Tag: character building

Adding new characters so people don’t hate them

If you’re writing a series, you’re going to find that your cast changes over time. This makes sense and is realistic in real life. If your MC is learning, growing, and changing then people are going to leave and come to their lives. They might move, go to school, change jobs, or get a new neighbor. Maybe a family member needs to come stay with them for some unexplained reason.

Sometimes this is great. Some fantastic characters have been added later in a series. Using some TV examples because they’re the best known, here are some later added characters I loved.

Patrick from Schitt’s Creek.

Kimmi from Rugrats.

Ben and Chris from Parks and Rec.

Alex from Chuck.

Natalie from Monk.

Chris from 30 Rock

Jessie from Burn Notice.

All of these characters were great additions to their respective shows.

But not all characters added later in a series are great. Some are Godawful. And the examples of that are downright cringy. Think of Dill from Rugrats, Suzie from Space Cases, Scrappy Doo, and the much despised Bobby from Brady Bunch. This horrible addition trend is so well understood, that it was mocked by the Simpsons in their eighth season.

So how do we do it right? How do we add to our cast without creating a Poochie? Well to me, this involves a series of do’s and don’ts.

Do add something to the story that was missing

Most of the characters in my ‘good’ list fall under this rule. Patrick added a straight man (comedic straight) to a pretty zany cast. Kimmi gave Chucky someone who admired him in Rugrats. Alex gave Casey a softer side that he needed in Chuck.

Do you have a character that is a little too silly? Too responsible? Too damn irritating? Give them a character that has the opposite qualities to balance them out. If your story is just a little too dark, add a character that can give levity.

Do give them a believable and sensible reason to be there.

How did this new character join your cast? Did they move? Okay, why did they move?

Kimmi’s a good example of this. She and her mom joined the cast after the Rugrats went to Paris. Her mom was working for the antagonist, fell in love with Chaz, and moved back to the States with him. That makes sense. Well, not in the real world. But in the lovely fictional world in which a school teacher can afford to keep her family in a house in the suburbs.

As a bad example, we can look at Scrappy Doo. Why is he hanging out with his uncle? Why did we never meet his parents? Why doesn’t he ever go home?

It needs to

Do make sure they fit the style and overall theme of the show

We all know that fiction content tends to have a certain vibe. Some shows are warm and cozy, some are more dark. For this example, let’s consider The Good Place with The Boys. In The Good Place, everyone seems to be a little messed up, but essentially decent people.

Compare that to The Boys, where no one seems like an essentially decent person except the two main characters, Hughie and Annie. And even they, if they were plopped into The Good Place, would seem far too dark and messed up to belong there.

So, as much as you’re trying to bring something new and different to your universe, you don’t want them to be so different as to feel like they don’t fit into the world you’ve already created.

Don’t force this character to take up too much space

Now, we’ve reached the don’ts. And this first one is a doozy.

If you’re adding a new character, you don’t want them to necessarily take over as the main character. So they shouldn’t be treated as such. Yes, they should have some storylines. Yes, they should take up space in the world. Yes, they should be important to the plot. But they shouldn’t be the new focus, to the detriment of other characters.

A great example of this done wrong was Rugrats. Dill took over too many of the storylines. Now that there was a baby who needed looked after and cared for by the rest of the cast, every story had to be about him in some way. Before, each episode told a story of one baby, or the assembled cast facing a problem. Now all the problems were about dealing with Dill. Or they were exacerbated by his presence.

Honestly, did Stu and Didi never actually watch their kids?

Don’t take the place of existing characters

This one is a personal issue with me. And it started young. I’m likely dating myself here, but when I was a kid I loved the show Space Cases. It was kind of like Voyager, but with a younger crew. A ship was lost in way outer space, carrying two adults and a group of teens. Scifi hilarity ensued.

My favorite character was Catalina. At the end of season two, she was replaced by her best friend Suzee, who until this moment most of us thought was an imaginary friend.

And I never got over that.

Of course, if you’re writing anything that requires actors, you’re sometimes going to have to replace people. I had a few actors leave my podcast between seasons one and two.

Some of the characters I recast. Some I simply wrote out and didn’t replace. But if you’re writing for TV, you can’t always just replace an actor.

(Yes, sometimes it can be pulled off.)

Then there are examples like Space Cases, or Charmed, where an actor leaves and their position is simply taken over by a new character. And that’s a jarring situation.

If you’re writing a book series, you don’t have to worry about actors leaving. So you do not ever need to shoehorn a new character in to take the place of somebody else. So, you know, don’t do it.

Don’t add a character just because they’re cute

Alright, you all knew this was coming. That’s why I saved it for last. I have some words of revulsion for the Scrappy Doo, Dill Pickles, and Cousin Oliver sort.

We do not need a character added just for the sake of being cute young and new. We don’t need it. If you find yourself writing a new baby, a new puppy, or a new adorable pet sidekick to keep things interesting and fresh, stop right there. Your story doesn’t need it, and it won’t be the saving grace you think it would be. That stunt has worked once and only once, and that was on Sailor Moon.

I hope this post has helped you. And I hope I didn’t trash-talk a character you loved. If I did, please let me know in the comments. And if there’s a later addition character I didn’t reference that you think deserves some love, please let me know about them too.

Paper Beats World is a labor of love. If you love what we do here, please consider supporting the site on Ko-fi.

And don’t forget that Nova, book five of Station 86 starts on Monday! And yes it does have one later series addition, a survivor from Station Central. See you then.

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Secondary Characters, Learn to Love Them

If you’ve never questioned my sanity, you might be after reading that title.  But I bet that I can say four names that will change your mind; Hermione Granger, Gandalf, Rue and Four/Tobias.  Secondary characters make the story.

If you’ve never really explored all the different ways to use secondary characters in your book, here are just a few things you can do with them.

  • Comic relief.  It’s obvious, maybe, but it’s really useful.  No matter how serious a story is, I expect to laugh at least once.  I mean really, what can’t benefit from a laugh?  Your main character might not be the right person for that sort of thing, though.  That’s why characters like Matt from Wheel of Time work so very well.  Rand’s got too much of a stick up his ass to me funny.
  • Crazy sub plots.  These are always fun.  You can do thing with subplots that you could never do with the main plot of a story.  People getting into crazy hijinks, racing horses, falling in love in such a way it doesn’t have to be complicated.  Whatever you’d like to do that seems to weird to put in the main part of a story, you can explore with a secondary character.
  • Extra conflict.  I honestly think I could do a whole series of posts about ways to add extra conflict with secondary characters.  I might do that at some point, but for now, let me just do a quick overview.  Extra conflict comes in many forms.  You can have a rival lover, a person who just doesn’t like your character, someone who wants the same job as your main character, someone who is teasing the main character’s kid.  It can also come in the form of a friend of your main character who’s running into their own trouble that your mc now has to help with.  Or at least is affected by.
  • If your books has different cultures, a secondary character is a perfect way to explore them.  Fantasy novels are a great example.  If your main character has never run into a person from some other country, they can ask all sort of questions, thereby giving you a great chance for exposition that feels natural.  The secondary character can ask the same questions of the mc.  And thus a whole bunch of information that your reader needs is there.
  • Your secondary characters are going to see the world differently that your mc.  At least, I hope so.  I mean, I assume your characters aren’t all cookie cutters or flat representations of people.  So, you should use them to show a different point of view than the one your mc represents.  There are very few times in real life that there’s a solid right or wrong answer to a situation.  Why should there be in your story?  You can use secondary characters to explore different viewpoints.
  • Your mc is a real person.  So it stands to reason that different people are going to see your character differently.  Their lover will see them one way, their parents another.  The guy who rings them up at the check out will see them a whole different way.  If you worry that your mc is too good, without some flaws that will round them out, a secondary character who doesn’t much care for her will do the trick nicely.  It’s also nice because rather than saying the character flaw is good or bad, it just puts the fact out there, and lets the reader develop his own opinion.  You’ll also show a lot about your character based on how she treats the people around her.  How does she treat her betters, equals and inferiors?
  • Finally, a secondary character can be useful to foreshadow events that are coming in an indirect way.  They’re the perfect tools for misdirection.  While your flashing your mc about, doing all that mc stuff, your secondary character can do all sorts of things undercover.  Or, the other way around.

Your secondary characters have to be there anyway.  Unless you’re doing some sort of strange proof of concept piece where you’ve only got one character who is in a room all by himself, there are going to be people around him.  Might as well use them to their full advantage.

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Writing Prompt Saturday- List character traits

So, I’ve got a thing about lists.  I really like making them, and reading them.  List the 20 best movies in the last fifty years, worst songs from the 90’s (that would be a really long list) most offensive things said by church officials.  They’re fun.

Lists are also a great way to organize thoughts and ideas when writing.  I’m going to try to incorporate at least one list every month.  This is a big writers notebook building exercise, as well a a great brainstorming technique and at least some fun.

Here, then, is our first list.  We’ll do it to 100, because that should be enough to get beyond the normal and really make you think.  List 100 character or personality traits.

Now, I think you should do this on your own, but it’s also something we can do together.  How about it?  Add ten character traits in the comment section until we get to 100.  I’ll start us off, with the first ten.

Generous, vindictive, optimistic, musical, creative, traitorous, foul smelling, faithful, grating, and finally, dependable.  What else can you think of?

This week’s affiliate sponsor is Shutterfly.  I get any pictures I have printed from them, and have never had a bad experience.  Everything I get is well priced, good quality, and gets to my home fast.  Which is good, because I’m not the patient sort. 

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What your antagonist doesn’t have to be

If we are to talk about characters at all, of course we must talk about antagonists. It won’t be a very exciting story without them. Not much fun watching your mc achieve all of their goals without any sort of roadblock, after all. Your antagonist has to be at least as interesting as your mc, if not more so.

Eh, but there are a lot of blogs that will tell you how to make a great antagonist, tell you all the things they should be. Here at Paper Beats World, I want to go a step beyond that, and shatter some illusions you might have about what an antagonist has to be. It’s your book, after all, you can make it anything you want. Just for the record, your antagonist doesn’t have to be-

Stupid or for that matter, smart

Someone’s intillect has nothing to do with whether or not they will make a good antagonist. Brillient authors have done it both ways to great effect. Take, for example, Saruman from Lord of the Rings. Great antagonist, really scary, really smart. Then, we’ll consider Buffalo Bill from Hannibal. He’s a freaking moron, but he’s still a really effective antagonist.

At the head of some group of evil do’ers with a bunch of henchmen

An antagonist doesn’t need to have anyone on his side to feel like the world is against your main character. Just any anybody who’s ever seen a horror film. The antagonist in those is almost always alone, but he doesn’t ever seem to have a problem ripping all those college kids to shreds.

Evil

This is a big one. You’ll notice, through this article, I’ve not said bad guy once. That’s because your antagonist doesn’t have to be a bad guy anymore than your protagonist has to be a good guy. He or she can be someone just doing their job, or maybe even someone who thinks your protagonist is the real bad guy and needs to be stopped. Remember, we’re all the heroes in our own minds. The same is true for your antagonist.

An actual person

Of course, you could just not have it be a person at all. Who’s says it’s got to be? Some of the coolest stories I know didn’t have a bad guy to root against. Jaws, Animal Farm, Perfect Storm. The list is endless. Nature can be a great antagonist, and animals are always a quick choice for science fiction slasher flicks. Then, there is time itself, the antagonist in all of our lives. Illness is another great non human antagonist. Want to see what I mean? Watch Contagion. Actually, if you’re just wanting a good movie to watch, watch Contagion.

So, to sum it up, there are only two rules about what your antagonist must be. It must be capable, and it must stand in between your main character and the thing he or she wants.

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Character Driven Stories

There are a thousand different kinds of stories, one for every star in the sky.  There’s fantasy, horror, science fiction, historical and all sorts of things that I haven’t the time to list and you haven’t the time to read.  But no matter the style, language, or theme, all stories fall into two broader categories; plot driven stories and character driven stories.  Given a choice between the two, I’ll always go for character over plot.

It can be hard to distinguish between the two at first.  Basically, though, a plot driven story is about something massive happening, like a plague or a riot, or an alian invasion.  This is a story that can be told from the pov of any number of people.  Like a riot, for example.  You can see that from the eyes of a riot officer, a pedestrian, an independent journalist who’s recording the action on her phone.  Each one will be a different story, but in each case the character is very reactionary.  Basically, this riot was going to happen whether your character was there or not.  A good example is Divergent. (Spoiler Alert!)  Even though the main character impacts the story, the whole mess was going to happen even if she’d never been born, let alone if she’d stayed in her original faction.  It just might have had a different ending.

In a character driven stories, though, it’s a different situation.  This is a story that just would not have happened without this character.  The story is about this character.  Think about Dexter, for instance.  The story is about a serial killer hunting serial killers.  Take away the main character, you take away the whole story.

How to build your very own character driven story

Step one- Make your main character.  When I started writing Woven, it sure didn’t start as a series.  It was all about one boy who liked to weave.  That’s it.  Take a person, and decide what makes him or her different from other people.  Devon liked to weave.  Alright, so he likes to weave.  What could possibly go wrong with that?  Well, maybe his weaving is magic!  That was honestly my first brainstorm for Woven.  Everything in the book stemmed from Devon and his sister Lenore, who was also given pov character status.  Without Devon and Lenore, there’s no story.

Step Two- Make your characters impactful.  Seems like a no brainer, but a character driven story needs characters that are, duh, driven.  This is not Shaun of The Dead, where the character just wants to sit back and play video games with his best friend.  Your character has to have something about them that goes against the grain, or a drive to make a difference in their world.  For better or worse, your character has to make the world ripple around her.

Step Three- Make your character fascinating.  I mean this character needs to really grab my attention.  I need to want to know more about him.  I’m thinking like Jonas from The Giver.  I want to know more about Jonas, right from the first.  I wanted to understand why he was so concerned with precision of language.

Remember, in a character driven story your character is in the spotlight.  He or she has to be the biggest selling point of the book.

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