Developing Side Characters

I won’t take the name of the book, but its side characters were so undeveloped, I couldn’t make it till the end. Eight siblings live together but since the author was only concerned with the protagonist, she got married and had children. As for the rest? Two died, while the other five decided to live like hermits with no family. Really? The author couldn’t have spared two lines about how at least one of them finds a spouse?

Within the story, your protagonist is the most important character. But as a writer, you get an aerial view of the story and by now you must know just how important side characters are. If you start them off with a side story and don’t finish it, it’s a loose end. A loose end that your story will eventually trip on and fall. At the same time, you can’t give each person their own saga, so here are a few suggestions about how to make your side characters seem like a fully developed persons existing in their own right.

1. A Strong Relationship

Arthur & Eames' bad relationship was
one of the best things about Inception.
It was not necessary to the plot, but gave
them additional personality.

My current project deals with seven rather important side characters. Two of them were brothers who help out the protagonist. When they seemed too stilted, I made them fiercely competitive. Whenever they’re in a scene, they’ll pass snide remarks about each other. Suddenly from being one dimensional people related to my protagonist, they also have their own life. It tells the reader that although we’re concerned with the heroine, when these brothers leave the pages of the book, they’ll continue living their lives, probably undercutting each other. If your characters connect to each other in ways other than the protagonist, it’ll make them more realistic.

2. Specificity

Sometimes all you can afford is giving a character two lines worth of description. If you pin down one specific trait, it’ll be enough to give them a personality. I read a story the other day where a man goes to his seventy year old mother for advice. The mother gave advice (her role within the book), but it was interspersed with her packing posters of Brad Pitt for a trip (separate personality). Not just that, she has Backstreet Boys CDs, and I think accessories of the Twilight men. She features in the entire novel for half a page, but I remember her because of the quirky personality- “the old ogling lady.”

3. Know Your Side Characters

In the film"Stand By Me" the cast & crew said they knew what 

happened to Gordie's cap. Did the audience ever find out? Nope. 

But it helped Keifer Sutherland get into the head of the 

evil "Ace."

Know the life of your characters before and after the book starts even if the information isn’t relevant to the plot. You don’t have to add any of their biography in the book, but if you know your character’s life, he will automatically develop his own unique personality.

For example, if you decide that Tracy loved to ride horses as a kid (a detail that’s never going to find its way into the book), it’ll influence the course of your story meaningfully. Instead of the protagonist meeting Tracy at a café, the friends could meet at Tracy’s ranch. Or when Tracy is ending her phone call with the protagonist, she might say, “Take care, sweetheart. I gotta go feed the horses.”

Sure, it’s just a few sentences, but your audience will form a distinct image of Tracy- the girl who likes horses, she’s probably an animal lover, and in good shape because she works at a ranch.

4. Protagonist

Side characters have a life of their own.
Separate from the protagonist.

As mentioned above, the hero is the center of the story, but not necessarily the center of your side character’s lives. Please don’t forget that. My friend wrote a story a while back where the heroine’s husband cheats on her. Sure, the audience is outraged. But then, the husband’s brother is so disgusted, that he disowns his own blood due to the infidelity. I’m not saying that family members can’t scold each other, but my friend forgot that the heroine was not as important to her brother in law as she was to the story.

Hamlet is a good example of this. The man is withering away because of grief, but the kingdom (particularly his mother and uncle) seem to be moving on. We are concerned with him because we are readers, but the other characters have to live their lives.

Think of fairytales, how much do we know about Rapunzel’s parents or even the prince? Now think of who fairytales are intended for. If you want to a story with depth and layers, be sure to make memorable, well developed side characters.

Staying Motivated While Writing Your Story

When I was taking a sociology class during freshman year, my professor asked each of us what had drawn us to sociology. Most of us said it was mandatory, some were interested in the subject, one kid said his friends had raved about how hot my professor was. She smiled and replied, “Whatever gets you here.” I think a similar logic applies when you’re writing a story. Writing consistently is a hard thing to do and sometimes I find myself avoiding even a work I adore. So here are some ideas to stay motivated:

1. Decide a Limit

Decide the amount of words you’ll write every day and stick to it. This is the best type of motivator because it gives a concrete record of your efforts. Avoid a vague parameter like “I will complete a chapter a day” because your chapter could be two pages long or two hundred. Take something definite like “I will write five pages per day.”

The biggest mistake you can do is make an unrealistic goal. Don’t be bothered if people recommend writing 5,000 words a day and you’re comfortable with 500. You are your own unique person and no one else’s style is going to work for you.

2. Mark Down Your Achievements

I have a little word chart which I fill out at the end of every day:

Date	Targeted Word Count	Targeted Total Words	Accomplished Count	Total Story Words
19. March	3,000	3,000	2,579	2,579
20. March	3,000	6,000	3,098	5,677
21. March	3,000	9,000	3,423	9,100

The best part of this chart is that I can see where I slacked off and then make up for it later. Plus, you can even set up a little reward system if that helps.

*Remember that such a word limit is really just to show you how you’re doing, if you go a little above or below the limit, don’t worry about it.

3. Music

Some people prefer to work in silence and that’s fine, but let me share my experience about the importance of music. When I’m working on a story, sometimes I find that a song in my library fits a particular scene or character perfectly. This helps trigger the mood that needs to go in writing that scene. For example, when I write sad scenes, I’m usually in a good mood. So I switch on “Hamlet Walks the Plane,” and let the music work its magic. Try it.

This is a personal quirk, but it might work for you. Sometimes when I’m listening to songs, I start playing out scenes of my story against the song like a music video. Seeing a visual reinforcement of your story can really help you out. Then, again, I’ve never heard of anyone else using this method, so I won’t swear by it. But who knows? Maybe it’ll work for you, maybe I’m starting a revolution!

4. Adore Your Characters

While I don't "adore" Claudia,

I do think she's very pretty, 

and I needed a pretty visual in 

my head for the heroine of my 

story.

You and your characters are sharing the same space, so if you don’t get along, it’s going to be like sworn enemies trapped in a cave. Here’s silly trick that I used for my last story. I was rewriting a classic so the characters had already been defined by the real author. This made me feel rather distant from them and for a while, I didn’t have any internal enthusiasm towards them because I hadn’t created them. So, I started imagining my favorite actors as those characters. Naturally, my enthusiasm skyrocketed. As long as you aren’t actually “soul plagiarizing” some real life person, it’s acceptable to have a vested interest in your character. As my sociology professor said, “Whatever gets you here.”

5. Daydream A Little

I’m guessing that you have dreams of making the NY Bestsellers list. Use that. A great way to pick yourself up after a slump is to imagine your book being a success. Heck, in dream world, it can get turned into a movie and your favorite actor/singer/football player will be so impressed by it that they will track you down, tell you how much your book impacted their life, and eventually ask you to marry them (and no, I’ve never actually dreamt that far).

As long as your dreams aren’t clouding your actual achievement, it’s fine to encourage yourself with a promise of the future.

6. Force Someone to Encourage You

I suggest this point as a last resort, I’ll explain why later.

If you’re desperate, pick the passage or page (not more) that you’re most proud of and show it to a friend who you know won’t trash it. Sometimes a hearty praise is what you need to hear. After all, you wouldn’t be writing this book if you didn’t want others to read and like it.

Warning: It is my sincere request not to dump your stories on some friend/relative every day and punish them because they are tolerant. The reason I say this is because I’ve been that friend/relative often enough. Unless you’re T.S. Elliot, chances are the draft you are working on right now isn’t your magnum opus. Our sense of accomplishment can blind us to the crap our work actually is, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is blind. I know that sounds harsh but if you want to keep your friends (and their respect), you’ll take my advice.

7. Know When to Quit

There are enough quotes, clichés, movies about winners and quitters, but the truth is you should know when to quit. I’m not saying quit forever, but take heed of warnings when your mind is saying it just can’t go any further.

After I finished my first draft of my story, I felt like I was okay with abandoning it forever. I knew this wasn’t an option so I continued for one tortured week before I had burnout. Now, a month later, after not having looked at it, thought about it, talked about it, I’ve rediscovered its charm and am ready to take it up again.

If you start to associate your story with fatigue and hatred, what’s the point? Yes, writing is hard, but it’s also supposed to be fun. So when it stops becoming fun, put down your pen and throw your plot completely out of your mind.

Just A Keats' Movie Review

“Bright star, would I were stedfast as though art—

Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night…”

                                             - John Keats

It’s with great restraint that I’m trying not to add Keats in my every post. His was the first poem that got me interested in literature and it’s his sacrifices that inspire me to write even when I’m ready to throw in the towel. So you can imagine how excited I was about Bright Star, a movie about Keats’ life.

                Bright Star didn’t compromise with the facts and for that it’s worth the watch. Still, there were a few things that I had a problem with. First off, Keats, played by the brilliant Ben Whishaw who most people would know as Q from Sky Fall, is portrayed as a bit too delicate. Understandably, a man who writes poetry is sensitive, but that doesn’t translate into being physically frail. My teacher remarked wryly that when he rests his head on his lover’s bosom, it feels more like a scene of a mother and child. If I’m not mistaken, Keats was known to beat up his brothers and got into some savage fist fights at school.

                Another bone of contention was how much they focused on Keats’ fiancé, Fanny Brawne. Sure, she is the inspiration for the titular poem, but at times I felt like I walked into the wrong theater. It was Keats that drew me to this movie, damn it, I wanted to see his heartbreaks not hers.

The wonder that is Keats

                Finally, the movie has some beautiful scenery and this makes sense considering that Keats’ poems are all about seeing the beauty in things. But the problem was they didn’t film it as if it was Keats’ was experiencing this. Another Ben Whishaw film, Perfume, is all about the different scents a man experiences and they made you live the movie through his sense of smell. It’s something that Bright Star failed to do. They may show Keats with a gorgeous background of pink blossoms, but it didn’t feel like he was really engaging with the flowers.

                But on the whole, would I recommend it to Keats’ lovers and viewers in general? I think I might. The flaws I listed are quite subjective, and I’m sure that most people would enjoy it for a one-time thing. It’s funny, touching, and gives a nice enough glimpse of the man behind some of the best works of the Romantic Era. As a side note, I’d definitely recommend Perfume for anyone who prefers more outlandish films.

Painting depicting a scene from Eve Of St. Agnes

So to wrap up, I’m just going to list some of my favorite Keats-related works. You’ll probably find them for free on Google:

1. A Drought of Sunshine

2. A Thing of Beauty (Perhaps his most quoted work)

3. The Eve of St. Agnes (Opening lines are supposed to be the coldest lines in literature.)

4. Sonnet to Sleep (I’m considering getting the last line of this one tattooed on me.)

5. Letters to Fanny Brawne & Charles Brown (not poems, but a nice a read)

6. Adonis (This one’s by fellow romantic writer, Shelley, but it’s about Keats and his tragic end.)

Tips for First Time Poetry Writers

                Before I start this post, I want to just say that I’m not a poet. Prose is my thing, but I’ve had the good fortune of taking a poetry class with a rather amazing poet recently and learnt a few things that I’d like to pass on to any first time poetry writers out there.

Don't get saddled by your childhood.
Rhymes aren't essential for your poems.

1. Jack & Jill Went Up the Hill…

                It’s tempting to write with rhymes,

And certainly that’s not a crime,

                But your work can start sounding forced

With unwilling words that seem coerced.

We grow up with nursery rhymes and certainly some of the greatest poetry in literature has rhymes, but rhymes aren’t a prerequisite for poetry. My teacher stressed that what made a good poem was the power of its metaphors, and often enough similes. Judge for yourself:

“He acted rather bad,

And that made me sad.”

As opposed to:

“He hasn’t returned.

I feel as hopeless as a broken promise.”

[please don’t knock the above lines, I wrote them for my class]

                Okay, I used an exaggeratedly bad example for rhyming lines, but it’s to illustrate that the metaphor not the rhyme makes the poem.

2. Metaphors Over Similes

“He’s as powerful as the wind as he rushes into my life.”

“He’s the wind that rushes into my life, uprooting my thoughts

                There is nothing wrong with a simile, but if you have a simile that can be converted into a metaphor, convert away. Metaphors are stronger forms of speech as suggested in the above example. Remember, however, that these suggestions are general. You might find that only a simile works in your poem and that’s fine too.

3. Sentiment vs Sentimentality

So, what’s the difference? To put it rather simply in terms of the effect, if your poem has sentiment, the reader feels it. If your poem has merely sentimentality only you feel it. My last assignment was to write an unsentimental love poem. That’s a contradiction in terms, you may think, but it’s not.

Read Shakespeare’s My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun. My teacher told us two methods to write a similar poem. The first was to pick one characteristic of your lover and describe it in extreme and beautiful detail while another was to describe the person’s flaws and yet justify your love (Shakespeare’s technique). I chose the first style and wrote in extensive detail about a man’s golden hair. I described what it looked like when he was getting a haircut, when it was freshly washed, what it looked like in the moonlight. Then, just in the last stanza I wrote, “When the world is drenched in darkness, I see sunshine in his hair.” It was considered a good unsentimental love poem because my class had no idea who I was talking about, but in that stanza they understood what he meant to me.

You can of course write, “He is the best looking person in the world. No man can look better.” But your audience won’t be convinced, their idea of the hottest person is that vegan vampire. Your job is to make them feel what you feel.

Tom Hardy serves no actual 

purpose in this post, but since 

we are talking about good lips...!

On a side note, this approach works in prose as well. Recently, I had to describe my character’s beautiful mouth and no matter how many accolades I put to it- color, shape, lushness- it wasn’t all that. Miserable, I stared at my work, then realized the missing ingredient. I put in a line about his coarse skin, his cruel eyes, his wide forehead, and his gorgeous younger brother. Then, against this backdrop I wrote that despite all his shortcomings, he could rival any man because of his mouth (Shakespeare’s style). See what I’m getting at?

4. Leave Out Descriptions

                What? No descriptions?

Yes and no. It depends on the type of description you have. Of course, you want to go on about your lover’s eyes but never list their color and shape.

“Her eyes are blue” or “her blue eyes are breathtaking.”

“She carried the ocean in her eyes.”

They both describe the same thing, but the first one belongs in a work of prose while the second one takes its place in poetry. Metaphors, metaphors, metaphors all the way!

5. Brevity Is A Virtue

A poem is visibly smaller than prose and there’s good reason for it. Poems don’t have unnecessary words in them. If your job is getting done with “she’s looking good,” don’t bother adding, “she’s looking very good.”

To achieve this, you’ll have to choose appropriate and powerful words. Consider:

“The salty spray from the ocean’s waves hit my face.”

Firstly, I know that the ocean has salty water, so omit “salty.” Secondly, can you make this more concise?

“The spindrift hit my face.”

Trust me, few but powerful words can say a lot more than a million less effective ones.

6. Don’t Do Something Just Because…

In poetry, don’t do something just because it sounds nice. If you’re using improper word order, alliteration, or a rhyme make sure it’s there for a reason. Otherwise it’ll take away the reader’s attention from the theme of the poem. Writing a poem the other day, I kept most of it free verse, then let just two lines at the end rhyme. The point was that the last two lines were related and the echoing sound made it easier to draw the connection between them while isolating them from the rest of the poem. So make sure whatever you’re doing has a better reason than “it just sounded pretty.”

7. Poetic Language

Sure, poetry does something rather special with language that we don’t achieve in our daily conversations. But this doesn’t mean that you have to use flowery language when a simple word is doing the trick.

I stuck to pretty words in my poems and went the conventional way, but a rather gifted classmate of mine managed in lines like,

“We each hoped the other would speak,

And then, whatever…”

Out of context, it sounds a bit odd, but believe me, it got a lot more praise than my poem. So use language that you’re comfortable with. Similar to the very first point, good poetry isn’t defined by the kind of language you use but how you use it to express your thoughts. If “f*** off” is getting the job done, don’t get hampered with, “You offend me, sir.” 

Munch It Like Mello: Character Types To Work With

                Of course, there’s no set pattern of what kind of characters you can create and every writer has her (or his) own preference. Still, I think there are some basic rules when you’re making a character for your readers to love. In my writing process, I’ve discovered that there are three types of characters that have come up constantly in my work, and there’s only one that I work well with. I’ve described the types below and listed the pros and cons of each.

Angels

                First off and the easiest types are the angels. There’s no simpler way of describing them: they are good. For those of you who are familiar with Death Note, I’d put the Japanese police force in this category. Selfless, honest, hardworking, and a kind of personality that everyone aspires to. Note that, you can never really relate to this kind of a person because your readers have ignored their conscience at least once in their life. For this reason, it’s best not to choose an angel as your protagonist UNLESS he’ll be later faced with a choice of being bad or evil.

                I spent a good two years working with a heroine who was good until one day I realized that I was avoiding writing the parts with her because she was just boring. Regardless of what she did, it was pure, and that kind of predictability can be difficult to work with. Oscar Wilde starts out with Dorian Gray as the epitome of untainted youth but imagine if Gray had remained like that throughout the book! If you need a pure bred angel in your book, make sure it’s a side character, Jane Bingley-type.

Fallen Angels

                There’s always a certain charm with a man who willingly chooses the “damn all” attitude and has to face the consequences for it. Usually, fallen angels are the villains of the story, but I’ve seen enough works where the fallen angel makes a compelling protagonist. Clockwork Orange’s Alex Burgess, Death Note’s Raito Yagami, and of course, if you want to go epic, then the original fallen angel of Paradise Lost.

If your hero is a bad guy,
be sure to strike the right balance

                To be honest, I’ve never bothered with this type of protagonist. Mostly because this character type is not my favorite, but if you choose to work with the damned angel as your hero, do it carefully. The charm of the above mentioned characters is not just that they are evil but that you cry for them when their eventual downfall takes place. That’s a tricky balance to achieve when you have to make your hero cruel enough and yet keep the sympathy of the audience. If you can pull this kind of hero off, I’d take my hat off to you. After all, I hated Raito throughout Death Note, but when he died, my eyes had melted into tears.

Flawed Angels

Choose A Character That
Keeps You Guessing

                So now the title of this post makes more sense. The gorgeous looking girl at the side who is actually a gorgeous man is the best example of a flawed angel. These are the characters are almost angels but have that one fatal flaw which clips their wings and keeps heaven’s gates just out of reach. So, they fall down to hell while their thoughts tend upwards (I’m not sure if I just plagiarized Milton).

                I find these the best kind of characters to work with. Readers can relate to such characters much better than the first two types and flawed angels tend to get sympathy galore. But more importantly, there’s scope for complexity in this kind of character. Sure, Death Note’s Mello runs the mafia and kills people, but he’s also the only person to express genuine regret over the death of a friend. These characters are unpredictable because you don’t know which way they’ll go as they have a bit of bad and bit of good in them. As my friend once described it, “Be ready for anything. They can break into a dance, they can kick you in the ass.” And it’s this unpredictability along with the character’s flawed destiny that makes him my favorite type of protagonist.

                The Greeks described the fatal flaw as the “hubris” which means an excess or lack of any one trait that is eventually going to lead to the downfall of the hero. All of Shakespeare’s tragedy heroes have it. Lear, Othello, Coriolanus, and of course,  Mr. To Commit Suicide Or Not To Commit Suicide.

                So, if you haven’t already figured out the kind of character you want your protagonist to be, hopefully, this will help. It took me three good years of experimenting before I achieved the right balance in my characters, so I hope I’ve saved you that much time with your work. Keep writing!

Write & The World Writes With You

                I flinch when people ask me about my writing. Mostly because of the strange notions they have about  what goes into making that little softbound copy of Jeffery Archer’s latest that’s lying on their table. Having only read the success stories of Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer, everyone’s always expecting you to pop out the next bestseller. So where do they get these ideas from? It’s because it’s so darned simple to write.

                Now before all my fellow writers start booing me, hear me out. I said it’s easy to write. Creating characters with depth, a plausible story line, pages that force the reader to turn them, reaching that word limit that seems either too large or too small, all of that might just kill you.

I find a lot of similarities between writing and having children. Just because you can reproduce doesn’t mean you have parenting skills, and similarly, because you can churn a few pages on your computer doesn’t make you writer. But because people think that anyone who wants can write, they expect too much of an aspiring writer. They expect to see your name in the NY bestsellers list when you’re still tackling the problem of that one loophole in your story through which your entire plot dissolves.

So What Are Writers Like?

                In my experience, writers, real writers are easy to distinguish by their attitude towards writing. I was talking to some friends yesterday and one complained about how she was ready to shred her manuscript and feed it to her shitzu. At this, my second friend began to talk about how writing was the most relaxing thing she knew. She loved every story she wrote about her breathtaking protagonists, and the rainbow that shot through the words and hung over her bed as she dreamt about bunnies sprinkled in pixie dust. There’s nothing wrong with feeling happy about writing, I just think there’s a difference between the kind of happiness you get.

"A work of art is the unique
result of a unique temperament."
-Oscar Wilde

                Real writers seem to have more intense feelings towards their work. I know that in a few months, my friend’s going to pull out her work from under her bed or out of the trashcan and start working on it again like a bad relationship that just too precious to lose. (I say “bad” because in this writer’s humble opinion, if you’ve been visited by Erato or Calliope you’re in for some sleepless nights). Back to my child rearing example, you never go to your children to unwind. If anything, children represent nothing more than worries, messes to clean up, and awkward sex talks. But the point is that the reason you put up with all that is because there’s something deeper than just liking your children that motivates you and it’s same with your work.

                It’s almost an elemental need that forcing yours fingers to pen down those last few words before you fall flat on your writing desk snoring while the rest of world is just waking up to the sunrise.

Two Sides

There are those who indulge in the arts, who view it from their balcony seats and feel infused with beauty, truth, and what not. And then there are those, who view it from behind the curtains. Who see the dirt, who cover their cuts with grimy band aids and keep the show going, and they discover a rather different form of beauty.

                It’s the beauty that comes when you decide to abandon that blasted book that has given you nothing but pain, only to realize that the one thing worse than writing it and that is not writing it. And that is what makes a real writer.