ThePoetSky Archive

Side characters require a tricky balancing act. If they’re not interesting, then the readers are going to start to wonder “Why am I reading about this character?” If they’re too interesting, readers are going to ask “Why isn’t this the main character?” I wrote last week about ensemble writing, which makes this easier, but even then, there will still be side characters. So how do you strike the balance?

Harry Potter is an example of the latter problem. As I mentioned last week, I don’t find Harry to be an interesting character, at least not when compared to the others. I found Neville and Luna far more interesting and wanted them to get more focus. Unfortunately, they’re only side characters. Instead, I’m stuck with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Despite hanging out with the main character, even Ron and Hermione don’t get nearly as much focus as he does.

Animorphs did a much better job managing the side characters. There are a few of them, but they are always in the background, and they’re never more interesting than the six main characters. We have a sense of their struggles, enough to understand them, but not so much that we need more than that. There are clear main characters, who each get about the same amount of attention as one another.

I have a lot of side characters in Girl in Red, but it’s hard to judge my own writing, because any information I want to know, I can flesh out in my head. While my beta reader enjoys the side characters, I’ve never gotten much feedback from anyone else. But writing ensemble occasionally allows me to jump into a side character’s perspective. I do this with many of the professors from time to time, which means they need to remain relevant, otherwise readers will get tired of it and skip to the next scene. Despite having focus, they are still side characters, and thus shouldn’t take up too much time.

Writing side characters is a balancing act. There are many ways to approach it. Side characters are necessary to a story, unless the main character is the only character in the story, which itself is tricky to do. Don’t put too much focus on a character unless you’re willing to go all in on them. And if while writing you find your side characters are more interesting than your main character, ask if maybe they should be the main characters. The best way to find out is to keep on writing.

#Essay #Characters #SideCharacters

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

I have a very affectionate dog. He just turned 14 (although you couldn’t tell by either his size or energy level), so I wanted to write a poem for him. The difficult part was figuring out what to write.

There’s a lot I can say about him. He fluffs pillows when he gets ready to lie down. He likes to snuggle with my son’s stuffed animals. He stares at me unblinking for several minutes when he wants something. He holds still when I have my phone out so I can take a picture. I could go into the long story of how he came into our family.

But the first thing most people learn about him is that he loves to give kisses. He’s always happy to see people, especially my family, and makes sure we all know how much he loves us.

I wrote One Hundred Kisses to celebrate my little dog with a big personality, and how much we all love him.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Ensemble is a category of stories in which there are multiple viewpoint or main characters. In a series, not all of the characters need to have focus in every book, but may be given focus in later books. Wings of Fire and Animorphs both do this. But multiple characters must have focus. This makes it tricky to write, since they must be balanced, but it has the advantage of providing multiple characters in the event that one character isn’t likable or takes time to progress.

In Girl in Red, I had at least ten viewpoint characters, between the students and teachers. In Skwyr Court, a different character takes over the narrative every so often. I had no system in Girl in Red for ensuring each character was given equal time, so one or two characters got more focus than the others. Especially in the first book, Rose got a lot more time than the others. As she faded into the background, other characters got more time in the spotlight. The eight characters I’d consider my “main” characters still got most of the focus, but other characters, including Dumbledore, Draco, and Umbridge, all had parts written from their perspectives.

In Skwyr Court, I have a system. At the time of writing this essay, not all the main characters have been introduced, but after they are, the sequence of viewpoint characters will repeat itself. This ensures that each character will be given equal time and focus. This is what Animorphs did, more or less, using a different narrator each book. Most readers will pick a favorite, so its important to give roughly equal time to each one.

It’s also important to give different characters focus because readers will also have a least favorite. If that character gets too much focus, it can lose readers. While I like the world of Harry Potter, I don’t care for Harry himself. I found the other characters more interesting, but Harry is the only main character, making it hard to follow the series again. Were Harry Potter an ensemble series, the other characters would have focus, and I could at least grin and bear it until a more interesting character took focus.

Focusing on multiple characters is tricky to get right without having a system in place. Some writers have hand-written notes in different colors for different characters. Others will mark each scene in an outline so they know who has recently had focus. In Crimson Caster (year seven), I alternated between groups of characters each chapter. Not only did that build tension when each one ended on a cliffhanger, but it also ensured that each group got attention, not just my favorite group. There are many different ways to approach this. Pick the one that best suits your story.

#Essay #Ensemble

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Once I reached middle school, I rarely cared for any of the books I read in school. They were the “classics”, which meant they had a lot to teach about the art and craft of writing (something I appreciate now), but I didn’t care for the characters, plot, or setting. But my middle school had a program called “Reading Counts”, which let us check out a book from the library, read it, then answer a few questions about it, and that would count towards our English class.

This let me select books I enjoyed, one of which was A Wizard of Earthsea. I enjoyed it, never realizing that it was only the first book in a series. This past January, I got the entire collection, deciding I wanted to read all of it. Being in quarantine has helped expand my reading habits from non-existent to reading every day. I began it in January, and finished it at the end of October.

While I was reading the books, I’d been thinking about Skwyr Court. A lot of it came from the ideas I’d had in Girl in Red, but I kept asking “What makes this different?” At the time, not much. It was a standard story about teenagers growing up in a castle in a fantasy world, something that’s been done to death since the Harry Potter books were first published. It was when J.K. Rowling essentially claimed that trans women weren’t actually women that I had another idea. I wanted this world to include everyone.

Which brings me back to Earthsea. When Ursula K. Le Guin began writing it, as she said, it was fairly standard. The first big difference she made was not making the main character, Ged, white. When she reached her second book, The Tombs of Atuan, she made the main character female. There was a long gap between her third and fourth books in the series, and during that time, she began to rethink the ideas instilled in her about the standard tales. The brave man saving the damsel in distress, etc. And so she focused more on the women for the fourth book. She went against many of the stereotypes of the time, which haven’t faded away yet.

I’ve always been timid, something I don’t often see in male characters. That’s why Neville is the only male among my main four in Girl in Red, because he’s the character I wanted to follow. And female characters can do so much more than sit back and cheer on the men (as Rose, Hermione, and Luna have proven many times). I didn’t want Skwyr Court to be yet another story with the knight or powerful wizard defeating the villain in an awesome display of power. As Le Guin has written before, this doesn’t need to be the main plot.

As I read the books of Earthsea, I found that the fantasy story I wanted to follow was no longer Harry Potter, but Earthsea. A series that pushes the limits of the possible archetypes. I’m not saying that Skwyr’s going to be groundbreaking, because it’s simply not, but I want to focus more on problems real people encounter, putting them in a world of magic and wonder.

I wrote The Hawk’s Flight as a tribute to Le Guin, not only for showing me a world of wonder, but for showing me that my writing can push the boundaries of the familiar. And that’s exactly what I want to do.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Not long after I started writing Girl in Red, I realized that I needed to challenge Rose. I’ve found many ways to do so, but I wanted a villain, and Voldemort wasn’t going to cut it against Rose. While I was talking to my friend about it, she mentioned how cool it’d be if something else lived in the Chamber of Secrets. And thus the idea of Slytherin began to form.

Slytherin is first introduced at the end of year two as a disembodied entity that lives in the Chamber of Secrets. It possesses a small army of “Spektres”, which are essentially Dementors that can cast spells, and “Cruentius”, a creature made of animated blood. Rose fights Cruentius while in the Chamber of Secrets, and despite the fact that Cruentius kills her, wins the fight. At this point, Slytherin is a villain. It has an unknown goal, but has no problem killing people to get what it wants.

In the following year, Rose and Slytherin talk more, developing Slytherin. At this point, Rose believes Slytherin to be the consciousness of Salazar Slytherin. It has Rose fetch Hufflepuff’s Cup, which, while readers may recognize it as a Horcrux, doesn’t mean anything to Rose. During this, Slytherin speaks through Cruentius, who is able to take a human form. What changes her perception of Slytherin is what happens at the end of the year. Rose accidentally breaks a Time Turner, causing time to bleed around her. She ultimately gets help from Slytherin to repair the Time Turner and restore time. At this point, Slytherin appears more as an antagonist, willing to help out when the situation suits it.

In year four, it has Rose collect the remaining Horcruxes, explaining their significance, and telling Rose it intends to kill Voldemort. It tells her its name is important to it, and it doesn’t want Voldemort killing people in its name. This is, more or less, a clear motivation. With Slytherin’s goals aligning with Rose’s, it seems it can be trusted. As time goes on, Rose begins to consider Slytherin as a friend of sorts.

After Rose “dies” at the end of fourth year, not much is heard from Slytherin in years five and six. For a villain that is careful about telling too much information about itself, this wasn’t a good move on my part. Slytherin couldn’t develop during this time, because it wasn’t there. It was only mentioned by Hermione and Dumbledore, the only two in Hogwarts who knew about it. But Slytherin reappears at the end of year six, when Voldemort steps into Hogwarts. Slytherin gets into his head and physically restructures his mind to force him to regret what he’s done. This rejoins his soul, and Slytherin kills him, absorbing his blood and soul.

At this point, Slytherin’s true motivations are made more clear. Its face, which originally looked akin to a plastic mask, takes on the quality of skin. It marvels (as much as an entity that never has emotions can) at the fact that it can feel its skin again. It turns on Hermione, who actually killed Rose not five minutes earlier, believing itself to have been friends with Rose and wanting revenge.

At this point, Slytherin was once again a clear villain. Not only that, but it had solidified itself as the main villain of the series. Hermione had arguably taken over as the main character, pitting her against Slytherin, something I hadn’t anticipated when I’d first started writing Girl in Red. Following clues Rose left behind, Hermione and Luna find the notebook Rose kept with her, into which she’d copied Salazar Slytherin’s note on his secret project: Slytherin. Her notebook also explained why she’d faked her own death and turned on them: Slytherin forced her to, threatening her friends if she didn’t.

The biggest difficulty with writing Slytherin was that it was careful not to reveal too much information about itself. This meant that a lot of its plan had to be worked out by the other characters, tying up the loose ends it left throughout the series. Hermione works out most of it, but Ron still calls her out, reminding her that she can’t actually know any of it (but that scene’s purpose was to fill in gaps for my readers anyway, so it served its purpose). This also made Slytherin’s motivations a little confusing. While its desire for a proper body were made clear in its backstory, its hatred of humanity wasn’t clear. Because it was so careful, it never mentioned either part of its plan to Rose. Hermione worked out that it was amassing an army of Spektres to spread out over the world, sucking the happiness out of the air, causing humanity to lay down and die.

Even if you haven’t read Girl in Red, I recommend reading the chapter with Slytherin’s origins (look for “Day 1” to get past the part that leads up to it, stop at “Day 103”). There’s a lot of information in there that I can’t get to here. Writing Slytherin was a challenge, forcing me to scrap several possible outcomes when I realized Slytherin was too careful to allow that outcome. Even its plan with the Spektres didn’t occur to me until nearly the end of the series, when I realized that was exactly something it would use. But its ultimate weakness was its inability to understand human emotion. It was because of this that Ron, Sally-Anne, Harry, and Ginny realized that something had tampered with their memories from the end of sixth year. It didn’t understand why Rose would rather die than live as its puppet. It didn’t expect Rose to have found Salazar Slytherin’s notes, allowing Hermione to craft a spell to destroy Cruentius. And it didn’t expect Hermione to sacrifice herself to kill it, bringing Hogwarts down on top of her in the process.

Most of what I’ve learned about writing villains came from writing Slytherin. It was the big bad of Girl in Red and an original villain. I wrote or expanded other villains along the way, but Slytherin was the first and hardest. I had trouble conveying its motivations, and I don’t think I made it as sympathetic as I’d wanted to. But I like what I got in the end, a villain able to challenge my characters, one that I’ll always remember.

#Essay #Villains #GirlInRed

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

In Summer Nights on Church and Main, I mention Bobby. When I started going to Open Mic at FBC, he was in charge. He opened the night, he managed the list, and he was the guy to ask if I wanted to squeeze between two performers so I could get home in time to put my son to bed.

In August of 2019, Bobby got a job out of town, and thus was moving away. It was to be his last night at Open Mic, and I wanted to do something special. My first instinct was to sing (a rare occurrence from me), but I couldn’t sing any of the songs I wanted to perform.

There was one in particular, Never Too Far From Home, from Pokemon of all things, that I thought expressed how I felt about him leaving. He was going off to a new place, leaving his family, and I wanted to express that he’d always have a home with us. Something I’m sure he knew, given his parents, but I wanted to say it anyway.

That idea became A New Beginning.

Bobby comes back every so often to visit his parents, and stops by when he can. I love getting to hear him play, as I do with everyone at Open Mic. What amazed me at the time was how much my words meant to not only him, but everyone else. Now, a year later, he’s still doing alright. And as with everyone else, I look forward to seeing him again, and wish him the best.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Sometimes in a story, a protagonist turns antagonist. This shouldn’t happen at once, although there may be an inciting incident that pushes them over the edge. That character should slowly change, sliding ever closer to evil as they have to justify their actions to others. It makes perfect sense in their head, and if their friends can’t understand that, it’s their friends’ problem. While many of my characters did have problems that put their friends in danger, there were two that became active antagonists/villains: Sally-Anne and Rose. The difference was that Sally-Anne remained a perspective character, allowing my readers to see what happened in her mind. Rose, as far as her friends knew, snapped. Thus, I’m going to focus on Sally-Anne as an example.

This didn’t happen at once. Sally-Anne was everyone’s friend, trusted by staff and students alike at Hogwarts. Everyone knew her, and even though she was Muggle-born, the Slytherins didn’t actively harass her. People opened up to her, often sharing secrets or gossip. One of a few times she used this to her advantage was breaking up a fight between the Gryffindor and Slytherin Quidditch teams, blackmailing the Slytherin captain into complacency. In her mind, this was justified. As time went on, she saw her friends becoming less trustful of the Ministry (this is fifth year, when the Ministry didn’t trust Hogwarts), and believed that the Ministry was there to help them. She believed Harry when he said Voldemort had returned, but reminded him that his word alone wasn’t enough to cause everyone to panic, which is exactly what would happen if the Ministry agreed with him. Once again, she justified this with “I know better”. This is something that happens often with characters slowly turning: justification. They keep having to justify their actions because other people don’t see things the way they do.

Oftentimes when a protagonist is changing like that, another character is responsible. In this case, it was Umbridge. Sally-Anne saw Umbridge as a Ministry official, not a “goon” as Hermione might’ve put it, someone trying to reassure worried people and avoid a mass panic. As far as they knew, it wasn’t possible for anyone to come back from the dead, upon Umbridge insisted. She seeded Sally-Anne with the idea that Hermione was losing herself to grief after losing Rose. Once again, Sally-Anne understood this. She slowly began to wonder if her friends were right, and if there were other motives for claiming Voldemort was back.

Finally, there’s the tipping point. For Sally-Anne, it was when she started believing Umbridge over her friends. She still didn’t entirely trust Umbridge, but she realized that Hermione refused to see reason when it came to their newest teacher. In Sally-Anne’s mind, Umbridge was reforming the school in which they’d nearly died multiple times in a few years, while Hermione had convinced herself and the rest of their friends that a threat existed where it didn’t. When Sally-Anne learned of a resistance movement within Hogwarts (the original books called it Dumbledore’s Army, while this version of Hermione chose to name it the Crimson Insurrection, which didn’t help their case), she initially tried to reason with them. When Hermione revealed that Umbridge was using physical punishment on students, Sally-Anne made a deal. She gave up her friends in exchange for Umbridge not using the punishment quills anymore. At that point, she was an antagonist.

Sally-Anne’s story didn’t stop there. I’ve written a poem from her perspective, Given Up on Me, which goes on to the point where she realizes that Umbridge has been lying to her. Umbridge’s entire argument was founded on the claim that Rose went mad and killed herself, which Sally-Anne realizes Rose wouldn’t do, not while her friends could be in danger. And if Umbridge lied about that, Sally-Anne realizes that she could’ve been lying about anything. She uses her position as the head of the Inquisitorial Squad to get a message out about what Umbridge has done to the school. After pointing out to Draco that Umbridge would likely throw them both over if it benefited her, he gets his family involved, which puts an end to Umbridge’s reign of terror. But as it says in the poem, “too little, too late”. This is the final part of a protagonist’s descent: consequences. There will be consequences for the character if this is done correctly.

Changing a character like this is tricky and should only be done with care. Both Wings of Fire and Star Wars do this with Darkstalker and Anakin Skywalker, respectively, but in both cases, we see the backstory of a character we know as a villain. We see them change, following the path they believe is right. But doing this with an active character, one the readers don’t know is becoming an antagonist, may lose readers. If they don’t like where the character is going, they may not stick around until the end. If you feel this is the path your character should take, tread lightly.

#Essay #Characters #Heroes #Villains #GirlInRed

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

I wrote Uncomfortable and Keeping the Faith on the same day with the same thoughts in my head. Protests had broken out, and the higher ups weren’t doing nearly enough to address the reasons people were protesting.

I keep looking at them and thinking “The right thing to do would be to join them”. To this day, I haven’t, because I’m scared. I have anxiety, particularly about being with a lot of people I don’t know. Every time I think about going out there, I think of reasons not to.

“Where are they being held?” “Is it in a relatively safe part of the city?” “Is someone coordinating parking?” “Is it safe to take my things with me?” “What if the police start retaliating?” “What if I get arrested? Will that put my job in jeopardy?” “What if I don’t come home?”

That’s how my anxiety operates when I’m doing something new. As I wrote, it makes me uncomfortable. But “uncomfortable” only mildly describes how my brothers and sisters that have the courage to speak out feel. John Lewis was arrested over 20 times, but he kept trying, because it was important. It mattered.

It matters to me. One day, I hope I’ll have the courage to stand up for what’s right. I hope I can add my voice to theirs. Until then, I’m going to keep writing. Of a better world, of the problems with this one. I may not have courage, but I’ll always have hope.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Motivation is important to every character in a story, and villains are no exception. If it’s not clear why a villain is acting the way they are, then the audience won’t get behind the story. Motivation can be simple for unsympathetic villains, but for sympathetic ones, there should be more depth. Motivation that is too complicated can be bad too, because it will end up confusing the audience.

Oftentimes, a villain’s motivations are simple. They want power, money, something basic we can all understand. These are your generic villains, usually. It’s a quick and easy way to develop them. We don’t need to know their whole backstory to understand why they want what they want. However, it can be a little dull and make the villain bland. You’ll have to put more time into making them distinct from other villains.

If you want the villain to be sympathetic, then there will have to be more depth to them. I’ll take an example once again from Person of Interest, because it was good at this. The villain Elias was shown at first to be a mob boss who wanted to run New York City. But his motivation was soon made clear: He was abandoned by his father, who had his mother murdered. After that he sought revenge on his father, himself a mob boss. Elias also sought to claim what he believed to be his birthright, that is taking over the city. It’s clear, it’s understandable, and Elias was so dignified and charismatic that I wanted him to succeed.

The problem comes when a villain’s motives are too complicated. They want something specific, so there’s a reason they want it, one that may not be clear. An easy way to fix this is by having the villain gloat about their master plan. This often explains not only what, but why. If their plan is so complicated that people don’t understand it, you may lose part of your audience. The same goes for their motivation. I don’t need to like them, but I want to know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Villain and antagonist motivations can be easy to get right, but also easy to mess up. Which makes it like everything else in writing. If in doubt, it’s okay to do something simple. The Joker is an iconic villain for a reason. His motivation is simple: he’s insane. Simple motivations can make a memorable villain, but sympathetic ones need more depth. It’s up to you which one you choose.

#Essay #Characters #Villains

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

As I mentioned last week, I used to have problems controlling my anger. Now, I don’t even like getting angry. I try not to, I try to keep it all under control. But sometimes, things happen, and anger is the appropriate response.

In 2020, the year that never seems to end, there have been multiple incidents of African Americans dying in police custody. Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, Daniel Prude, to name only a few (as of the start of October, and the year’s not over yet). Even after massive protests broke out earlier in the year, this kept happening.

I haven’t marched in the protests in my city. I donate to the ACLU, and while that’s something, it’s not a lot. We should all be doing more. I don’t mean to speak down to anyone or blame anyone. I hate the feeling that this is my fault, but that’s a fact. It’s everyone’s fault.

Many of us didn’t realize what was happening, but we’ve seen this before. For years, racism has been a part of our world. My town is no different, being predominately white. That’s not an accident, that was intentional, many years ago. We should’ve been asking “Why?” a long time ago. Why is it like this?

Knowing who’s at fault is only important because it tells us who is responsible for fixing it. We are all at fault, so it’s our responsibility to fix it. I can’t even say “my city’s not like that”, because Daniel Prude was from my city.

It’s up to us all to fix it. We can do it. Because as I said in Keeping the Faith, we are better than that.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA