In a post talking about real people influencing your characters, I talked about how I preferred basing side characters off of real people more than I like writing them as main characters, and it got me thinking about how important good side characters are to a story. So, that’s what we’re talking about today.
In a writing class I took in the spring, the instructor talked about how side characters have to serve a purpose to be in the story, meaning that they have to affect the main character in some way. I really liked this definition of a side character, because it helps frame why they're important while also giving me a way to decide if the side characters in my stories are actually relevant.
Now obviously, there’s different kinds of side characters, like comedic relief, an antagonist character, or the supportive best friend. I’m not a huge fan of comedic relief characters, but sometimes they’re needed. If you’re looking for an example of this, Mushu from “Mulan” is a great one. I write a lot of best friend characters, and even though I have a sister, I don’t write siblings very often, because it’s another whole character I have to not only create, but keep track of in the story.
Quick sneak peek side note! I’m currently plotting a novel that has a big friend group in it, meaning there’s eight characters that I’m using regularly, plus parents on top of that, and I recently decided to give the female main character a sister inspired by mine, who is a wonderful human being and I’m incredibly lucky to have her in my life.
Now, it’s no surprise that I’ve worked on a lot of projects, so I thought I would tell you about my favorite side characters that I’ve written. First and foremost, my favourite side character is Selena from The Cora Anthology. I love her so much to the point that she got her own spinoff novel. She was a past love interest turned antagonist in the first book of the main trilogy, and for some reason, I just loved digging into her psyche and figuring out why she did what she did. Another side character I liked writing in that series was Cora’s brother, because he just had a really interesting arc to me (I know I created it, but ignore that), and his changes throughout the series were really fun to write. Another side character I liked writing is actually in one of my unreleased novels, but at the time that you’re reading this, I’ll be editing it, so mild spoiler. However, this character is in Healing x3 Part Two, and she’s based on my cousin that passed away. She’s named after her and everything. Nora just needed a friend in the story, and my cousin was the most outgoing, friendly person I’ve ever met, second only to my sister. The final side character that I’m going to talk about is in the novel I’m currently writing. The main character, Catalina, suffers from endometriosis, just like me, and her boyfriend’s best friend is those negative thoughts and comments that people have said to me about my endometriosis. Bo accuses her of faking her pain for her boyfriend’s attention, just pretending to be sick, etc., and it was actually at the recommendation of my therapist to write a character like this as I was struggling with comments people had made to me in my past about my chronic pain.
So, not only are side characters important to a story, but a lot of my side characters have meaning to me as well. I could talk endlessly about--and to--my fictional characters, and you’re going to be getting some more posts on that soon.
That's all for now, folks!
-C
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