Writers in the Storm

by Ellen Buikema

Good stories have a cast of characters who each play a specific role. Minor characters, although not indispensable to the plot, matter.

Minor characters are not afterthoughts to the protagonists.

These characters can make or break a story. In addition to advancing the plot, they add depth and dimension. These individuals usually have a small role and often appear for a few scenes. But even if they aren’t in the story for long, minor characters can have a significant impact.

If you want to give a minor character more depth and dimension, you can give them their own story arc with something as simple as emotional or physical change.

Minor characters have many forms.

They can fill out the population of your world.

“The other townsfolk—rubes, as Uncle Al called them—had already made their way through the menagerie tent and into the big top, which pulsed with frenetic music.” Like Water for Elephants

Minor characters are great for providing information, which is a good way for the protagonist to overhear or see what’s happening.

In the Dead Until Dark: Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery #1 by Charlaine Harris,The main protagonist “listens in” telepathically to the thoughts of other characters to gather information. A gift that is both blessing and a curse.

They can set the tone of a scene.

Dean R. Koontz’s Lightning features a pair of foster parents that Laura, our protagonist, is afraid to love for fear of loss.  Her foster mom speaks.

‘“I owned an interior design firm, but I had to give it up eight years ago. Health reasons. Too stressful. I wasn’t used to sitting at home like a lump, so I did all the things I dreamed of as a businesswoman with no spare time. Like learning magic.”

“Health reasons?” Laura said.

“Security was a treacherous rug that people kept pulling out from under her, and now someone was getting ready to jerk the rug again.”’

These characters may be helpful in small plots. They might cause a problem and then leave or assist another character briefly.

Hugo, the drinking buddy of the protagonist’s father, drags the father home after a night on the town, warns the protagonist of trouble with the father in the morning, and then leaves, never to be found in the story again. (From a work in progress.)

The following tips can help to create great secondary characters.

1. Give them a reason for being

Minor characters without a clear purpose have the potential to unnecessarily complicate and disrupt the flow of your story.

Giving minor characters a reason for being doesn’t mean that each has to change the course of the storyline. A character’s purpose could be to support the protagonist, witness events, or point the main characters in a particular direction.

• In The Hunger Games, minor characters play a role in aiding, guiding, or hindering Katniss along her journey through the games.
• For a romantic comedy or family drama, the purpose of the minor characters can be to convey relationship history.
• A minor character in conflict with the main character helps create tension and keeps the readers turning the pages. No conflict—no story.

In each case, characters may have brief appearances. Having a defined purpose, they become an essential part of the story instead of window dressing.

2. Give them clearly defined traits

Whether on the physical or mental level, well-crafted features let even the most minor characters stand out from the crowd.

• Clearly defining an individual’s characteristics paints a vivid picture, fixing them in readers’ memories.
• A character’s defining trait could be their lack of tact. This person may own a closet filled with the same outfit, have an unusual physical attribute, or gesture wildly with their hands.
• Plainly defined traits help distinguish critical minor characters in your story.

3.   Have them impact the story

Consider their impact. Positive, negative, or neutral, this impact affects the reader’s perception and memory of a character.

• Even if a character only appears for a short time, their impact lives on, encouraging interest.
• Impact can be indirect or direct. A minor character can set events in motion that catch up to the protagonists, or they can directly interact with the protagonist.
• Whether wild and crazy or subtle and subdued, imbuing each character with their unique impact will cause the most minor of players to stand out.

4. Consider their relationship to the protagonist

Unless you plan to write a story using one character, your protagonist(s) will interact with many characters and represent all kinds of relationships: family, friends, lovers, colleagues, acquaintances, and strangers.

• Tying a minor character’s relationship to the main character reinforces their worth in the story, giving them meaning and adding to the tale.
• Once the relationship between a minor and major character is established, the reader becomes more invested in minor character.

5. Give them a personal dialogue style

As a fundamental element of character development, dialogue can help define and distinguish one character from the next.

Giving a minor character distinctive dialogue patterns distinguishes them from the others, making them memorable no matter how small their role is.

The way they speak provides insight into our character.

• Formal or informal
• Use of more than one language
• Slang
• Lively or mellow – how each character speaks adds depth to your story.

Think about the unique interests, traits, and background of each character. How old are they? Where are they from? What happened in their lives to develop their personalities?

Also, consider their voice and speech patterns.

One character may speak a mile a minute while another may speak with great care due to a stutter. One may blab on incessantly, while another may be a person of few words.

The next time you consider your cast of characters, see if any of the above tips helps in writing minor characters that matter.

What types of roles do your secondary characters have? How do you differentiate your characters? Do you have a favorite secondary character?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents and a series of chapter books for children with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, YA paranormal fantasy.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by Sam Williams from Pixabay

by Lynette M. Burrows

Are your characters two-dimensional? Do they all sound like you and only you? Tune in to the music of character voices, make them sound more like the different instruments of a band or orchestra. Make music with your character voices and your readers won’t be able to get enough of the stories you write.

Great Characters are the key to great fiction.

Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel

What or Who Your Character Is

There are many things to consider when creating your story characters. Many how-to-write articles suggest creating a detailed profile of your characters. Delving into a character’s birth place, likes and dislikes, job, hair color, and using tools like spreadsheets and fill-in-the-blank questionnaires can be helpful, but characters are more than the details on a spreadsheet or form. Character are more than their story role, more than the point of view you choose for them, and more than what they do in the story. Your characters each need a voice, a unique voice. But how do you create that?

The Key to Understanding Characters

When a writer is told they’re too young or haven’t lived enough life to write about it, it’s often because of a lack of understand the basics of character or even life. A general understanding of psychological personality types will go a long way to helping you create varied and interesting characters. 

Learn about the fundamental personality types. Go deeper than Wikipedia, though it may give you an overview that is helpful. There are literally millions of sites on the internet that discuss variations on personality types. Choose one that’s reliable like psychcentral, psychology today, and The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Psych Central has a helpful explanation of what is personality. Psychology Today discusses the basics of personality traits. NIMH has a great resource on personality disorders. Those three sites offer multiple articles on personality, personality traits, and personality disorders. 

Establish Your Characters’ Musical Pitch

The most significant part of any melody is pitch. It’s the part you remember, the part that you hum absentmindedly or sing with abandon.

When we read a story or watch a film, we connect with characters whose inner guidance system is most like ours. Choices the character makes, and the possibilities rejected by that character, fascinate us. The more we wonder, “would I have done that” and “what’s he going to do now,” the more we are hooked..

How do we create unique yet relatable characters? Go deeper in developing your characters. 

Most people have morals, values, or other belief systems that guide them in their choices. It’s the reason they choose B over A when A and B are equal. Call it an inner guidance system, their pitch. Thousands of religious belief systems and a non-religious belief systems in the world offer potential for story characters. 

Often we don’t think about our inner guidance system, it just is. It is significant because it is the belief that you could never do x, but y is okay. 

The five dominate religions in the world are Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Develop a general understanding of each of them. Each belief system (religious or not) creates a different pitch. A person with deep beliefs in one of these systems will believe in different taboos and different words, actions, or events will trigger feelings of repulsion or guilt. 

Decide which inner guidance system each of your characters follows. The more significant your character, the deeper you want to dive into their belief system and how it creates tension with or conflict between the others in your story. 

Discover the Texture of Each Character’s Melody

Musical texture is a complex concept. The easiest way to understand it is to consider two or more versions of the same piece of music. One instrument plays one version. Two or three instruments play the next version. A full orchestra and a vocalist create a third version. Each of those versions has a different texture.

Characters play certain roles in stories: protagonist, hero, villain, antagonist, sidekick, etc. These roles define their story purpose. Story purpose is important, but don’t make the characters relatable or interesting or part of a symphony, orchestra, band, or even a song.

There is a spark in most people. It lights them up and spreads the joy or enthusiasm they have. Some people’s spark is a shining beacon. In others, it’s a tiny spark that keeps them going no matter how badly life piles it on.

This spark may look identical to all the characters in your story, but make sure it is unique to each individual character. The spark influences the way they see the world. It influences the way they interpret people, places, and events. They also gravitate toward people with similar sparks and away from those with extremely different sparks. 

Your characters could all wish to be writers, but the thing that sparks their joy is different. One writer could be all about writing historical nonfiction, another lives and breathes fantasy, and a third writes contemporary women’s fiction. That means each of them will find different ways to interpret story events. Witnessing a historical event thrills a historical nonfiction writer. The fantasy lover may see the event as a unique way to introduce elves or vampires to a similar situation. And a contemporary women’s fiction writer might see it as a struggle a contemporary woman must overcome to be empowered.

Consider what sparks joy in each of your characters and how those sparks are different. How each character interacts with and interprets events around them will be different based on their view of the world. Who do they gravitate toward and who do they avoid?

Mimic the Rhythm of Music

In real life, people move and talk rhythmically in a way that is differs from other people. It may be similar within a family or between twins, but there are always variations. 

Most people from the U.S. will assume that Southerners have a slower way of speaking. Consider the distinct speech patterns and word choices a midwestern farmer and an east coast Ivy School graduate use. Or the daily life rhythms of a suburban mom with the rhythms of an urban single woman. Is your character a native to the story’s locale or a visitor or an immigrant? You wouldn’t expect any of these people to dress, move or speak the same. They may have similarities, but their differences make them interesting. Create your characters with their own cadences of speech, body language, and movement. 

The inner lives of people, the rhythms of movement and speech they use make ordinary characters extraordinary. 

Cacophony or Symphony?

Is all this character development necessary? Writers could spend an eternity developing all the traits, practices, beliefs, emotions, history and all the things that create the music of a particular character. Some readers of specific genres don’t want to get all squishy about characters. Know your genre. Know how deeply you want to dive into your characters and if your readers will appreciate the music of character voices. 

Developing all the pieces of your characters’ voices may create a cacophony that will confuse or distract your reader. Choose to develop the melodic parts of your characters that strengthen your story, your genre, your voice. 

Need More Help?

You don't have a natural ear for making your characters behave and talk like real people? There are ways you can work on achieving deeper characterizations.

If your critique partner say your characters all sound the same, read your dialogue aloud. Only the dialogue. Does it all sound the same? If it doesn’t sound the same to you, record yourself reading the dialogue. What inflections and tones do you add that aren’t reflected on the page? (Don’t worry, we all leave things off the page and think our readers can sense it.)

Some Resources

If you need forms or spreadsheets, check out Angela Ackerman's post about Character Builder software on the One Stop for Writers site. There are many more available, experiment with them. And remember to go beyond the spreadsheets and forms.

Lori Freeland's post explains that characters are people too and gives suggestions you may find helpful.

Become a people watcher. Go to a public space — a mall, a public park, the airport — anywhere people gather. Listen to the voices surrounding you, watch the body language, the clothing, attitudes. Ask yourself questions. What musical theme do the two people holding hands make? What makes those two people different from one another? How does the language and behavior of that family of four make them different? Even a child mimicking their parent has unique traits. 

Deliberately create voices that are not yours. Research different personality types, different backgrounds and give your characters ones you don’t have. Go to festivals or international fairs and listen to the music of their voices and conversations. You might also learn interesting tidbits about their cultural background.

Make Your Story’s Music

Like all aspects of writing, it takes practice to become good at making the music of character voices work for you. You are the conductor and creator. You can do this.

The music of character voices in your story will strengthen your reader’s connection to your story. And the sweet melody of success will be yours when a writing partner or reader comments about how each of your character has their own theme song. 

What's your best tip or most difficult struggle for giving story characters distinct voices (theme music)?

by Penny C. Sansevieri

I’m a huge fan of author education, and there’s no better way to further your book marketing and publicity success than attending a writers’ conference. The connections you make at these events are tremendous.

With writers’ conferences finally returning to in-person, now is an excellent time to start planning for your next event. Virtual conferences were a great option, but in my opinion, there’s nothing like meeting other writers and industry professionals in person.

A word about goals...

Unfortunately, I find many authors attend writers' conferences for the wrong reasons. I’ve heard authors say things like, “I’m going to land an agent!” While it does happen that an author may find an agent at a writers’ conference, it’s rare and should not be your absolute goal.

What Should You Expect?

This really depends on the event. When you first come across an event, I recommend you review all the classes offered before deciding to commit. Some conferences focus only on craft, while others are more heavily marketing-focused, so it depends on the event itself.

Planning Considerations

Don’t get pulled in by some flashy headline if the speaker tracks and content aren’t appealing to you. I suggest finding at least four classes that you feel are worthwhile before registering. Of course, you’ll probably want to attend more sessions, but four is a good start. That’ll give you enough time to network, maybe take in an agent meeting or two (if that’s something you want to do), as well as attend keynotes and luncheon speakers.

If you’re attending an event just to meet an agent (or two), make sure that agents are attending the event who handle your genre. That can be a big disappointment if you base going to the event solely on finding an agent, only to discover that none of them work in your particular genre.

Types of Conferences

As I mentioned above, there are literally as many writers' conferences as there are genres (well, almost). There are romance-specific events, mystery and thriller events, and even writers' conferences geared to lawyers who write fiction- you’d be surprised how many attorneys we’ve worked with over the years who write fiction!

So, I always suggest digging through some events and maybe even consider attending events outside your genre. Let me explain.

Attending Outside Your Genre

I’ve spoken for Romance Writers of America multiple times, which always puts on a great conference. And though I write in non-fiction, I always find their classes helpful. I know a lot of authors who attend events outside of their genre, like fantasy authors who go to Thriller Fest and on and on. 

Though the sessions will be specific for a certain genre, you still can learn a lot from attending these events if the tracks seem appealing to you.

Finding the Right Conference for You

Google is a great place to start, but magazines like The Writer always have a monthly listing of events (and it’s pretty extensive). Also, many local writer's groups may be linked to events that appeal to you. Ask around, you may just find your new favorite event!

(See below for some of my recommendations.)

What Are Your Book Marketing and Publicity Goals?

A big piece of deciding on what kind of events to go to will depend on your goals. If you’re looking to sell your manuscript to a publisher, you’ll want an event with many agent appointments. But if education is your interest, you’ll want to identify what you want to learn and make sure the conference offers related sessions.

Do you need to get more versed in social media? Are you interested in getting more influencers to review your book? Want to know more about how to work the Amazon algorithm? Knowing what you’d like to learn will help you decide which writers’ conference to attend.

In-Person vs. Virtual Conferences

Some events offer a blend of in-person and virtual, though not all – and some have gone all virtual for the foreseeable future. So if attending virtually is more your thing, that’s definitely another option. Though I have to say, it’s such a great investment to participate in person.

Why you should always purchase conference recordings

Most conferences record sessions, and I always encourage authors to get a set of recordings. Why? You’re not going to be able to attend everything, even when you attend sessions in person. Also, you may hear of sessions that you didn’t get to attend after the event, so it’s always good to have recordings to listen to later!

Be Prepared!

Now that you’ve booked your writer's conference let’s get ready to make the most of it.

• Join the conference Facebook group: This is a great way to start networking early and get to know some of the speakers, topics, and attendees.
• Bring business cards: You don’t have to spend a lot of money creating these, but bring something professional looking that you can hand out.
• Collect business cards: Also, note where you met the person on the back and briefly take down what you discussed.
• Be prepared to talk about yourself: I know this is tricky for many authors. We live in our world, and networking is hard, but the better prepared you can be, the easier this will flow. Here are a few things you should be ready to talk about:
  • What kinds of books do you write? Get very clear on your genre; not knowing what genre you write in is the #1 way to look like an amateur.
  • Describe them in one brief sentence.
  • If you’re writing non-fiction, what are your qualifications?
• Bring swag if you have it: Swag can be anything from bookmarks to character trading cards – swag is optional but if you have it, bring it.
• Hit the bar: Some of the best conversations happen after the last session, so be sure and stop by the hotel bar and don’t be afraid to tee up a conversation or two while you’re there – just don’t, you know, partake too heavily. This is a work event, not a vacation.
• Never sit alone: It’s easy to want to sit alone during lunch or dinner but don’t, and most events won’t let you anyway. You’ll be seated at a table of eight or ten, generally. Also, don’t sit with the same people all the time. Get to know as many other writers and speakers as you can.
• Don’t hog a speaker's time: This is from personal experience. As a speaker attending events, I can tell you that being courteous to others who want to chat with a speaker, whether after a session or during a meal, will be greatly appreciated by not just the speaker but other writers who want a chance to ask some questions.

Final Thoughts

Writers’ Conferences can be a fantastic way to network with other authors, learn more about your craft, and dig into more book marketing and publicity. It can be both inspiring and career-building if done right! I hope to see you at one very soon.

Also, here’s a list of a few conferences I love:

• San Francisco Writers Conference
• IBPA’s Publishing University
• Emerald City Writers Conference
• Southern California Writers Conference
• Romance Writers of America
• The 805 Writers Conference

What conferences are your favorites? What are some positives that have come from writing conferences you've attended? Please share down in the comments so we can all trade information.

About Penny

Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a bestselling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU. She was named one of the top influencers of 2019 by New York Metropolitan Magazine. 

Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most innovative Amazon visibility campaigns as well offering national media pitching, online book marketing, author events, and other strategies designed to build the author/book visibility. 

She is the author of 18 books, including How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload on Amazon, Revise and Re-Release Your Book, 5-Minute Book Marketing for Authors, and From Book to Bestseller. She also hosts the top ranking podcast Book Marketing Tips and Author Success.

AME has had dozens of books on top bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal. 

To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, visit www.amarketingexpert.com.