This post is from April 02, 2023 – continuing in the theme of expanding the story without padding, here’s a look at fleshing out minor characters that I wrote while in the last third of Dust of the Ocean.

I’m about to break and enter into a research lab in order to recover some alien technology… Note, NSA dude, I’m talking about the Work In Progress here, not real life. Anyway, this can either be done via doorkicking, or it can be done via shenanigans. I could go either way, but shenanigans is appealing. However, in order to make hijinks plausible, I need a character that know the lay of the land…

It’s way too late in the story and hundreds of miles away from friendly territory, so introducing a new character is right out. But developing a more minor one? Ah, this is entirely possible. In fact. I have two alternative for the job, based on jokes and comments they’ve made earlier. This would just turn those one-liners into foreshadowing. Which… actually makes a lot of sense, and it’s why I accuse my back-brain of being smarter than my conscious brain is, because the opportunities were built in.

All have to do is 1.) use them, and 2.) make sure I go back and flesh that out just enough that readers who were skimming still feel like this didn’t come out of nowhere.

Think of it as the Larry Correia school of minor character moments:

Larry Correia
January 23, 2018
I’m editing House of Assassins now, and I got to thinking about a trick I do. Maybe this will help aspiring writers.

One thing I get complimented on is that most of my secondary and even tertiary characters feel fleshed out. In actuality that’s not true, because Guard #3, I didn’t pay any more attention to him than necessary. But if you add a little extra focus to even a few of these type characters, it will create a feeling of depth.

So tonight I come across a minor character who needs to come into a scene, basically do one thing, and then die. This character needs to be here. But as I wrote that scene, I went to the To Do List at the end of the book (that’s literally what it is titled so I can find it fast with a ctrl F) and made a note about that guy.

So while editing, I looked at that minor character who needed to do something important, and then I asked myself where I could maybe have him show up earlier to get a bit more depth.

At the same time on the To Do List, I had a note about fleshing out another secondary character by telling something about his family.

Boom. Connection made. Problem solved. So minor character gets attached to this other character.

So then I go through the book looking for scenes with this second character, and what is the story between these two. I made a few tweaks, added a bit of a complication, and all of a sudden there is this really tragic story of betrayal and sacrifice involving a secondary and tertiary character.

And by adding like 500 words, spread across four scenes, there is now this really interesting story about these two guys.

If you pay attention there are often a bunch of opportunities like this while you edit.