2ndary Characters, do you really need to know them?

Every world needs a little mystery now and then. Just don't make it a Chekhov's Gun by spending too much time on it.

mrsmig said:

If you've had the MC comment on the secondary character's scars and the SC clam up as a result, you're giving the scarring enough weight that it would make me want an explanation of how it happened. If not right away, then at some point in the story.

It reminds me a bit of the old theatre saying that you don't put a phone onstage unless it's going to ring.

Click to expand...

I tend to agree. If it's in the story and you have created a curiosity around it then you should probably satisfy that curiosity at some point. If you don't intend to, I would not draw attention to it. It is perfectly fine to have things that are not revealed about 2ndary characters that make up part of who they are, but if it is asked about in the story then you'll probably want to follow through or the reader feels cheated. For example, in one of my novels about a world where people develop super powers, It never comes to light why people started developing super powers, but I also don't spend any time on people asking about it, so it's not a big deal. But I have a character who has several quirks and acts outside of social norms. It often comes to play and since I've drawn attention to it I am eventually going to reveal his past and explain why.

I would agree with the above comments that you should do something with it. However, don't jump to the conclusion that it has to be a thoroughly explained backstory. If the reason for the scars is implied (but not overly reaching and vague) and the mention of the scars is used to round out the character or somehow relate to an action the character takes later, the reader doesn't necessarily need every complete detail.

Tolstoy initially wrote about a novella's worth of Anna Karenina's back story, her life and times, before cutting it all out, and instead inserting a sentence here and a sentence there to give a more impressionist sketch of her life up to the point the book starts.
While this is not always the way to go with central characters, with secondary and tertiary such I think it's perfectly OK to make things more or less clear through a fast conversation, or some heavy hints, instead of a full back story.

I would definitely want to know where those scars came from, especially if they were important enough to mention in the first place. It would drive me nutty thinking it was mentioned (and therefore important to the story) and never got answers.

My question is, does it matter if his history is never clarified?

Click to expand...

It may not matter in this book but could be important later on. In the first novel of one of my series I established a few "triggers" in a major supporting character. He's usually well-behaved, but hit a trigger the wrong way and he goes Medieval on their behinds. The main character did not ask him what the problem was, just accepted and gave the guy his privacy.

Half a dozen books later the supporting character's triggers became the driver for a new novel. He'd been steadily getting more and more edgy and something tipped him over the edge. By then I'd developed my craft enough so it was a book I could tackle.

Otherwise the rule I follow came from a scriptwriter's workshop:

What does the character want and how far is he/she willing to go to get it?

Do that for every character in the book with a speaking part and you likely won't have to do much plotting, the characters will do it for you.

mrsmig said:

It reminds me a bit of the old theater saying that you don't put a phone onstage unless it's going to ring.

Click to expand...

LOVE this. This is the best thing I've read all day.

Keeping this in mind, I remember reading somewhere that, "Real life doesn't make sense, but stories do. Don't have things happen that do not have a purpose. Real life is not fiction, nor should it be."

However, I forget who wrote it.

Just my two cents!