happinessisaplaceidreamof
happinessisaplaceidreamof-deact:
Okay, I was wondering do people think it's necessary for all the characters to have an interesting back story or can they simply exist just to be killed off? I'm currently in the process of introducing additional characters and I don't know where to draw the line at creating their individual story. I want the reader to connect with them enough to be bothered by the death, but I don't want them overshadowing the main character.
I think we all underestimate the power of a good, character-outlining paragraph. In our discussion about characterization a couple of weeks ago, I talked about how we did these characters sketches for a class I had where we filled out a sort of survey of our characters’ qualities, then wrote maybe… 1000 words just about who our characters were? And big chunks of those sketches ended up in the story.
Obviously main characters will develop over the course of the story, but your more minor characters can probably be introduced in a half page to two pages (or so). Give them detail enough to make them seem real, but don’t belabor your characterization if you’re just going to kill them off in the next few pages.
Hope that helps! Anyone else have any advice on this topic?
