Sacha Black - 8 Steps to Side Characters: How to Craft Supporting Roles With Intention, Purpose, and Power

8 Steps to Side Characters

How to Craft Supporting Roles with Intention, Purpose, and Power

Sacha Black

8 Steps to Side Characters: How to Craft Side Characters with Intention, Purpose, and Power

Copyright 2021 Sacha Black

The right of Sacha Black to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted, without permission of the copyright owner. Except for a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

First Published July 2021, by Atlas Black Publishing

Cover design: Andrew Brown, Design for Writers

www.sachablack.co.uk

All rights reserved

For every writer ever marginalized for being weird, strange or unusual. Youre not a side character.

Youre a fucking hero.

This ones for you.

Fuck the Rules

Where we pontificate about inevitability, break, burn, and banish the rules to the fuckit bucket, and discover why your imagination should be a rebel.

Of all the books Ive written, this one was perhaps the most inevitable. Once youve spent time chiseling out your heroes into sculpted muscle-shaped weapons, and youve spent equal time crafting the ultimate villainand yes, equal is italicized for a reason: bad guys deserve, demand, and require as much time spent on their creation as your heroes dowhere else is there to go except your devious little minions?

Next in line are your friends and allies, mentors and mischief-makers, all the characters that make up supporting roles.

See, every time I write a book on characters, I impress the importance of developing that particular type of character. Villains are vital to conflict and storytelling but heroes are the lens through which your story is told but what about side characters? It will come as no surprise to you that side characters are you guessed it, super important. These pesky players need your attention because they are the pillars that prop up your protagonists.

Too often, writers slap a few side characters into their novel like theyre nothing more than jam in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Tut, tut. Thats not how these pillar-pumpkins should be treated. We need to paint them with as much skill and dedication as weve sculpted our muscled heroes and deadly demons.

To be clear, while this book will provide a raft of tips and tricks for helping you improve your characters and characterization overall, I focus predominantly on side characters. For the sake of simplicity, Ill mostly refer to side characters but insert whichever phrase is most relevant, be that supporting roles, minor players, sub characters, or any other name that tickles your nips.

Let us dwell on rules for a moment

Rules are darling little things shaped like teddy bears and treacle and baby bunny rabbits

Teddy bears are for kids.

I dont like treacle.

And baby bunny rabbits?

Well, my cat eats them for a tasty weekend snackapologies to the baby bunny conservation society, no offense was meant in the writing of that sentence.

Why are we talking about treacle and bunnies when were learning about characters? Come now, my sinful wordsmiths, you know me well enough by now (and if you dont you will shortly); we need at least a brief chapter of hyperbole before I give you the good stuff. The tidbits and tactics for delightful character creation are coming, I promise.

But first, where was I? Ah yes, the rules.

Rules are shaped like cuteness and fluff, but really, theyre demonic restraints sent from the literary under-gods. They are the enemy of muses, fledgling writers, and seasoned pros. A rules sole goal is to thwart your book-writing shenanigans and constrain your imagination. Oh, and I do mean writing rules. Im not talking about the legal ones like thou shall not murder, thieve or harm. I happen to agree with those ones. Those ones keep the assholes in line. Dont be an assholetheyre full of shit rather than words.

I like to start my craft books discussing the merits of rules in writing because, well, there are many, and mostly theyre all bullshit. Unfortunately for us creatives, bullshit seems to spread quicker than viruses.

Heres the thing, for every teacher who ever told you to show dont tell, I can show you a dozen ways telling can be effective and pull out a dozen random books all with moments of telling sprinkled liberally over their pages.

There are Oxford comma preachers, tutors who hate adverbs, ones who say even purposeful repetition is bad and yet more who will say you can never filter as an author.

Listen to Sacha.

Its all bullshit.

Prose is art.

Art is subjective.

For every reader who adores clean prose, there will be a plethora of others who much prefer indulgent, rich prose. Thats why we have R&B, Dubstep, and acoustic music. Everyone likes their own shade of sound. And readers, the darlings, like their own shade of sentence.

But as much as I like to break a lot of rules, it would be remiss of me not to admit that these supposed rules do come from somewhere. Many of them were supposed to be guidelines, suggestions to help you say exactly what you want to sayrather than what you think you saidwhich actually came out more like the strangled afterbirth of a hangover. Over time, these supposed rules became cardinal law. Someone dipped their fingers in the ink well and played God with us lowly wordsmiths. That was a booboo.

Whatever your word fetishes are, its okay. You can rub adverbs over your word-nipples if you like. I mean, I dont want to, but if thats your thing, you do you, baby.

Any rule can be broken if youre skilled enough. When I say must this and must that, you dont have to agree with me. Im not here to argue with you. Just to present some principles and techniques you could use to help you craft solid side characters and minions for your stories.

What I do suggest, though, is that you spend some time both reading and researching in your genre. See, while I dont care much for rules, there are many readers who do appreciate it if you give them the tropes of their genres. A romance reader is gon be pissed if you dont give them a happily ever after. Epic fantasy readers have a penchant for the epic, crime books well, they need a dead bodysome rules are rather important.

Im not going to detail the construction of supporting roles for specific genre tropes, it would take a book the size of an encyclopedia and its your job to know your genre.

Consider this your first piece of homework, if you cant reel off at least five tropes or expectations in terms of style, length, tone for your genre without having to scan your bookshelf, you dont know your genre well enough. Take your word-booty to your local independent bookstore and buy some books. Better still, help your friendly neighborhood indie author and order a couple of their books from your genre too.

Done that?

Good.

Now, I always like to caveat my books. Heres why you should put this book down:

Youve come for advice about heroes and villains. Erm Ive already written those books. If youre after specifics for improving your protagonists or antagonists, then I have two books that will help you:

13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft Superbad Villains