Tag Archives: Storytelling

How to Write First Class Secondary Characters

Writing Tips, ,

How to Write First Class Secondary Characters. The Hero of Your Story Lives in a Larger World Beyond Herself. She lives in a fictional world you have created. A world populated by other people usually referred to as secondary characters. I suggest you also think of them as supporting characters because they support  your main character and her story.

Your Hero Drives Your Story. But, no matter how substantial and fully realized she may be, if her supporting cast is weak, your story will be weakened too. Your story structure will be in danger of toppling —  off your reader’s bedside table into oblivion. As Mike Nichols said of all characters. You must give your secondaries their own beating heart humanity.

Create a Full Cast of Individuals who Come to Life on the Page. Functionaries won’t do, characters who walk on stage, perform a task or two, then disappear forever. If someone makes an appearance for any reason, however mundane, they must appear again in some meaningful way. They add to the emotional truth of your story. They are not just furniture.

Some Supporters Appear Often and Prominently, Others Less So. But they all perform actions that drive the story forward or amplify your hero’s role. They may not be as fleshed out as your hero, but you, the author, still must know and imagine them to be flesh and blood individuals, complete with compelling and memorable details. Click here to learn about this detail.

Your Hero’s Support Character may be a Lover, Enemy, Friend, Whomever. He or she may lessen story tension by making us laugh now and then or enhance that tension by introducing an obstacle to your hero’s goal. Whatever the secondary character’s purpose,  they must be carefully written to have an impact and engage your reader.

The Most Readily Effective Cast is Headed by a Trio. The hero, her mate or sidekick, and the villain. The hero leads the story; the other two support the story. They are the foundation upon which the story is built. They keep your story moving. You must explore two critical questions for each. What must they do in this story situation? Where do they belong – on which side of the story conflict?

These Questions Relate Especially to the Motivation of a Mate or Sidekick. How this character responds. Why they respond. These are the essentials of their story role. Dig deep to find the best motivation ideas for this character. Determine what their resulting actions will be, and you have discovered how they will enlighten your story situation.

The Arc of the Sidekick’s Development Illuminates the Path they will Take. Make detailed notes on how they do or do not resolve the two crucial questions mentioned above. Whatever their path, these must be strong secondary characters. Their actions create dramatic events. Their interactions with the hero add emotional depth to her character, and to the story.

You are the Creator of your Story World and of Every Character’s Purpose. These characters serve your hero’s goals or impede them. You, as Creator, determine the specifics. The scenes, the action, the dialogue. Choose each of these for each character by weighing its potential to intensify story conflict. Because powerful conflict and struggle are the most essential support every successful story requires, and they are absolutely never secondary.

This is How to Write First Class Secondary Characters.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

ASK ALICE Your Crucial Questions. What are you most eager to know – in your writing work and in your writer’s life? Email aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. Or add a comment question to this post.

Alice has published 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, many articles and several blogs so far. She wrote her nonfiction book No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells as a gift to the writers’ community. Her latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.

A Time of Fear & Loving

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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Write Your Stories of Summer Memories

Inspiration, ,

 Write Your Stories of Summer Memories. We each have a memory bank account of favorite summertime nostalgia. One of my favorite memory bank deposits is a story of a green island and a pink tractor.

Once upon a time, I bought my husband Jonathan a 1947 tractor. My goal was to see him drive in the annual Strawberry Festival Parade. I had no idea how much that would come to mean to our family, because I hadn’t yet been diagnosed with breast cancer.

We lived on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, a 20-minute ferry ride from Seattle. We had moved there from New York City to help raise our grandchildren. We were city slickers plunged into village life on a five-acre plot of land two miles from town.

The parade was a local treasure, and antique tractors were its crown jewel. Our first parade summer, the closer those old tractors rolled, the brighter my husband’s eyes shone. I made a promise to myself right then. Someday Jonathan would drive his own tractor in that parade.

Our dream vehicle turned up eventually in Eastern Washington. The intense sun over there, on the other side of the Cascade Mountains, had bleached her from orange to a lovely shade of pink. We decided to leave her that way, and our five acres became Pink Tractor Farm.

The next year, despite Jon’s best efforts, on parade day, Pink refused to run. The following year, I had cancer. The last thing we needed was another complication, but Jonathan knew what a boost it would be for all of us to see Pink in the parade.

Jon, and an old tractor hand named Milt, worked like crazy to make that happen. Parade day morning, Jon was still tinkering. He and Pink had to get to the tractor lineup on time or it would be no-go again this year.

They made it down our driveway to the road. Ahead lay a long, steep hill. The grandkids and I spotted Jonathan from my red jeep as he attempted the climb. Several times, Pink’s engine turned over then stalled before he pronounced the inevitable by cell phone. “She’s not going to make it.”

But the children weren’t ready to give up. “Grandpa can do it!” they cried out together. That hope and belief radiating out the jeep window to Jonathan and his pink charger may explain why he gave her one more try. She rumbled to life, and they began to ascend.

Not long later, I was propped in a camp chair beside the parade route. “Come on, Honey,” I whispered as the kids’ shouts continued. “Grandpa can do it,” It was nothing less than a family victory when Pink bumped past at three miles an hour, smack dab in the middle of it all.

A little ditty popped into my mind at that moment. It’s simple rhyme rings with resonance still. “Strawberries are red. Tractors are pink. There’s more triumph in us than we may think.”

 What are your favorite summer story memories? Go full-bore for nostalgia. Aim straight at our hearts. Write Your Stories of Summer Memories. Do not hesitate to bring tears to our eyes – and your own.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Summer is also the season in Alice’s novel The Wrong Way Home – the first book in her Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Sample this warm weather treat for free HERE. Take to your deck chair with the four Riverton Road story adventures that follow. Find them, with the rest of Alice’s books, HERE.

What  readers say about A Wrong Way Home: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”  “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”

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Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen

Personal Storytelling, ,

Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen? Someone once said that watching me cook in my kitchen was like watching a captain on her ship. Sure of every move I make, piloting with confidence however agitated the sea may be. Don’t you love that feeling?

Or, you might prefer a dance metaphor. Cooking up a story comes with its own choreography. When all is well, we glide from counter to cupboard, sentence to sentence, light on our feet. Each gesture has purpose. Each word has its place. We take charge.

No need for a long mirror to watch ourselves. We know how we look in this familiar place. More important, we know how we feel. At home in our natural habitat. Free to deviate from the recipe, a pinch of plot experiment here, a dollop of quirky dialog there, without counsel or critique from anyone.

Who’s Cooking In Your Usual Story Kitchen? You are. Occasionally you may invite collaborators in, but generally trust your own judgement first. Prefer your own fingerprints on the spice jars of your imagination. You perform with comfort on this stage, and soloing here gives you peace.

I pause now to focus on those sensations in my personal experience. Luxuriating, mid-pirouette, toes grazing tile, fingers flying over keys, commanding whatever my creative corner of the world might be. All are, for the moment at least, part of my past.

My Covid era story kitchen is another place entirely. I no longer flow freely from one inspiration to the next. No longer relax in my familiar creative place. I am no longer a captain on the bridge of my ship. Because I am no longer alone.

My husband is here. He simply showed up one day, buffeted by circumstance onto my private preserve. I might have been less taken aback if he possessed more aptitude or affinity for the practical tasks at hand. But maybe not.

His choreography is clumsy at best. He wants to be here about as enthusiastically as I am eager to admit him. He is out of his element and imperfectly replanted in mine. We attempt a compromise amidst our mutual discomfort. Try our best not to blunder into each other’s path.

All the same, he taxes my parameters. Asks endless questions, makes furtive moves, displays little inclination for blending into his new, accidental environment. He captained his own ship in another place, at another time, but that ship is on covid drydock now.

Our pandemic pas de deux may improve with practice. Lately, we are less at odds, but I doubt he will ever slide smoothly between storage cabinet and stove, or that his bumpy ballet will become a beauty to behold. And this is only in the cooking kitchen.

In other rooms, something more troubling pervades. I have lost my private creative space. Writing has always been a solitary occupation for me. I am challenged to maintain motivation in a shared environment. Are you in a similar circumstance, struggling to contend with the same question? Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen?

Meanwhile, an even deeper discomfort lurks  beneath our displacement dissonance. The absence of supper guests who never arrive. We yearn for company worth unearthing our most lovely table linens to pamper and please, so sadly absent now.

We are in lockdown, staying at home, staying safe, whatever. No feet other than our own tread the deck of whosever ship this may end up to be. Which, we find with regret, is the least tolerable intrusion of all.

Who occupies your Coronial creative place? Who samples the kettle and adjusts the seasonings just so? What characters concoct your story stew and contrive the plots in your pots? Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen?

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

A Wrong Way Home

Aunt Dee cooks to heal the heart in Alice’s novel The Wrong Way Home – the ladle-licking-luscious first book in her Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Sample this delish dish for free HERE. After that appetizer, dig into the four Riverton Road story courses that follow. Find those, and the rest of Alice’s books, HERE.

What Readers Say: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”  “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”

https://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/