So you know how sometimes, you think of a character that is just so awesome you just can't hold it in? You want to explode and tell everyone how great they are and how everybody should love them- but not everybody because then they'd become a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu and that just sucks.
And so you focus on the awesome character and you build a world for them, and a story and a life and they become your Precious... But then comes the time to see them off and start giving them friends. I recently dove into this part of the writing processus and let me tell you-
It's a shithole. A dark and evil place where evrything is boring and bland and is even less interesting than the tabloid covers you read at the grocery store- be cause let's face the reality here people, what else are you gonna do while you're waiting to pay for your stuff?
This place is where your main charcater's friends are born, the place on the side... and they are side charcaters. ( We call them that because they're as ordinary as a side of fries next to your award-winning burger of a main.)
Side characters can be hard to make, especially if your main character is as mind-blowing as you made them. They have to be worthy of your Precious' friendship or hate, they've got to have a backstory to be abke to keep up with your Precious' ferocious past, they've got to be able to have enough personnality to support the story without completely taking over, and just enough of it that your Precious' isn't friends with the most boring people ever.
And so you realize, sitting there and thinking about Sides, that you have no idea what to do. ( Personally, I go online and find a bunch of dress up games to experiment with styles and appearances for various characters when I'm out of ideas, but hey- that's me.) All your good ideas went into the creation of your beautiful Main and you're reduced to hitting your head against a wall as they go off to do more awesome stuff.
So here's the lesson of today: YOU CAN MOVE STUFF AROUND.
This isn't a joke, I figured out I had to do this : take experiences away from my Main and hand them out to my Sides. Like taking the ketchup from your hotdog and putting it on the fries instead. The hotdog's still good, and the fries are even yummier!
You've got to be careful your Main doesn't lose all their attributes- think about what really defines them, what experiences they really need, and then give the rest out to your sides. Exmple:
You've got a guy who was born in an orphanage and then shipped off to china where he learns karate and tae kwon do ( completely diffrent, but hey to readers on this website, all martial arts come from China.) He also discovers he's a spiritual master and accidentaly marries a local, but leaves her because he's a player. But wait he also has a true love waiting for him on another continent, but he can't go and see her because he's exile because he's the chosen one and the people of that continent are evil!
This is all very interesting but all together it makes for too much. Especially if like most Mains these days, your character is really young- like in his twenties or younger. Taking some stuff away from them to give it over to Sides would work really well in this case. Examples:
Have a brother and sister from ( okay I'll just generalize:) Asia. Maybe the brother is a martial artist who is tasked with protecting his sister, a spiritual master. Or the other way around for girl power. ( See what I moved around?)
Have them meet the Main in some restaurant where an attention-seeking layer is chatting up the sister. ( Heheh see what I did there...) Give him something else to so his whole personnality isn't just ' weirdo pervert guy'.
And then what's left is your Main eing an orphan who's also the chosen one of something, and tryig to resue his love from a bunch of evilos on another continent!
Of course, there's a lot of work to be done when you get around to your Sides: what are their likes, dislikes- basically building them a personality and we already went over that.
Point is, Sides can be tough. If you're out of ideas or if they seem a bit too bland, try to move some backstories from one person to another to fit whoever it does best. And if there's nothing to be moved around and you can't even think of anything else outside of a general plot- then your story probably isn't going to be going places.
------- A/N:
Forgive any typos I might have made- am extremely tired but had to get this out of my system. G'night now.
