Fixed Bugs:
Just discovered this gem this morning: Critique Match, an "an online platform that connects writers, beta readers, and freelance editors."
Obviously this site is immediately going into my favorite links list! Hopefully it'll prove to be a useful site to you, too.
Background is everything. I'm not talking about a character's history, though yes, that is important to flesh out if not for your readers than for yourself as the author. No, the background I am referring to is the background with which your characters interact. The floors they walk on, the halls they navigate, the roads they wander down late into the misty night as crickets chirp and the stars wink overhead.
Without background you have floating bodies in a vacuum; a void, and thus you have nothing to root your reader. They won't care what your character sounds like, how they move, or how they interact and react. It might keep them intrigued for a hot minute, certainly, but what does any of it matter without a landscape?
Readers must know where your character is positioned, how they're moving through their world, or what feelings arise as they stand in a bustling coffee shop surrounded by the clashing scents of hazelnut mochas and lemongrass teas as their voice gets drowned out by harried customers and the deafening sound of steam wands foaming oat milk. But it's not only for our reader's benefits, mind you. It's for us, too. Without having the answers to these questions, do we really know anything about the characters we're birthing?
Some will argue and say I'm too focused on detail, that this is why my stories are too long. And I will not disagree with that. I've even written a Facebook post on the very subject, to which a good friend of mine responded "Embrace it!" (Actually she wrote quite a bit more than that, but such was the gist of her incredibly passionate and encouraging response.)
In honor of embracing detail, I'm even going to go one step and beyond and say it's not just about the background scenery you've placed your character, it's about their clothing choices. The way they wear their hair. Why they choose to wear—or not wear—the make up that they do. Though as I've learned from Ann Copeland, once you have written these details, it's not enough to say it once and move on. You have to implement it into your story every now and again. Preferably in the way your character and background work interchangeably together.
Based of a real experience I had back in August, I was in a park—not quite a dog park but certainly a park where everyone brought their dogs nonetheless—having a family picnic when along came a girl dressed in a red, glitter-ridden ballgown for a quinceanera, accompanied by her half-dozen or so male escorts dressed as if they were princes, roses in their mouths. This group was out of place. They were also there for a photo shoot. As they walked from place to place looking for the ideal photo spot, the girl's dress needed to be lifted at its poofed out hems to avoid dragging along the dry brush under foot or getting snagged on the rough bark of the closely surrounding trees.
We see here the scenery, the character's dress, and the way it forces her to interact with her surroundings. It also shows us how important this event is to her.
My only exception to these rules comes in the form of minor characters.
When it comes to minor characters with whom the readers have no purpose connecting with, I will not spend time nor waste precious word counts describing them. Especially not in massive detail.
In short, I never describe characters that won't affect the story in some shape in form. That said, their presence—however minor—must still affect the scene in which they're placed. They must have some form of interaction with the people around them. Which is why I'll likely make note of what this minor character is doing, or specify an intriguing detail about their appearances, especially if it's in character for the narrator to notice such things. But make no mistake, these details are written as but a blip on the page. Anything else would be a waste.
Then why write what they're doing at all? You might ask. Why even add them in the first place?
My only four reasons for adding minor characters is that they...
1. Provide an introductory set up for the primary protagonist/main character (PP/MC). Let's look at an elitist—or at least judgmental—protagonist as she stares in abhorrence at the purple leggings under a green frilly tutu of her waitress in the bar, grateful she'd never have to work a job that would force her to wear that.
2. Are capable of forming the basis for a plot. A character so minor is taking up the park bench on which your character wishes to sit, so they opt for a view of the sunset on the river from the grass. We can learn about the character's feelings—Is it a better view anyway and they're happy? Do they even give it a second thought? But perhaps they actually wind up meeting someone else who's unhappy with the circumstance of the preoccupied bench and form a connection which then forms the entire basis for the rest of the story
3. Bring to light our primary character's idiosyncrasies. A minor character is drinking from a fountain in such a disgusting manner your main protagonist changes their mind, ducks out of the line they've been impatiently waiting in for several minutes to quench their thirst, and casually opts for a water bottle instead. Unless there are no nearby water bottles. Will they forget their thirst, improvise, or cave and drink begrudgingly from that same fountain?
4. Add a drop of realism and relational ability. Even if the minor characters scattered here and there might add nothing to the plot and are never be seen or heard from again, they add just enough realism, just enough resistance to end your primary character's too-easy-flowing forward-moving inertia, readers will feel as if they're in a real location, viewing a real person, and ideally might even find themselves relating as a result.
