“Elevated Extras” refers to a side character that has suddenly become a main character. Or, if not a main character, they are suddenly more relevant to the plot than they were earlier. This happens often in TV shows where a character who was popping up every so often is suddenly in every episode. This may happen because they needed to add more main characters, or because a character has suddenly become more relevant. Like any side character who suddenly has more attention, they have to be interesting, otherwise people won’t care.

There is a difference between an elevated extra and a main character that wasn’t getting a lot of attention. In Girl in Red, I didn’t give Neville much focus until year three, but that doesn’t make him an elevated extra. He wasn’t exactly a side character; I certainly didn’t think of him as one. He was a main character that didn’t get a lot of focus. In Person of Interest, a lot of the characters they add to the cast are arguably main characters that didn’t get a lot of attention at first. Fusco, Root, and Shaw are all examples of this. As with an elevated extra, they must be interesting enough to keep the audience’s attention as they settle into the role of main character, and I would argue that all of them were.

For an elevated extra, I would point to the character Molesley in Downton Abbey. He pops up every now and then, but he’s clearly a side character at first. It isn’t until later in the series when he starts working at Downton that he becomes a main character. Like most elevated extras, this takes place in a series. If it’s in a single book or story, there likely won’t be enough time to establish the character as a side character. However, as Molsley does in Downton Abbey as he becomes a main character, he is interesting enough to keep the audience’s attention. He has his own troubles, and becomes more than just the butt of other characters’ jokes.

In Girl in Red, the best example of an elevated extra is Sarah Perks, who was probably my favorite side character of the series. As Sally-Anne’s mom, she does come up every now and then, always calm and collected, with a frightening knowledge of working people for information. The hint that she’s more than she seems comes from a scene at the start of year three, when she tears down Harry’s Uncle Vernon by citing a specific incident at his drilling company that he doesn’t want known. It isn’t until the end of year six that it’s revealed that she works for a government organization tasked with monitoring magicals in the U.K. and maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, with eyes and ears all over the country. In year seven, her position becomes relevant to the plot when Umbridge actively seeks to dismantle the Statute of Secrecy and take control of both the Magical and Muggle worlds.

The transformation from side to main character must be done with care. When a character suddenly becomes more relevant to the plot, they shouldn’t be ignored either. Take the time to build interest around them, to pique readers’ curiosity. Once you’ve got their attention, you’re ready to introduce the plot point that makes them relevant. It’s best if they remain somewhat relevant to something, though. Otherwise, we’re following a random character for no apparent reason. As with everything else in writing, it takes practice and balance. But it’s worth it to get it right.

#Essay #Characters #SideCharacters

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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When writing the plot, something will be against the main characters. The question is, is it a villain, an antagonist, or an obstacle? I didn’t understand the difference until it was explained to me, but it makes a lot of sense when explained well. The show Person of Interest has great examples of all three. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend watching it.

An obstacle is something that stands in the way of the main character. In Person of Interest, like in most stories focused around a vigilante, this tends to be the police. They aren’t actively out to stop the main character specifically, they’re just doing their job. They’re certainly not evil like a villain, but they do get in the way of the main character. This makes them an obstacle, but not an antagonist or a villain.

There’s a thin line between antagonist and villain. An antagonist is a character that is actively trying to stop the main characters from achieving their goal. A competing romantic interest in a romance movie is an antagonist. They’re not evil like a villain, but their wants are in opposition to those of the protagonists, making them more than an obstacle. The difference between an antagonist and a sympathetic villain is that a competing romantic interest isn’t necessarily sympathetic. We’re not supposed to like them. Going back to Person of Interest, Detective Carter starts the series as an antagonist, and a sympathetic one at that. She’s still doing her job, but she’s taken a special interest in the main characters, enough so that they have to avoid getting close to her. The detective that’s above the rest and wants to bring a vigilante to justice, arguably like Commissioner Gordon in the Batman comics, is always an antagonist.

A villain is… well, a villain. They are evil. Maybe not pure evil, but their methods are questionable at best. They probably have no issue with killing people, or are happy to get others to do it for them. The character Simmons in Person of Interest is a villain. The corrupt cop whose dealings the main characters always stop comes up often in vigilante stories as well, as do mob bosses and gang leaders whose plans the vigilante foils time and time again. Cluny the Scourge from Redwall, Visser Three from Animorphs, the Emperor from Star Wars, and Voldemort from Harry Potter are all villains.

There are a lot of ways to challenge your protagonist and create drama. Having a villain is arguably the easiest approach, but not the only one. As always, pick the approach that works best for your story. Like all tools, this is only meant to show the possibilities, not provide a mold to which your story must conform. Pick your idea, then start writing.

#Essay #Villains

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Villains come in all varieties, but one of the big questions to ask is sympathetic or pure evil? A sympathetic villain is one whose motives are not only clear, but we think “Yeah, I can understand that”. Pure evil is self-explanatory. That’s the kind of villain that doesn’t cuddle puppies, but kicks them. Hungry? That baby’s candy looks delicious, and its tears will probably taste good too. There are great examples of each in literature.

In Redwall, Cluny the Scourge is pure evil. He wants to rule the world, and will happily kill anyone that gets in his way. In Animorphs, Visser Three has a bad habit of decapitating his underlings. Visser’s in a bad mood? Decapitated. Didn’t take off fast enough? Decapitated. Interrupted the Visser? Decapitated. While both of them are pure evil, we understand their motives. Cluny isn’t given a backstory, but we accept what he’s doing. He’s built up as a nightmare, a legend, a force that conquers the world. We don’t need more than that. But saying “That one’s pure evil” isn’t enough to make your audience believe it. You have to make your readers feel it. The name “Visser Three” looks evil to me, because this was done well.

In Wings of Fire, Darkstalker is a sympathetic villain. We see him talk to Moonwatcher and show her his vision of a better world he wants. The way he gets there is what makes him a villain. He’s been corrupted by his power, believes his way is right, and isn’t good at listening. We don’t want to see him killed by the heroes, we want to see him realize the errors of his ways. Sympathetic villains walk the line between antagonist and villain, a distinction I’ll talk about more in depth next week.

When writing either a pure evil or sympathetic villain, it’s important not to skip on motivation. Their motives should be clear to the readers, even if not clear to the main characters. The choice depends on the story you want to write. Classic fairy tales often have pure evil villains so the choice is easy. Sympathetic villains should be used if you want your readers to think more about it. It’s your writing, so it’s your choice.

#Essay #Villains #Characters

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I talked last week about discovery writing. This week, I’m going to delve into some of the pros and cons of outlining that I’ve found. I won’t go into outlining techniques yet, but leave that for another post.

Outlining has the advantage of giving a broader sense of the story. You can map out the plot, figure out what has to happen when, and write it out without as much concern about the overhead. This also means if you don’t like the part you’re on, you can skip it and come back to it later. After all, you already know what happened in the parts before it. With a broader view, you can also see any problems earlier than you would with discovery writing.

As I’ve found time and again with outlining, it has a major downside: what happens when the plot changes? Well, you update the outline. Again, and again, and again. Sometimes, you completely forget about it, and the outline falls behind the actual story. Some people are dedicated outliners. They keep the outline next to them while writing and follow it exactly. But for those of us that deviate from it from time to time, we tend to forget to update it. This isn’t a big disadvantage, just something extra to handle.

Like discovery writing, outlining has pros and cons. It all depends on what works for you. Like there was no one that could tell me what would work for me, I can’t tell you what will work for you. Try both approaches, or, like I tend to do, try a hybrid approach. Like most writers will tell you, the best way to improve is to practice.

#Essay #Planning

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When planning out a story, there are two approaches: discovery and outlining. Discovery is making up the story as you go, whereas outlining involves creating an outline for the story. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. As always, I’m only going to scratch the surface a little, this week with discovery writing, next week with outlining.

I’ve found discovery writing to be helpful when writing because I come up with ideas while writing that I didn’t while outlining. The biggest one I can think of was in Cherry Champion. After Hermione followed Rose’s example and ran in to try to stop the Death Eaters at the World Cup, she became traumatized. My idea was that it would come up throughout her year at Hogwarts, but I couldn’t figure out where to begin. After being stuck on that for nearly a month, I started writing the next chapter, making it up as I went. I started with her parents’ reaction to it, and soon realized there was no way they were about to let her return to Hogwarts. That shaped the rest of the story in a way I never thought about until I’d written it.

The biggest disadvantage of discovery writing is that it requires going back to fix it once you’ve written it. While this is typical of second and third passes, it happens a lot more with discovery writing. The pieces written at different times might not always fit together, because there’s no guiding outline to keep them consistent. Thus, entire chapters might have to be changed to keep it consistent. This isn’t as big a deal when writing a novel; it’s expected to rewrite it several times. But without an outline to look at and see problems beforehand, more time might be spent rewriting than would otherwise.

These are just some of the advantages and disadvantages of discovery writing that I’ve found while writing. Other writers will share different experiences. I tend toward discovery writing because if I focus too much on fleshing out an outline, I get stuck and can’t write. With the exception of year one, all of Girl in Red has an outline, but those outlines weren’t always followed. I’ll talk more about the advantages and disadvantages of outlining next week.

#Essay #Planning

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