later down the road during writing. As each person fleshes out and fills their space in my story, I add more info to their part of the roadmap. This helps me keep things in order even when new stuff comes up.

I feel that mCs need plenty of attention too because sometimes they may later have their own stories. Also, I have come to enjoy some mCs much more than my MCs. This usually leads to more writing and new ideas.

~ I tried to wrestle my inner demons once... but they used too many illegal holds.

My minor characters go the full range from the walk-on parts (who are written on the page) via minor parts (who are written on the page, but with more pause for thought first) to the secondary character(s) (who not only are planned beforehand but sometimes get planned almost as much as the MC - Sriana in my planned Nano novel is an example of this extreme).

Percussus resurgio

NaNoWriMo History: 2008 - Keldostri Acaleros (Won - 53129 words)

LOL, your DM side came out in the NPC ... not sure they're called non-player characters in literature! =P

(I DM as well, so I find myself referring to NPC's etc as well.)

For other stories, I always let the main character have the most realistic life, and all the other characters were simple and common. I couldn't visualise them very well, and each time I ended with a perfect MC and ALL the other characters only had a name, purpose, and MAYBE a family and friends. They were impossible to work with, because I just could't say anything about them.
For NaNoWriMo I'm going to add minor details even to aquaintenances and minor characters, even if I don't plan them to say anything. Why? It greatly helps (me) to describe a fight, for example, if I know more about the characters. It helps me to add more feelings to the story (more adjectives = more words ;) ) The big disadvantage is that instead of doing a complete description of only 4-5 characters, you end up with the descriptions of (sometimes) more than 12 characters.

Oops? No, really, I love my DM side. DMing is what brought me to writing in the first place. I owe it much of my skills, so the little DM in me always gets a lot of praise. :P

I plan them pretty well. They get basic stats and in depth personality and descriptions. They don't get discarded.

My minor characters hold an importance later on in my 2009 NaNo. Since I'm writing a trilogy, the minor characters I've included in this novel will play a much larger role next year. Since I've got everything planned out for next year as well, my minor characters for this year got planned out as well.

2007: Camp Strange-50,006/50,000
2008: Blue Rose-50,154/50,000

' width=100 height=100 border=0 alt='Official NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner'>