More on minions — and other minor characters

I loved Mario’s post this weekend. The word “minion” conjures up so many wonderful images, but it was also a very thoughtful piece that caused me to begin thinking about minor characters and even those little walk-ons that happen when one is writing fiction.

We often talk about “colour” and “place” in novels and they are crucial important background items that help a great deal in bringing a story to vivid life – especially if the reader lives there or has visited. That visceral “I’ve seen that building!” or “I know that place”, can certainly add to a novel’s success. For those who haven’t been to that location, the writer must provide clear images to fire the imagination and inner eye of the reader. It really can be the kiss of death when a novelist can’t manage to portray these things believably (or at all).

But maybe there’s a third very important background piece that is too often taken for granted in novel writing: the perfect background character.

I know I’ve been guilty of not giving these important people their due. You know what I mean. If you had to visually represent them, most would be cardboard cutouts. It’s quick and easy to populate a story with the “extras” you need, but I, for one, need to do it with more care.

There is something else that must be considered here, though, before you start to flesh out those walk-ons: how much is too much?

Everyone in a novel can’t be a “character”, those people who are quirky, often memorable, and when used judiciously, can lift the writing directly into the readers’ imagination. I can’t remember now whose novel it was (but it was a well-known, dare I say, famous author who was well thought of), but I do remember not finishing the book. The problem was that every character seemed to have an interesting background, or something quirky about their personality to the point that the main characters seemed overwhelmed by the background and the story rather bogged down. I remember thinking, Too hard to wade through, and set the book aside.

So that’s the back side of this coin. The front side reveals books that are so plot- and/or character- driven that unimportant characters are herded on and off the stage to the point where they seem more like cattle.

Where is the happy medium and how do you know when you’ve found it? And what are the secrets to being in that “sweet spot”?

I’ll have more thoughts on this next week, but first, I want to hear from Type M readers, and not just those of you who are authors. For the readers: how much do you want/need to know about those with whom the main characters in a book interact? What authors do you think handle this particularly well – and why? For the authors: how do you handle this aspect when crafting your novels?

Respect Your Minions

I'm close to priming the BSP pump and start spraying news about my forthcoming Felix Gomez detective-vampire book, Rescue From Planet Pleasure. Early in that story I had a battle between the good vampires and the enemy bloodsuckers. My heroes were cutting down the bad guys by the dozens. Then during the writing of that manuscript I saw the James Bond thriller, Skyfall, and that made me reconsider the body count. Near the climax of the movie, a horde of bad guys close upon Bond and company trapped in the mansion. Our intrepid champions cut through the ranks of the evil doers who kept attacking and attacking like mindless zombies. Then it hit me.

Why are minions so willingly expendable? Why are the bad guy pawns so relentless in their attack despite being slaughtered? These guys are criminals, which means they have only two possible motives. Either they are cultish slaves or they're in the business of murder and mayhem for profit. Even if they are devoted slaves to the master criminal, wouldn't they--as they're being mowed down--ask the boss to reconsider their strategy? What's the point of them dying like vermin? And if they're in it for the money, I think that after one or two bite the dust, the rest would pull back and regroup. Money is only good if you can spend it, something that's hard to do from the grave.

In Skyfall the bad guys arrive in a gigantic helicopter, worth tens of millions of dollars. Flying that machine ain't easy, so it would have to be piloted by an experienced and rather level-headed crew, and despite their competency, the copter is easily destroyed. At what point would the crew hit "minion-override" and decide to quit acting stupid? A band of murderous criminals is like a pack of wolves, and like wolves, once the alpha threatens the pack, then they turn on him.

That realization made me reconsider the slaughter of the minions in my story, and I cut back on the body count. I even had some of the minions rebel against the villain because of their useless loss. As we writers like to say, everyone is the hero of their own story, so it would make sense for the minions to act in their own self-interest. Which actually makes for a more layered and deeper story. Lesson learned.