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Oct 28, 2011

Minor Details for Minions.

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was not just any little girl, she was a princess and she had a lot of minions. For times sake I will refer to her minions as minion 1, minions 2 and so on. Because they are minions they have no personality and can blend into the background for all I care! One day prince charming comes along and he gets a two page description and the princess and him live happily ever after.

The minions I was referring to were the minor characters of the story. Now there is a common misconception that if a character is minor than it does not need a character profile. But even if you are the third wheel on a date and kind of unimportant you are still you! So minor characters may seem trial but they are still characters and as so they have personalities. Sometimes they can be the comic relief or the know-it-all or the one sane person in a gooey romance.

The take home advice for this is treat your minor characters with as much care as the major ones. If you do this then readers will have a hard time figuring out the love interest. Oh, suspense!

Now, let me just define what a minor character is, before you start writing profiles for the milkman who only says "hello" and "goodbye". Minor characters are characters that appear in the story several times and speak more than a total of 100 words or have a close relationship with one of the protagonists.

So I think this might be the last installment on the character bandwagon, the only thing left would be character description (appearance and what not), I like to do that after the I write the plot so I don't have to keep going back and forth adding important props. I think everyone knows how to describe their characters.

So next up will be the plot and the actual story. I'm planning on dropping everything but homework and writing this story for NaNoWriMo. I'm, shooting for a short story of 100 pages, 5 pages a day will leave me room if I need to extend it. I know it's weird to hear 100 pages referred to as short but most of my other stories are looking like they'll be 200 pages as the very least.

Click here for Alfred, Rosie and the Arab.

Xoxo


9 comments:

  1. I love the way you write your posts! It's almost like a poem.

    I have to admit, I have a lot of minor characters who don't really serve a purpose and have no personality whatsoever.

    Are you typing or writing for NaNo?

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  2. I plan on writing. There is something so inspirational and magical about paper and pen. Maybe I've just associated the computer with homework :P

    Xoxo

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  3. haha! I can sympathise. After years of typing up assignments on my laptop, I'm not so happy to have one anymore.

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  4. WOW...you write it so cool! I like it!
    have a nice day :)

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  5. Good luck with Nano - I only did it one year but it was great fun!

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  6. Amazing post. Love the photos.
    I love writing minor characters. I actually like doing characters just waay too much, so.

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  7. Love the character building advice! Can't wait for your next installments!

    Wishing you a spooktacular day and eve!

    xo Mary Jo

    http://ON-PCH.com

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  8. beautiful shots. i love the second one
    thanks for sharing
    x

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