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/lit/ - Literature

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3647503 No.3647503 [Reply] [Original]

My side characters lack depth.
What can I do about it?

>> No.3647506

Have them casually throw in details of serious crimes they've committed in their dialogue, and the main characters are too busy to notice.

>> No.3647511

>>3647506
Go to sleep, Quentin Tarantino.

>> No.3647515

Write supplemental novels to your main novel. Call them [MAIN NOVEL TITLE]: [CHARACTER NAME], and make them a brief action-packed prequel wherein the side character is the protagonist.

>> No.3647520

have them go through an existential crisis. The main character can recount and fill in their story as they talk and all the while he steels his angst and woe into a grim acceptance of an ending existence.

or just make them look mysterious

>> No.3647521

>>3647515
I actually like your idea.
Cheers.

>> No.3647574

>>3647515
go to sleep, Roberto Bolaño

>> No.3649652

>>3647515
>tfw I have been doing this for a while now
>tfw said stories usually get more attention and become bigger than the main one
Fuck this shit

>> No.3649694

Read Shakespeare, or download some filmed versions of his plays. He's the master of realistic side characters. Falstaff and Polonius are the most famous, though Falstaff almost steals the show completely.

>> No.3649705

>>3647503
>caring about side characters lacking depth

Read some Montherlant. He comments himself "if the reader finds some of my characters uninteresting, it is because they indeed are uninteresting and the author depicted them as close to reality as possible".

(or something along these lines)

>> No.3649710

Add significant details in the way they talk, the way they choose topics and answer to question, the way they pick their words and carve their phrasing. It depends actually on which point of view you write. Previous suggestions apply to external (first, second or third person but not knowing what's happening in the character's heads, and having to judge only from what they do). In the case your narrator can for some reason see what they do when alone, have them make significant littke things or go to significant places. Don't be heavy-handed, better leave the reader ponder about what Mr.Sidekick really thinks or if Ms.Secondary really is a hateful bitch than have they suffer things like "he did that, and that was obviously a bad thing to do".

Now if you can tell directly what they think or how they feel, do the same with their innate reactions: a little shade of repressed guilt here, a shred of hidden desire there, a quick moment of doubt a this particular point. The less you tell, the more guessing work you will left to the reader, and the more the dedicated reader will get from those small brushes (as for the non-dedicated reader, you shouldn't care, unless you're a non-dedicated writer). Of course the trick is to have those meaningful details to be, well, meaningful. That is, you have to nail something with each one. That doesn't mean being able to tell precisely what you nailed down, but still have some idea of it. It is a matter of intuition, I guess, but reading experience and feedback could provide tremendous help.

>> No.3649714

>>3649710
The best you can do in any case would be to start thinking of any character as important in itself -not as a tool for the plot or a way to highlight the singularity of the main protagonists, but as a living person in all its depth and contradictions. From then on, you can develop your character in two ways: by first expanding it or concentrating it. If you choose to expand, you will have to build the whole persona as if you were to write entirely about him/her. Then you'll have to try to express the more of it with as few words as possible. Not that bold stylistic effects or strange metaphors should be banned, but you will have to make it a glimpse, or at the very most an intense but very short glare, into the character's personality. The other way is concentrating: with this method, you strive for expressing the character as a mere symbol, or as something that looks like a symbol, a mere sign, or, to phrase it maybe more accurately, to write the character as the mere sign of its own personality.

>> No.3649717

>>3649694
This and also Balzac, Tolstoy, and maybe ven Flaubert.

>> No.3649728

>>3649705
I agree with you, tripfag heretic, but the OP asked for more depth, not how to stave off the downfall of lacking depth. Adding (cleverly and not anciviliously) some depth to side character could make his writings more substantial and enjoyable. Even you heretics aren't against that.

>> No.3649735

Write shortish monologues about their personal lives before you put them in the story.
It will seem SO wasteful to not use the monolouge, but that gives you the full character, so you can work an eclipsed version of the character in the monolouge into the story (with cryptic tonal subtleties, references only to the monolouge that seem irrelevant and the bleedthrough of their internal struggle/motives as they manifest in that side-character's action).
These characters have REAL deapth, and if you are so tempted, the character-studies you wrote before putting in the secondary characters can be used to develop another story and/or character.

>> No.3649765

read "a song of ice and fire" series

rr martin is a master of side characters

>> No.3649783

Make their dialogue as close to the common things people you know/heard say and they'll be automatically recognizable.

>> No.3650090

>>3647503
Options:
Suicide
Ignore it
Make them deeper
Embrace their shallowness
suicide (did I mention this?)

>> No.3650097

>>3647503
Give them personality. While they obviously will not be very important to the story, they are still characters. Characterize them.How do they walk, talk, react to the situations before them? They should not be interchangeable, as in, they are distinct and the reader feels that they are not blank slates that bounce off main main characters' own problems.

>> No.3650098

read some Gene Wolfe

>> No.3650136

>>3647503
Learn from the master of depth: http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Peace-Brayden-Summerfield/dp/1616674776

>> No.3650181

>>3647503
Just spend more time on them. Learn more about people in general (leave your house), and drop your own biases at the door, but realize that they, the characters may and should have their own. That's not to say that you cannot create a character with similar ideals and morals as yourself, but don't make a habit of it.

>> No.3650194
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3650194

>>3650136

>http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Peace-Brayden-Summerfield/dp/1616674776

>War has broken out across the land. Follow the journey of a blacksmith named Thorbess as he establishes an Order that will fight to bring peace back to the land. Join their crusade as they face an out numbering amount of enemies and challenges. Follow them as they lose friends and gain new ones all for a greater purpose that none of them know of or understand. Will peace be achieved or will war's dark reign of death and destruction still cover the land? Find out about personal secrets and stories; put the pieces together to find out the truth. What will the future hold for the Order? What is the ultimate price for peace?

>> No.3650197

"If you describe someone, it is flat, as a photograph is, and from my standpoint a failure. If you make him up from what you know, there should be all the dimensions."